Calgary Stoney Trail [Ring Road]

[fusili]

Originally Posted by craner

You say this like it's a bad thing.

Is it not? I don't like paying $10K per house in sewer and water infrastructure. I don't like paying $8 billion for a ring road, when we could have got the SE, West and NC LRTs for that money.

If we build 160 units in Bridlewood, it costs our City millions in new infrastructure. A condo in the Beltline costs us almost nothing. We may have to upgrade a sidewalk.

[lubicon]

Originally Posted by freeweed

This is pretty much it in a nutshell. The reservoir IS the problem.

Now, on the "dangerous goods" topic - wouldn't a bridge over the weaselhead present the same problems as Glenmore over the reservoir?

Excellent question.

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by fusili

I am not so convinced. I wouldn't want the Ring Road through the Weaslehead, nor would I want it through Fish Creek, or Nose Hill or the Bird Sanctuary. My perspective personally is that we shouldn't be building massive super highways through environmentally sensitive areas, no matter where they are.

Sorry, I was specifically (and only) talking about the reaction from Lakeview residents. While they may cloak their opinions in environmental wool, they're 99.9% being NIMBY about it.

Just watch what the ring road will do to residential development in Symons Valley.

I really wish someone could create a "roads lead to sprawl" thread so we can have these detours effortlessly moved over there. Do you honestly believe residential development wouldn't be happening in that area if not for the ring road? The city only has so many directions to grow, and that was only a matter of time.

Or conversely - should we just stop building proper roads at all, because surely that will limit sprawl? Maybe if we had a single lane Crowchild with lights all over it, no one would ever have expanded the city into the NW.

Calgary is going to grow outwards, period. Unless we either a) make it illegal, or b) refuse to provide any services whatsoever to new areas (effectively making it illegal). I have a very hard time believing that the ring road is what's causing sprawl in the NW, now or at any time in the future.

Anyway, I'm not formulating my thoughts well on the "roads will always encourage sprawl that would not happen otherwise" issue but suffice it to say that I'm far from convinced, in this city's case. I just wish we didn't have to have this argument repeated ad nauseum every single time someone mentions a road on SSP.

[Wentworth]

Originally Posted by suburb

It is a *ring* road.

Not the 37th street option, not really. It will overlap with Glenmore and intersect Sarcee... this area ia already a bottleneck. Can't imagine it with the extra ring road traffic added. I honestly thing they need to do some hard core computer modelling on this proposal to see if it will actually work from a traffic management perspective.

[MonctonGoldenFlames]

Originally Posted by Wentworth

Personally, I don't see how this necessarily constitutes a huge positive benefit for the larger community. A big plus for the deep-SW residents for sure, but at the expense of facilitating further sprawl and eventually more upstream/inner city traffic problems as this traffic unloads off of the ring road and tries to get downtown.

it positively affects the entire south and west portion of the city. last time i checked, that's a massive chunk our of city's population.

[fusili]

Originally Posted by freeweed

Or conversely - should we just stop building proper roads at all, because surely that will limit sprawl? Maybe if we had a single lane Crowchild with lights all over it, no one would ever have expanded the city into the NW.

Calgary is going to grow outwards, period. Unless we either a) make it illegal, or b) refuse to provide any services whatsoever to new areas (effectively making it illegal). I have a very hard time believing that the ring road is what's causing sprawl in the NW, now or at any time in the future.

I am saying I would much rather spend the however many billions from the ring road on LRT. If the scenario was that no Ring Road was built and instead we had two more spur LRT lines, we would definitely see a lot more development along places like centre street than in places like Symon's valley. People make housing decisions all the time based on the level of instracture. A condo on Centre street today isn't really that appealing. A condo adjacent to a subway stop that takes you downtown, is another thing entirely.

I am not saying we starve people of infrastructure, but that we shift our funding priorities to transit rather than roads.

[Seadood]

Originally Posted by fusili

Is it not? I don't like paying $10K per house in sewer and water infrastructure. I don't like paying $8 billion for a ring road, when we could have got the SE, West and NC LRTs for that money.


If we build 160 units in Bridlewood, it costs our City millions in new infrastructure. A condo in the Beltline costs us almost nothing. We may have to upgrade a sidewalk.

