Edmonton Construction 12 (December 2013)

[Hallsy's Toupee]

To me, eliminating the hairpin would allow for more public transit on that road (I have a hard time believing that an ETS bus can navigate that turn), remove a potential winter hazard, and eliminate the traffic bottlenecks (a looong red light at Sask Drive WB). Plus I feel that a better alignment is needed with the new Walterdale Bridge coming up - another opportunity squandered by not including this in the new bridge project.

Years ago I posted an idea on C2E on how to fix the Sask Drive hairpin without any big cost or greatly affecting the neighborhood. My idea was simple - realign 2 lanes at the farmer's market to the other side of the parking lot and run them under Sask Drive. This idea actually took traction at City Hall, except the idiots in Transportation fucked it up (deliberately?) by adding more lanes on Gateway north of Whyte, thus ensuring that the idea was killed by Old Strathcona freeway fearmongering.

It's admittedly too late to reverse some of the short-sighted decisions made in the past. I don't know who thinks developing power centres in the medians of thoroughfares are such great ideas.

Ghetto apartments on prime downtown land are knocked down and redeveloped all the time - look at the shantytown walkups the Pearl and the two Illuminadas replaced. This will be driven by higher demand for more downtown highrises. Gene Dub has a proposed development at Bellamy and 99 Ave that should hopefully kickstart a renewal of that stretch.

As for businesses - citizens can demand new standards, and the city can implement those standards and enforce both old and new standards. If the current standards allow for, say, a wall of hubcaps, change the standards to disallow them. If commercial buildings are becoming dilapidated, there are maintenance, health and fire code standards that can be used. Those flophouse motels south of the Whitemud have been shutdown in the past due to health violations.

If businesses fail, the land can be bought, sold, rezoned and redeveloped. CP Rail is supposedly pulling out of the railyards south of Old Strathcona, if that happens along with the closure of that NAIT satellite campus then that presents an opportunity to turn some ugly into awesomeness.

Finally - although there's no need to turn Calgary Tr and Gateway into a freeway, there needs to be some traffic expedience - after all, people need to catch flights at the airport. Overpasses at 34 Ave and 63 Ave would be nice. So would signaled crosswalks. I really hope the new retail development at EIA takes care to not cause traffic tie-ups on the QE2 or on Airport Rd.