I disagree, we should also have one at 1 St SE like in the original plan.
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Urban Development and Proposals Discussion
- Thread starter Surrealplaces
- Start date
Mountain Man
Senior Member
Sarcasm man...
We should have at least 4 or 5. 11th, 8th, 5th, 1st and then 4th in the east and whatever happens with a new underpass at 5th or 6th SE. Those would be the start for me, build more with demand. Traffic will only ever get worse (especially if we can't add any meaningful transit options), so time to start looking for alternatives.
It might not happen, especially here in Calgary, where we prioritize cars over other modes.
I would argue that 9th ave is backed up only for a couple of hour each morning, and outside that it's mostly an empty freeway. 8th is there, but is very limited in use. We really need a protected cycle lane that traverses downtown and continues east of DT.
6th ave would be good as it cuts through downtown and continues into EV, but ends at the west end of DT (though it could be connected to the river path at the west end) 9th is great because it not only goes through downtown, but it goes all the way straight into Inglewood.
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
Don't forget, it would connect with the Grand Central Station too.
Cowtown
Senior Member
If we were serious about cycling infrastructure we would have an EW cycle lane every 3 blocks at least. Having one at 12th and truncated lanes on 3rd, and 8th isn’t good enough
CBBarnett
Senior Member
For much of 9th, you could probably add a cycle-track with zero impact to the number of lanes due to parking lanes that are 1.5 - 3 times as wide as a standard lane. 9th isn't backed up due to lack of lanes, it's the volume of turning that's going on, mostly to the north.
A cycle-track - or even just a street reorganization/circulation plan would go a long way. Cleaning up all the random lay-bys, overly complicated dual or single turns some with leading, some with lagging priority and just making the whole corridor more "normal" would help a lot.
9th is a Calgary Classic - a product of incremental, car-only priority in transportation planning - never enough momentum, priority and resources to convert to some sort of car-only freeway, while also never so little priority or funding that engineers were forced to leave it alone or prioritize a more sensible corridor plan that improves transit, walking or cycling. That's how we end up with weird one-off tweaks at essentially every intersection - there's always a bit of money to make an adjustment to 9th but never enough to make the street better than a weird Frankenstein car-sewer.
Just simplify and clean up everything, take away all street parking and there's space for far more cross-town cycling, bus routes and sidewalks - and 4 lanes of cars. Downtown one-ways have always fallen into this trap where we have always felt we have to do something about the car congestion, forgetting that in crowded urban areas like downtown the only tool that actually works to manage congestion is mode shift to anything but cars (downtown mode-split is somewhere around 50% non-car already).
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Mountain Man
Senior Member
Simplifying curbs / laybys and excessively wide parking lanes would do absolute wonders for our city!
Golfing guy
Active Member
Isn’t there a bikes/pathways thread for this?
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
Redoing 9th Ave is urban development-ish lol
Mountain Man
Senior Member
I think what we are discussing is more than just bike lanes though, it's addressing the massively car oriented nature of 9th and it's inherent hostility to any other form of movement. The ridiculously narrow and obstructed sidewalks on the south side of the street west of 4th is what lead to this, and it's perfectly on topic IMO, even if we discuss some of the topics other specific threads also discuss.
Golfing guy
Active Member
Fair enough. You realize it’s basically the only way into downtown for cars from the west? I agree there probably is a need for more bike lanes form that direction. Though having bike lanes on 15,14, 12, 8 ave’s and the riverfront is quite a few options
Beltline_B
Senior Member
The bike lane could start at 11th street and go east from there. Would work well especially after 11street underpass gets done and the 11th is proper bike lane.
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
Something will need to be done on the west side of downtown. Really all that is left is the Renfrew and Mercedes dealerships. You can get from Eastbound Bow Trail to 5th Ave currently (a lot of people don't realize this) so a reconfiguration of the road network west of 11 Street gives you ample opportunity to build out multiple options to both enter and exit downtown from and to the west.
Mountain Man
Senior Member
I'm curious how the realignment of Bow Tr will work once the West Village actually happens. Still a long way off since nobody wants to touch the creosote.
DiscoStu
Active Member
It's probably a non-starter with CP, but any chance they could build bike lanes adjacent to the train tracks on 9th? Looking at an overhead map, I could potentially see room for a bike corridor separating from the river pathway under Crowchild till about 4th St when it goes into a tunnel. There's a lot of dead space in those lots on 9th/alleyways, and it might be something to work in now before those lots get developed (whatever century that may be).
In general, I'm a fan of separating bikes and cars as much as possible (for both safety and noise reasons), and utilizing alleys and dead zones might not be a bad solution in places.
In general, I'm a fan of separating bikes and cars as much as possible (for both safety and noise reasons), and utilizing alleys and dead zones might not be a bad solution in places.