Urban Development and Proposals Discussion

[Calgcouver]

I agree, the lack of street activation and walkability on 4th, 5th & 6th Ave makes those roads less desirable for residential. However, there are lots of other areas in the core that residential development is much more suited and not yet fully developed. i.e West Village, East Village, Beltline, Eau Claire & the Arena District. Over the next few decades, there are only so many people that will want to live downtown. I think the focus and resources need to continue to be on attracting people to those neighbourhoods rather than the more commercial looking parts of downtown.

The problem is that an easy majority of properties front onto very uninviting one-way roads that have little to no street activation and only function as car sewers through the core. Very unsurprisingly, these are these blocks are the trouble areas that require investment. Red blocks denote areas with an uninviting street frontage fronting onto an oversized one-way road with a poor public realm.

I didn't include 7th avenue, but I also don't think it is a great street for residential as it is kind of nice if someone can street park on your street when visiting (or moving in). If you take away 7th Ave frontages as well, which aren't exactly optimal, that leaves you with only 8th avenue frontages being remotely desireable and 8th Avenue is clearly the only successful street downtown for a reason. This leaves the vast majority of possible redevelopment sites as being not a great place for investment in residential redevelopments. Significant investment in the East Village occurred after the public realm improvements began to present a CLEAR vision for what the neighbourhood could be. No such vision exists for any of these lots on the red frontages above and without addressing that, significant investment will not follow no matter what the City tries to give for incentive. Not if the streetscape out front of the possible development is utter shit.
Look at this sidewalk on the southside of 9th Avenue. On what planet is this acceptable urban design standard and who would ever buy that parking lot to redevelop with this being the existing condition.

 

[MichaelS]

While it is not ideal, and would not fix the entire stretch of 9th Avenue, if someone was redeveloping the parking lot, they would likely upgrade the frontage for their parcel to something better. However, the limited lot depth and City's desire to keep 9th Avenue 5 lanes wide would hinder those upgrades.

An example of an improvement that was hindered by the required road widening is Avenue West End on 5th Avenue. Here is the "before" condition from May 2009, prior to redevelopment:

Google Maps

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And here is the after from May 2019, with street trees seperating the pedestrian realm, but with a wider outside lane that allows street parking, but at the expense of more asphalt:

Google Maps

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www.google.ca

 

[CBBarnett]

While it is not ideal, and would not fix the entire stretch of 9th Avenue, if someone was redeveloping the parking lot, they would likely upgrade the frontage for their parcel to something better. However, the limited lot depth and City's desire to keep 9th Avenue 5 lanes wide would hinder those upgrades.

And here is the after from May 2019, with street trees seperating the pedestrian realm, but with a wider outside lane that allows street parking, but at the expense of more asphalt:

Google Maps

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

www.google.ca

It's wild to me this wider outside lane to allow for street parking because it accomplishes nothing - the lane is still needed for street parking as it's not wide enough to allow for cars to pass (no vehicle throughput benefits), but also manages to cut into the sidewalk and reduce pedestrian space. Another example where there aren't enough "input" lanes to ever need 5 lane capacity as well - the avenue is only 2/3 lanes wide a block to the west. And it's a new build too!

What could possibly be the logic of any of this?

 

[Calgcouver]

While it is not ideal, and would not fix the entire stretch of 9th Avenue, if someone was redeveloping the parking lot, they would likely upgrade the frontage for their parcel to something better. However, the limited lot depth and City's desire to keep 9th Avenue 5 lanes wide would hinder those upgrades.

An example of an improvement that was hindered by the required road widening is Avenue West End on 5th Avenue. Here is the "before" condition from May 2009, prior to redevelopment:

Google Maps

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

www.google.ca

And here is the after from May 2019, with street trees seperating the pedestrian realm, but with a wider outside lane that allows street parking, but at the expense of more asphalt:

Google Maps

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

www.google.ca

That is good example to use. The final condition fundamentally does not address how unnecessarily wide and inhospitable the street is in accommodating pedestrians and how overcommitted the space is to automobility. It is made even more ridiculous by the fact that the pylons in the centre in the 2019 streetview are to temporarily turn the street back into a 2-way street, which is more reasonable haha.

It is the desire to keep five lanes of traffic i just do not understand. I commute on 9th avenue home and 4th ave to work at rush hour (if i drive) and it is faster to cut through downtown than going around it. And i'm coming from 26 Ave in Mission. We have far more road capacity than we need and than creates a liveable core. When new developments come along somehow we end up widening automobile lanes which is completely counterintuitive as a city building solution for downtown Calgary.

 

[Surrealplaces]

It's kind of the chicken before the egg, but if a large number of downtown buildings were occupied as residential, I would expect that we should be able to take away a lane on some of the busy streets and widen the sidewalks as well as convert back to two way.

