News   Apr 03, 2020
Pastel Morning
 5.6K     1 
News   Apr 02, 2020
A Message to Our Readers
 7.4K     3 
News   Apr 02, 2020
Soon to be Gone
 4.3K     0 

Urban Development and Proposals Discussion

YourBoy007 said:
View attachment 428537

I stole this from the Calgary sub. Hilariously terrible I know. But besides that, do you guys think we can have pedestrian corners without a curb and have it all be flush with the road? Is it possible and does it make sense in areas like downtown?
Click to expand...
I noticed those when driving - going to be a huge tripping hazard and not ideal for those with low vision.
 
YourBoy007 said:
I stole this from the Calgary sub. Hilariously terrible I know. But besides that, do you guys think we can have pedestrian corners without a curb and have it all be flush with the road? Is it possible and does it make sense in areas like downtown?
Click to expand...
I am not sure the implications for snow plowing. We seem to work around the traffic calming speed bumps/humps alright. Otherwise, we should be doing it 100%.
 
YourBoy007 said:
View attachment 428537

I stole this from the Calgary sub. Hilariously terrible I know. But besides that, do you guys think we can have pedestrian corners without a curb and have it all be flush with the road? Is it possible and does it make sense in areas like downtown?
Click to expand...
Think it’s meant to keep pedestrians from cutting the corner and lead them out into the crosswalks. Also stop big trucks from cutting the corners. Which gets dangerous when pedestrians are standing on the ramps
 
Having 90 degree sidewalk ramps typically is seen as more accessible - orientated the pedestrian to cross straight. Part of caring about holistic pedestrian safety for diverse users of a sidewalk.

Problem is we don’t actually care that much.

Despite improvements from older even worse designs, we still imagine a car turning at higher speeds on our main streets, therefore requiring a curved corner rather than a more right-angle one. So a tight, right angle intersection becomes slightly wider, with weird dead space to accommodate right turns at speed - ironically the very thing that is the leading cause of pedestrian injury in the first place.

Coupled with other weirdness hidden in our engineering standards - wider than necessary lanes, plenty of turning lanes added everywhere, very high curb height compared to most cities, very steep cross-falls compared to most cities (I.e. the curve of the road surface itself as it rises to the middle of the road, drops to the gutter) - all this chips away at pedestrian accommodation, making crossing the road more random at each intersection and more difficult than it needs to be, especially for those with limited mobility/ability.

That’s the whole problem - trade-offs.

The issue is we want pedestrian safety & accomodation - but this is always conditional on car access still being able to travel relatively fast and with limited delay. So we end up with weird, random and mixed-success designs.

The problem is less the car access, more on the implicit designs that encourage higher speeds. These are always anti-pedestrian.
 
Last edited:
^ I don’t find Calgary has “very high curb heights”. The City standard 150mm (6”). Seems comparable to most cities I’ve been to.
Edmonton on the other hand has noticeably higher curbs. I always assumed it had something to do with the fact they get more snow that sticks around longer (but that’s just my guess).
 
FCC1982 said:
^ I don’t find Calgary has “very high curb heights”. The City standard 150mm (6”). Seems comparable to most cities I’ve been to.
Edmonton on the other hand has noticeably higher curbs. I always assumed it had something to do with the fact they get more snow that sticks around longer (but that’s just my guess).
Click to expand...
I don't know why this is the case, nor can I probably conclusively prove it as it's a hard thing to describe and there's many different conditions in each of the cities. Best I can do is my experience walking as pedestrian in the urban centres of all these places. Compared to Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal - all with far more pedestrian culture, more rain, and in Montreal's case, far more snow, ice and slush - Calgary and Edmonton feel they have way higher curbs and more "steeper" road cross-sections.

I find this phenomenon pretty much unnoticeable while driving. As a driver, the only time you'll notice is how sloped your car is in the curb side lanes on places like 11 Ave or 12 Ave SW. There's other weirdness that's a clue - sometimes the bottom of your door scratches on the sidewalk when you swing it open, pop-up patios have weird steps and grade changes need to make a level floor on an uneven road surface etc.

Where it becomes noticeable is when you spend enough time walking around the pedestrian cores of all these cities - particularly when crossing the road at a right-angle, such as a crosswalk. If you walk everywhere even in Calgary's most walkable areas, you'll start noticing it's fairly regular experience to see or be required to help a wheelchair user in the Beltline to roll out of the gutter as the drop from the curb is steep, followed by a steep climb to the centre of the road. Same goes with strollers and other carts, and folks with other mobility supports.

