Calgary Stoney Trail [Ring Road]

[lubicon]

I did notice they have reconfigured the lanes as you pass under the QE II. Now the right lane ends and the two inside lanes are continuous which makes complete sense. It just caught me by surprise as it is a new configuration, but it seemed to work just fine. Makes more sense to have the outside lane end than the inside lane (hello City of Calgary).

Originally Posted by You Need A Thneed

The new third lane is open on Stoney EB between the nose creek bridge construction and Deerfoot Trail.

Unfortunately, the way it has been done reduces the number of continuous lanes EB by one.

It was 2 through lanes before and you're saying it's only one now?

[Cage]

Originally Posted by Acey

It was 2 through lanes before and you're saying it's only one now?

2lanes before and after the reconfiguration. However new to the ecosphere is the inside fast lane continues on through while the outside slow lane ends just after the junction.

My optimal lane split would be to have two lanes go to the right of the junction and continue to Deerfoot while the two left lanes continue straight through EB Stoney.

[You Need A Thneed]

Originally Posted by Acey

It was 2 through lanes before and you're saying it's only one now?

There's still two lanes under Deerfoot, only that right now, one of those two only becomes a lane after West Nose Creek. Prior, the two lanes were continuous all the way from 16th Ave on the west side.

I shouldn't make too big a deal about this, since it will be corrected once the nose creek bridge opens.

[freeweed]

Yeah, it's only a wtf moment because the bridge is so far behind the lane openings. We've had several of those moments in the past year.

We'll have several more over the Bow, now that the new bridge over the tracks is open but we're years away from the river bridge.

[Mazrim]

Originally Posted by Cage

My optimal lane split would be to have two lanes go to the right of the junction and continue to Deerfoot while the two left lanes continue straight through EB Stoney.

If I'm reading this correctly, you would prefer something like I quickly sketched up below on the right?


If you've driven Glenmore EB towards 14th Street, you know what happens in that configuration. People who aren't familiar with the area or not paying attention have less "outs", so to speak, when you have both lanes exiting like that. They end up darting across one or even two lanes at the last second to get to the proper lane. In the current configuration (on the left of the image), if you're in the 2nd right lane approaching the exit, you can screw up and not have to panic merge. The right lane still has to dart across, but it's less troublesome when it's only one lane.

[para transit fellow]

Stumbled upon this recent article:


"West Calgary Ring Road might be a public-private partnership"

http://www.journalofcommerce.com/art...te-partnership

"Contract awards for the West Calgary Ring Road is expected to move forward in coming months.

“Procurement for the first phase of the final leg of the Calgary ring road, the west segment, will begin shortly after the business case has been developed and approved by the Treasury Board,” said Nancy Beasley Hosker, communications for Alberta Transportation.

The ministry is investigating whether to fund the final leg of the Calgary Ring Road through public-private partnerships (P3), which has been used for the construction of some of Calgary’s existing ring road portions."

see the article for the rest

[RWin]

Originally Posted by Full Mountain

IMO the bike lane debate galvanized the inner-city against projects like this, if the debate around the bike lanes hadn't been so bitter and drawn out, it's unlikely that there would have been any comments from the inner city regarding this. I know for myself, there is an urge to say well you won't let me have my infrastructure so why should I let you have yours? And why are my dollars (property or income) supporting your unsustainable lifestyle after you attempt to prevent me from living mine in a sustainable manner?*

*Petty I know, but the gut reaction is there for the majority of people

The quickest way to someone's heart is to not only tell them you're better but to explain why as well.

[Full Mountain]

Originally Posted by RWin

The quickest way to someone's heart is to not only tell them you're better but to explain why as well.

yup, that's a two way street too.

[Cage]

Originally Posted by Mazrim

If I'm reading this correctly, you would prefer something like I quickly sketched up below on the right?


If you've driven Glenmore EB towards 14th Street, you know what happens in that configuration. People who aren't familiar with the area or not paying attention have less "outs", so to speak, when you have both lanes exiting like that. They end up darting across one or even two lanes at the last second to get to the proper lane. In the current configuration (on the left of the image), if you're in the 2nd right lane approaching the exit, you can screw up and not have to panic merge. The right lane still has to dart across, but it's less troublesome when it's only one lane.

I drive through Glenmore and 14th about 5-10 times per week and Stoney Deerfoot about 1-5 times per week. Yes I would prefer the right hand drawing (nice sketch by the way) version to the current set up.

I see your reasoning WRT Glenmore however there are few major differences that favour having two lanes exit at Stoney Deerfoot.