I agree with what's been said, in that right now the streetscape and CBD in general is a hostile environment for residential, but it's not a show stopper as roads and sidewalks can be changed. With the office rental market so deep in the toilet, this is a great time for the city to think outside the box and maybe try something radical, and re-visualize downtown altogether.

 

[Mountain Man]

I think office conversions should be pushed as hard as they can, we have probably a bare minimum of 10 000 000 sqft of office space empty in a boring and sterile downtown core. Filling that space with residents will be the best thing we can do for our downtown core. Calgary built way too much office space and not enough residential space in the heart of downtown, and we now have a chance to correct that a bit Surrounding downtown with residential has helped offset that a bit, but most of downtown is a pass through zone on evenings and weekends, not a destination. You guys make great points about narrow sidewalks, hostile one ways and all that, but the best way to get it fixed in my mind is to add people to the area 24/7.

 

[Disraeli]

This has already been said over and over but without comprehensive investment to improve the road network and public realm in the core, not much improvement is going to occur. Sure, a few class C spaces that are in decent areas like Sierra Place might get converted, but the city needs to lead the charge in their budget. Enough with the lip service and the piecemeal approach. The same goes for the Beltline too.

 

[Kōsō]

I really think they need to address the fact that no one wants to live on a one-way freeway road which makes up the majority of our downtown streets (4th, 5th, 6th, 9th Ave). The ROWs are way too large for vehicles, have behemoth parking lanes, no tree line assignments and shitty/small sidewalks and public realm. If you want to make streets that are calm enough that people would actually want to live on, convert these Avenues (at least two or three of them) back to two-way streets, or reduce the drive and parking lane widths and keep them one-way for the most of the blocks with the exception of where flyovers come in, etc. No wonder these feel so windy and uninviting there aren't even trees.
Here is what I think:
View attachment 289079

I couldn't agree more! Calgary also needs to let go of our love affair with the vehicle. Not every street and Avenue needs to have two lanes in each direction. No one wants to hang out on a narrow sidewalk with cars whizzing by at 60kmph. Slower streets with wider sidewalks allow people to linger which in turn leads to shopping, dining out, and investment in the businesses that line the street. This then creates a very livable environment encouraging residential development. It really becomes a win-win scenario.

 

[gsunnyg]

I really think they need to address the fact that no one wants to live on a one-way freeway road which makes up the majority of our downtown streets (4th, 5th, 6th, 9th Ave). The ROWs are way too large for vehicles, have behemoth parking lanes, no tree line assignments and shitty/small sidewalks and public realm. If you want to make streets that are calm enough that people would actually want to live on, convert these Avenues (at least two or three of them) back to two-way streets, or reduce the drive and parking lane widths and keep them one-way for the most of the blocks with the exception of where flyovers come in, etc. No wonder these feel so windy and uninviting there aren't even trees.
Here is what I think:

View attachment 289030
View attachment 289111
Which in the renovation of this building the city allowed the road to be widened for vehicle parking, making the public realm even worse:
View attachment 289034
Here is basically how the ROW was before taking away more sidewalk space for a wider roadway (approx):
View attachment 289048
And here is what I think it ought to be if you want to create a street that residential development would actually want to be on (Two-Way example):
View attachment 289049
and one-way possibility:
View attachment 289079
You could still have oversized drive lanes, big lanes for buses, add tree line assignments and more pedestrian oriented light fixtures, expand the sidewalks a bit, create areas to sit outside of businesses and still have completely adequate traffic flow.
The one-way example would being to look a lot like this:
View attachment 289082

So sure, City admin/council want to create a better downtown, and for this hotel renovation project they allowed them to widen the vehicular ROW exasperating an already poor condition into one that somehow caters even more to vehicles. They have no plan to improve and beautify downtown except to 'encourage investment in residential'. Well no one wants to live on a freeway of a street with no trees where all the retail is in +15s that close at 5pm sharp. Allowing this additional road widening goes to show that the City didn't have a vision for how to improve the condition of 4 Avenue in front of this 'investment' downtown, they just did they same patchwork they always do. The hotel operator wants a drop off point, take that chance to improve the public realm condition not make it worse.

Figured this is the place to talk about how to create a better vision for how downtown could improve without just saying "it needs investment in residential development". Residential doesn't want to be located on the types of street conditions we currently have downtown it isn't desirable, maybe begin addressing that.

Hey! I work next to that street! On Burrard. I grab my coffee from that Timmies every morning.

 

[CBBarnett]

It's wild to me this wider outside lane to allow for street parking because it accomplishes nothing - the lane is still needed for street parking as it's not wide enough to allow for cars to pass (no vehicle throughput benefits), but also manages to cut into the sidewalk and reduce pedestrian space. Another example where there aren't enough "input" lanes to ever need 5 lane capacity as well - the avenue is only 2/3 lanes wide a block to the west. And it's a new build too!

