Golfing guy
Active Member
If you’re talking NE then I believe this one is tied in with Deerfoot and Barlow. Pretty big project
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Roads, Highways & Infrastructure
- Thread starter Oddball
- Start date
I might be missing it, but I don't think it says anything about traffic on Bow Trail that doesn't turn on to or off of Sarcee Trail - i.e. through-traffic on Bow Trail.
trtcttc
Active Member
Agreed, it was part of the Crowchild study a while back in the "medium term" recommendations, which were said to be 10 years from the study date (2017).
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
Crowchild traffic NB says this needed to happen yesterday. Curious what the infrastructure budget looks like after the clever accounting done to keep property taxes at the cap. They've teased infrastructure spending, we'll have to see what the marching orders are coming out of the budget process.
lemongrab
Active Member
That's one of many secondary reasons for me - though I wish we would learn a lesson in how we lay out new communities.
My primary complaint is that its a futile and expensive game of whack-a-mole. A "successful" outcome here is that they'd also need to widen 15 more blocks on Bow Trail, build another interchange up the hill at OBCR (and then probably 85th), and another interchange at Richmond Rd, and then widen Sarcee to 6 lanes. Might as well widen Bow Tr to 6 lanes on the west side, too.
Each of these projects only serves to necessitate the next one instead of actually solving any problems. You spend a couple years building it, which involves trip delays. Then you get a couple of years after its open where it's amazing! (but really you're just offsetting the construction delays). And then before long the miracle of induced demand puts you back where you started, but of course you can just blame population growth because the road network is so amazing that all housing units are built with a preponderance of parking and wide residential roads so the car-centric beast continues to feed.
Or at some point you can become more strategic about these investments and accept that some degree of congestion is inevitable and acceptable.
trtcttc
Active Member
I'm sure this will need provincial funding too. With the warning of a deficit, I doubt the province will want to put up money, even if it's their favourite type of project: roads. They'll also need to widen the section from 6th to 16th since it goes down to 2 lanes. Even free flow, there will be a bottleneck there.
trtcttc
Active Member
I agree with some of this argument, but it's a bit too simplistic. We do accept some degree of congestion, there is congestion everyday on Deerfoot, on Crowchild, downtown, Glenmore/Crowchild, Glenmore/Deerfoot. It isn't that we're spending billions creating 25 extra lanes so there's zero traffic ever. The challenge is to invest so that the congestion doesn't get so bad like it is in cities like Toronto, where the bottlenecks on the Gardiner and the DVP have a very real environmental, economic, and health cost. Induced demand is real, but there has to be viable alternatives for the demand to be induced. For many parts of the city, there is no viable transit option. Sure you may be able to transit to work and back, but what if you need to pickup your kids, go to the doctor, get groceries, are these all transit accessible? And there never will be viable transit for some of these areas, because many people live in SFH, even "higher density" townhouses are probably not dense enough for an East Asian/Western European type transit-oriented city. I'm in support of allocating costs more fairly, but it's not as simple as being against all road construction.
MichaelS
Senior Member
Here is the recommendations from Adminstration. Nothing will be final until Council debates / votes at the end of November:
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
This will happen, because as simply as you say it, the evolution of these roads will roll on. Stoney may have helped, but the plan for the interchange will sit there and eventually be used.
Bad roads and long commutes don't move people to transit. Better transit moves people to transit.
FCC1982
Active Member
I believe this is the current plan for that - I’d love to see this go ahead too:
Found this link from the City - dates back to 2017:
https://www.calgary.ca/planning/transportation/16-ave-ne-study.html
FCC1982
Active Member
Yep - crossing my fingers that something starts happening in 2027 but I’m not holding my breath.
Here is a link for that one:
https://www.calgary.ca/planning/projects/crowchild-trail-long-term.html
CBBarnett
Senior Member
To nuance and expand on this point - better transit is better when it's more competitive on travel time to cars.
Spending $100M every decade on various Bow Trail road widenings and interchanges and billions on a ring road provides value in various ways, but aren't neutral in transit competitiveness. They consume taxable land, create value for lands outside our jurisdiction and reduce transit's relative competitiveness.
If traffic demand in the area is so high and ever growing - a solution would be to start planning the Blue Line extension to 85th and beyond. If designed well, that would negate the need for the interchanges and excessive land consumption on and off the hill, while offering a more resilient choice of transportation to those growing areas.
The problem with our transportation planning is it doesn't work that way - transit is only applied after the land is consumed and the interchanges are built, not as an alternative to negate the need for any of it. That's how we end up with the most expensive and worst option - all the road infrastructure and unproductive land consumption at huge costs, followed by an also expensive transit extension a few decades later that can't maximize value because it and the neighbourhoods around it can't be designed to effectively compete against driving.
In effect, completing a A+ driving network is required as a pre-condition to good transit being contemplated. And by that time, it's too late to make the transit competitive or save any money or land.
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
I think too much weight is put behind the LRT. Adding on more stop is just not going to get that many more people to ride it. Transit as a whole needs to be invested in, given lane priority and decent frequency. I take the MAX Yellow downtown, its honestly a pleasurable ride.
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
From the budget document... This probably isn't the right place for all this but anyhow it is infrastructure.
Looks the City wants to put TOD at Anderson, Southland, and Fish Creek back on the table!
Some other TOD money being sought too.
Public Realm for Westbrook... the dirt lot?! And West Elbow LAP.
They want money for the next bit of the blue line, lots of talk about the Airport Connection. That study should be out soon.
What isn't happening is also interesting. Nothing for Arts Commons, I suspected that the pivot to better services would mean an Arts Commons delay.
Interesting to see Peigan widening was a consideration but inevitably pushed.
Looks the City wants to put TOD at Anderson, Southland, and Fish Creek back on the table!
Some other TOD money being sought too.
Public Realm for Westbrook... the dirt lot?! And West Elbow LAP.
They want money for the next bit of the blue line, lots of talk about the Airport Connection. That study should be out soon.
What isn't happening is also interesting. Nothing for Arts Commons, I suspected that the pivot to better services would mean an Arts Commons delay.
Interesting to see Peigan widening was a consideration but inevitably pushed.
trtcttc
Active Member
I noticed the same, is that for the modernization of the existing Arts Commons? The new building that was just approved at Planning is unrelated?