(1) The major problem with Glenmore/14th is the weaving that is required as Glenmore people need to get RHLs to get to 14th while the Crowchild people need to get into LHLs to onto Glenmore. Stoney Deerfoot does not have the weave problem.
(2) On Stoney Deerfoot, the only way for someone to get into far RHL is from center RHL, so it doubtful that unware motorists would be doing the panic merge from far RHL to Center LHL.
(3) The major advantage to having two lanes each at the junction is that cars in the far LHL only have to double lane change rather than triple lane change to take the Deerfoot exit.

The problem I have with the current set up is the Far LHL is doing about 120km/h while the center RHL is doing about 90-100Km/h and the highspeed weave has caused me a few times to do a panic triple lane merge. I am also finding that with three lanes continuing through the interchange, most RHL drivers are not changing lanes into new RHL.

I have also gotten into a few situations where the RHL is travelling at 90Km/h and desiring to continue straight through to Stoney EB. They are trying to merge at the same time as faster traffic (doing 110km/h) is trying to get around them and into Deerfoot exit lanes. This might be a seasonality issues as the two times i have witnessed the situation were slow moving 5th wheel with green and white licence plates.

[Mazrim]

On of the overhead signs on EB Glenmore approaching Stoney Trail has had it's height extended, most likely because that's a high load corridor and everything else already accounts for that. It sure looks silly now, with an extra length bolted on that's quite shiny compared to the weathered steel above it.

[craner]

Hey Acey will be glad to know they have repaved a lot of the bridge approaches on SE Stoney.

Excellent. Last time I was down there, it was still the joints on the WB-SB flyover at Deerfoot/22X that had be concerned, some incorrect signs, and lack of painted signs.

[DoubleK]

They have been milling and repaving some of the frost heaves out of the road and doing a damn fine job.

Final grading and contouring is continuing.

I have to admit that the contractor responsible for that scope of work did an amazing job last fall. I was very worried that most of those back-slopes would have washed away but they held up remarkably well. Very nice to see. Hopefully they can hydro seed it soon and pretty it up.

[Mazrim]

I was on Stoney SE a couple times this week and aside from a few nagging issues off the pavement (signs, grading), the drive itself is in good shape right now.

When I drove SB by 17th Avenue yesterday in the afternoon rush, it was backed up from 17th Avenue down towards Peigan, and North of 17th was a pretty impressive amount of cars constantly. I'm guessing the industrial parks are really taking advantage of Stoney now.

[msmariner]

I live by that part of Stoney and it's backed up everyday. It's possibly the worse designed part of the whole highway. Traffic goes from 4 lanes approaching 17th, down to 2 lanes quickly. Plus the two ramps coming off of 17 have no excelleration lanes. Traffic just grinds to a halt with cars merging from everywhere.
I hope there are plans to fix this clusterf@?k of design. Kinda makes everything built properly to the south quite useless.

It's not a cluster of a design, we just have no money to widen the NE. There's no real good way to reduce 40k vehicles per day from 4 lanes down to 2. Not ever going to work during the rush.

They've got to fix SW Henday before they fix NE Stoney anyway.

[Mazrim]

Originally Posted by Acey

They've got to fix SW Henday before they fix NE Stoney anyway.

I thought they've been making improvements on SW Henday for a while now? Agreed though, SW Henday has been awful for a long time.

I don't know what they were thinking when they built this Henday/highway 2 complex. It isn't very good. Henday is a parking lot every day, luckily I don't have to be involved in it.

[msmariner]

Originally Posted by Acey

It's not a cluster of a design, we just have no money to widen the NE. There's no real good way to reduce 40k vehicles per day from 4 lanes down to 2. Not ever going to work during the rush.

They've got to fix SW Henday before they fix NE Stoney anyway.

I disagree completely that's it's not a design issue. This section of the road is a complete fail. As someone who makes his living marking roads, I can say I haven't seen many worse designed road sections in Calgary (except maybe 3-4 sections of Deerfoot... Which is another poorly designed provincial highway). You don't design roads that go from 4 lanes, down to 2 then have two on ramps ( 17 ave EB to NB and WB to NB) in that short of a distance without proper acceleration lanes. There is absolutely no reason WB to NB shouldn't have been an added lane or at least 300-400 meter acceleration lane. Traffic will never get up to proper speed and cause backups to go farther back and turn the Properly built SE section into a parking lot (ie Deerfoot SB because of poor designs at Anderson, glenmore and NB at 64/Beddington and 17/memorial)

After driving the SE portion many times the province has learned many lessons on how to merge traffic together. They need to go back and spend a few dollars and fix the mess their design at 17th has caused