What could possibly be the logic of any of this?

So I googled this whole "wide outside lane" thing cutting into the sidewalk, it's actually got it's own wikipedia page for us non-traffic engineers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_outside_lane . Here's the original example on 5th Avenue SW for reference:

In summary, the concept of a WOL was developed in the United States and is generally considered a practice to allow for parked vehicles and - most surprising to myself - cyclists. That's why it's not just two-lanes wide to allow for a parked car and a travel lane or a "wide outside through lane" or WOTL. The whole idea is so the cyclist isn't in the travel lane adjacent.

All this makes sense until you scratch the tiniest bit past the surface....

• As mentioned, there's no demonstrated traffic demand to require 5 lanes of travel in the first place
• The WOL was developed from removing sidewalk space, the thing that is actually in short supply.
• It appears to be a classic of following "the letter or the spirit of the law", the 4.5m wide WOL was created because that's likely what the design book calls for. If we took a few minutes to think about the "why" the design is calling for that instead (i.e. to supposedly support cycling traffic) a few immediate problems would appear:
  • it's only a half-block long so doesn't connect to any other WOL or the actual cycling or pathway network. Any cyclist who (arguably) benefits from this, would be immediately thrown back into traffic before and after this development which makes no sense.
  • it's very much against all our cycling policies with no network connections, no plans to ever put a lane here, no connection to the pathway system nearby etc.
  • a WOL not considered cycling infrastructure by almost any cyclist/active transportation planner for a ton of reasons related to being super dangerous (door zone, no protection etc.)

Given all this, my best guess is whoever thought through this didn't care much about the WOL or why it exists in the a design book - they just applied it. At the same time, the same rigid application of a wide/consistent sidewalk guidelines (which don't exist as far as I know) was sacrificed to accommodate the arbitrarily wide lane that serves no functional purpose. In this 5th Avenue SW example, the outcome wasn't too bad - the development was large enough and could work with the setbacks to still give some pedestrian space. Countless others developments don't/can't as we see elsewhere in the core on new and old buildings alike. All of this is to give another 8 inches of space to put an imaginary cyclist in a very dangerous spot. It's road engineering gaslighting.

It's weird to me that our inputs were:

• 5 lane one-way condition grossly over-built with only 7,000 - 10,000 vehicles per day (comparable to 19th Street NW or 1st Street NE)
• High density urban condo development proposed in a central location, checking every walkability, sustainability goal we have.
• 2016 neighbourhood census of Downtown West End reports only 15.1% mode share of personal vehicles drove to work
• Existing sidewalk in terrible condition and small width

Our output was :

• 5.5 lane one-way condition with a unconnected, unannounced and dangerous cycling feature
• 200 new units in an otherwise highly walkable area
• Sidewalk rebuilt with trees, no additional width and jags inward from adjacent properties to prevent direct pedestrian travel lines

 

[Mountain Man]

I definitely think the city needs to undertake a major realignment of the roadways downtown. The curbs and sidewalks are to misaligned from one block to the next, and factor in huge laybys and it's brutal (this one really pisses me off! https://www.google.ca/maps/@51.0425...CuaDLpoTrSbIH0N573fA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en). Sadly I think it will take a lot larger of a permanent population to justify the cost. Plus, I think you guys overstate the impact of the 1 ways, I lived in a 3rd storey unit on 11 Ave by the Co-op and traffic was never a concern (the dust in the spring was pretty annoying though), aside from 3:30-6PM, there is a line of parked cars between you and the street. On those days, I would sit on my balcony with a beer and watch traffic go by, I loved the look on some dudes faces when they saw me with a pint and they were stuck in traffic lol.

 

[jdixon]

As a driver, I hate these one and a half lane places. So many people try to drive through the remaining 0.5 if someone parks in it, and then nearly sideswipe anyone in the lane beside them.

As a pedestrian, I hate them because they narrow up sidewalks downtown in areas they are too narrow to begin with.

Honestly they suck for everyone... So why are we building any more?

 

[Nimbus]

Did this vision for the former Midfield Trailer park site come up yet?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1339585437921206275

https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5844982?cmp=rss&__twitter_impression=true

 

[Mountain Man]

With the Motel next door shutting down, that stretch of 16th vshould look totally different in 10-ish years!

 

[Surrealplaces]

This is the first time I've seen this vision for Midfield.

Pedestrian-wise, it's kind of cut off from everything, but from a cycling point of view it's not bad. It connects to the Nose Creek pathway which can get you around. It's too bad there wasn't some sort of decent walking /cycling pathway along 16th ave eastward.