Oddball
Senior Member
The announcement, as reported in several news outlets and on the front page of SC, that the city's transportation has approved a plan for the Crowchild Trail seems like a logical place to kick off this thread. Despite all the articles, there was very little about the plan itself. So I managed to find the city's page on the topic.
Here's some screen grabs from the "medium term" proposal which seems to have most of the heavy lifting.
The main thrust is widening the bridges over the Bow and trenching Crowchild underneath the string of intersections North of the River. It mostly looks good to me.
Only two things popped up that really made me queasy, the lights on 16th Ave. NW as it crosses Crowchild and the return of the lights on 12th Ave. SW underneath Bow Trail. I'm willing to let them slide because in the case of 16th, one more set of lights isn't really going to make that mess much messier and it the case of 12th Ave, I'm not in high school any more so it's no longer on my drive home.
I do drive Crowchild a whole heck of a lot, so anything that can make it more free flowing will be a boon particularly in off peak hours. I don't know if it's going to do much for peak times since the main problem is that there aren't enough outlets into downtown.
The other bit of weirdness that I'm not totally sold on are the surfeit of traffic circles that used to be called Unveristy Drive. I'll have to see it in practice before passing judgement, but it does strike me as a being a touch convoluted. I'm not convinced that the existing semi-cloverleaf needs to be hacked up, but on the other hand, it gets rid of lights at 13th Ave. I wish the plan included another replacing the lights at Unwin road too, but that looks to be out of scope. It will be interesting to see the big changes to University at Crowchild play out on game days at McMahon because with the new plan that may be the only time I drive that stretch anymore.
I also like the "land bridge" concept for pedestrian overpasses that pops up in the documentation. It's kinda like the human version of "wildlife overpasses" that mentioned the Dream Ideas for Calgary thread.
Here's some screen grabs from the "medium term" proposal which seems to have most of the heavy lifting.
The main thrust is widening the bridges over the Bow and trenching Crowchild underneath the string of intersections North of the River. It mostly looks good to me.
Only two things popped up that really made me queasy, the lights on 16th Ave. NW as it crosses Crowchild and the return of the lights on 12th Ave. SW underneath Bow Trail. I'm willing to let them slide because in the case of 16th, one more set of lights isn't really going to make that mess much messier and it the case of 12th Ave, I'm not in high school any more so it's no longer on my drive home.
I do drive Crowchild a whole heck of a lot, so anything that can make it more free flowing will be a boon particularly in off peak hours. I don't know if it's going to do much for peak times since the main problem is that there aren't enough outlets into downtown.
The other bit of weirdness that I'm not totally sold on are the surfeit of traffic circles that used to be called Unveristy Drive. I'll have to see it in practice before passing judgement, but it does strike me as a being a touch convoluted. I'm not convinced that the existing semi-cloverleaf needs to be hacked up, but on the other hand, it gets rid of lights at 13th Ave. I wish the plan included another replacing the lights at Unwin road too, but that looks to be out of scope. It will be interesting to see the big changes to University at Crowchild play out on game days at McMahon because with the new plan that may be the only time I drive that stretch anymore.
I also like the "land bridge" concept for pedestrian overpasses that pops up in the documentation. It's kinda like the human version of "wildlife overpasses" that mentioned the Dream Ideas for Calgary thread.