A ring road moves goods - and people - a LRT only moves people. What we should be looking at is what kind of multiplier effect will each one generate. Like it or not Calgary is becoming a distribution centre for this part of North America. That requires a road network that provides the flexibility for movement of goods within and without the urban area.

While a higher density provides benefits in some areas, it creates headaches in others. Someone decides they want to develop a meth lab as a cottage industry - and burns down the condo. A lot of people are affected by it. I have a guest living in my house who was a victim of the Millrise condo fire. A lot of people had their lives severely affected by one person's actions. While a fire in Bridlewood would be no less serious, far fewer lives would have been impacted by that person's actions.

Densities can be increased, no doubt about it. But ring roads/LRT construction isn't as B&W as it appears.

Just my opinion. I have more......

[Mazrim]

Originally Posted by Seadood

A ring road moves goods - and people - a LRT only moves people. What we should be looking at is what kind of multiplier effect will each one generate. Like it or not Calgary is becoming a distribution centre for this part of North America. That requires a road network that provides the flexibility for movement of goods within and without the urban area.

I was going to point this out, but it's alright that you beat me to it. You said it better than I probably would have.

The province has no issues building the ring roads. It has major potential benefits to the province as a whole (with highway 2 being a CANAMEX corridor) and moving business makes the province money they can use elsewhere. An LRT line has great public benefits, but generally only in the area the LRT is built. It's not quite as far reaching.

[Bassic Lab]

Originally Posted by Seadood

A ring road moves goods - and people - a LRT only moves people. What we should be looking at is what kind of multiplier effect will each one generate. Like it or not Calgary is becoming a distribution centre for this part of North America. That requires a road network that provides the flexibility for movement of goods within and without the urban area.

While a higher density provides benefits in some areas, it creates headaches in others. Someone decides they want to develop a meth lab as a cottage industry - and burns down the condo. A lot of people are affected by it. I have a guest living in my house who was a victim of the Millrise condo fire. A lot of people had their lives severely affected by one person's actions. While a fire in Bridlewood would be no less serious, far fewer lives would have been impacted by that person's actions.

Densities can be increased, no doubt about it. But ring roads/LRT construction isn't as B&W as it appears.

Just my opinion. I have more......

The distribution of goods is pretty well taken care of by the north and east sections. Our industrial and warehousing facilities are all located on the east side of the city, pretty well from around Deerfoot to Stoney. The north RR allows trucks to bypass city congestion on 16 Ave and the East RR allows trucks to bypass city congestion on Deerfoot. When Glenmore is completed as a freeway east to Stoney and west past Sarcee, there will be tons of capacity to move goods through and around the region at any time except for rush hour.

The argument that creating freeway capacity to handle rush hour commuters will benefit the movement of goods seems absurd to me, especially after we have built three quarters of the ring road.

[Oliver Klozov]

Originally Posted by Stingray2004

The "Dangerous Goods" restriction for tunnels prevents gasoline/jet fuel tankers utilizing same due to the obvious potential disasterous effects.

The George Massey Tunnel on the 99 fwy. in Metro Vancouver has that designation and the 91 fwy. provides the bypass alternate route.

Same for the Cassiar Tunnel on the TC-1 fwy. in Vancouver whereby "dangerous goods" tankers utilize the exit/entrance and the surface route.

Another example:
from wiki- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower_Tunnel

The Eisenhower Tunnel, officially the Eisenhower–Johnson Memorial Tunnel,[1] is a dual-bore, four-lane vehicular tunnel approximately 60 mi (97 km) west of Denver, Colorado, United States. The tunnel carries Interstate 70 under the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains.
...
The Eisenhower bore (westbound tunnel) is 1.693 mi (2.72 km) long while the Johnson bore (eastbound tunnel) is 1.697 mi (2.73 km) long.
...