This probably doesn't make much of a difference to most able-bodied folks. But that's missing the whole point - everyone will be in situations in life where the have their mobility restricted at some point temporarily or permanently (strollers, carrying groceries, injury, illness, age etc.) why are streets not designed to to acknowledge this? A pedestrian-friendly city acknowledges the attention to details really matter for pedestrian accessibility. An extra inch or a extra step really does matter in many situations to pedestrians.

I think it's clear that drainage designs for road profiles are the source of the issue. But it isn't sufficient alone to explain the variability of that standard in application, nor why rainy/cold/slush/ice covered cities seem to be fine with lower profile curbs and less curved road cross-sections. Montreal seems perfectly happy have some streets with zero curbs at all, including ones with regular vehicle traffic.

By comparison, Calgary's inner city streets and sidewalks are all over the place in street width/slopes, sidewalk width/slopes, curb height, pedestrian ramp angles/quality/condition, amount of curb cuts, sidewalk closures, random debris, random poles locations/widths. In most cases the randomness is not some thought-out trade off between drivers and pedestrians - but a product of a culture of sloppy construction or general ignorance to the pedestrian experience and the attention to detail it requires. Some of these are annoyances but not overly harmful, many actually are anti-pedestrian and go against the basic right to mobility for everyone.
 
CBBarnett said:
I don't know why this is the case, nor can I probably conclusively prove it as it's a hard thing to describe and there's many different conditions in each of the cities. Best I can do is my experience walking as pedestrian in the urban centres of all these places. Compared to Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal - all with far more pedestrian culture, more rain, and in Montreal's case, far more snow, ice and slush - Calgary and Edmonton feel they have way higher curbs and more "steeper" road cross-sections.

I find this phenomenon pretty much unnoticeable while driving. As a driver, the only time you'll notice is how sloped your car is in the curb side lanes on places like 11 Ave or 12 Ave SW. There's other weirdness that's a clue - sometimes the bottom of your door scratches on the sidewalk when you swing it open, pop-up patios have weird steps and grade changes need to make a level floor on an uneven road surface etc.

Where it becomes noticeable is when you spend enough time walking around the pedestrian cores of all these cities - particularly when crossing the road at a right-angle, such as a crosswalk. If you walk everywhere even in Calgary's most walkable areas, you'll start noticing it's fairly regular experience to see or be required to help a wheelchair user in the Beltline to roll out of the gutter as the drop from the curb is steep, followed by a steep climb to the centre of the road. Same goes with strollers and other carts, and folks with other mobility supports.

This probably doesn't make much of a difference to most able-bodied folks. But that's missing the whole point - everyone will be in situations in life where the have their mobility restricted at some point temporarily or permanently (strollers, carrying groceries, injury, illness, age etc.) why are streets not designed to to acknowledge this? A pedestrian-friendly city acknowledges the attention to details really matter for pedestrian accessibility. An extra inch or a extra step really does matter in many situations to pedestrians.

I think it's clear that drainage designs for road profiles are the source of the issue. But it isn't sufficient alone to explain the variability of that standard in application, nor why rainy/cold/slush/ice covered cities seem to be fine with lower profile curbs and less curved road cross-sections. Montreal seems perfectly happy have some streets with zero curbs at all, including ones with regular vehicle traffic.

By comparison, Calgary's inner city streets and sidewalks are all over the place in street width/slopes, sidewalk width/slopes, curb height, pedestrian ramp angles/quality/condition, amount of curb cuts, sidewalk closures, random debris, random poles locations/widths. In most cases the randomness is not some thought-out trade off between drivers and pedestrians - but a product of a culture of sloppy construction or general ignorance to the pedestrian experience and the attention to detail it requires. Some of these are annoyances but not overly harmful, many actually are anti-pedestrian and go against the basic right to mobility for everyone.
Click to expand...
Curbs in Calgary are 150 which is consistent with the standard for the other cities you mention. The may be some old curbs at 7-8" but these are very atypical.

You are very right about the excessive slope requirements for street profiles. The standard profile calls for a slope from the crown of the road in excess of 3% unless the street is inclined. Roads in Calgary are very 'humpy' compared to elsewhere - it's actually quite ridiculous given the low amount of precipitation we receive. They say Calgary is a city of engineers and engineers love redundancy!
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top