To mitigate the dangers posed by a fire inside the tunnel, trucks hauling hazardous materials are also prohibited from using the tunnel. Prohibited trucks, bicycles, pedestrians and those who wish to stop and view the scenery must take the longer and steeper climb and descent of the older U.S. Highway 6 across Loveland Pass, 834 ft (254 m) higher at 11,992 ft (3,655 m) above sea level. Other than the above exceptions, the tunnel has replaced the pass for general vehicular traffic. While less formidable than the older route, the approach to the tunnel on both sides is steep, and runaway truck ramps are available for truckers who lose control.
During construction or winter storms that require closing Loveland Pass, there is a procedure in place to allow hazardous material trucks to use the tunnel. Once per hour, the tunnel bores will be closed to regular traffic, and the trucks will be guided through the tunnel in a convoy with escorts.

[fusili]

Originally Posted by Mazrim

I was going to point this out, but it's alright that you beat me to it. You said it better than I probably would have.

The province has no issues building the ring roads. It has major potential benefits to the province as a whole (with highway 2 being a CANAMEX corridor) and moving business makes the province money they can use elsewhere. An LRT line has great public benefits, but generally only in the area the LRT is built. It's not quite as far reaching.

Huh? Public transit takes drivers off roads. Those also include roads used by freight traffic. Deerfoot is a good example. The SE LRT won't just get people to work, it will ease congestion on Deerfoot (especially the bottleneck heading north before Anderson), which is used by a lot of freight traffic.

[fusili]

Originally Posted by Mazrim

I was going to point this out, but it's alright that you beat me to it. You said it better than I probably would have.

The province has no issues building the ring roads. It has major potential benefits to the province as a whole (with highway 2 being a CANAMEX corridor) and moving business makes the province money they can use elsewhere. An LRT line has great public benefits, but generally only in the area the LRT is built. It's not quite as far reaching.

And one last point. Truck freight, at least long distance truck freight, is slowly dying. Intermodal facilities and using interchangable containers is driving a huge change in freight movement back to trains. Anything long distance, especially city to city is going to be taken over by trains because they are many times more energy efficient (and therefore cheaper) than trucks.

The time costs associated with switching between modes favoured trucks before, because loading and unloading took so long. Often you wouldn't use a train because it would be faster and cheaper just to load a truck once and drive it a long distance. Now that containers can be pulled off a train and put on the back of a truck within minutes, the time savings are much less.

[Oliver Klozov]

Originally Posted by fusili

And one last point. Truck freight, at least long distance truck freight, is slowly dying. ....

Nope. While the rest of what you said about the efficiency of intermodal vs long distance trucking is true, truck traffic is not dying. Truck traffic on the Trans-Canada is growing and continuing to do so at the same rate it's been growing for years. Parks Canada talks about in their reports every time they want to twin another few kilometers of highway. I know this anecdotally as well.

Intermodal is growing faster but truck traffic is still growing. Just-in-time inventory will insure that continues for a long time to come.

As Calgary becomes more and more the main western distribution centre for a lot of companies, truck traffic around Calgary will grow even faster. The goods may arrive here by intermodal but they're going to leave by truck in all directions.

[Socguy]

Like it or not the SWRR is needed. Badly. Any discussion to the contrary is purely academic. Granted, I am biased because I live in cedarwood and work at MRU so obviously I would benefit tremendously. It will cut my morning commute from 15 mins to about 5. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about a 15 minute commute. The issue is that if anything, and I mean ANYTHING happens on Glenmore or 14th st or sometimes even south Crowchild. This quadrant is screwed. In personal terms: that 15 minute commute turns into an hour. All that extra time behind the wheel gives me plenty of time to think about the effect of all that stop and go traffic sitting right over the water supply.

Will the RR encourage sprawl? Yes. The demand is there and with or without the RR it's happening anyway. As things stand, the increase in traffic will be funneled up 14th and Macleod and then onto Glenmore, necessitating massive upgrades to those roadways. Who thinks that's a good idea? The extra sprawl generated will have to be controlled through other means. Not building essential infrastructure is not a viable method of city planning.

How about transit? That would be great. I would love the option to take a bus to work, but I can't. Buses don't run early enough to get me to work on time and even if they did, taking transit would more than quadruple my commute. If the RR was built and as per current planning, MRU becomes a transit hub, the RR would do the same thing for buses that it would do for cars: provide a direct efficient route to the deep SW.

As for what kind of form the SWRR should take, I think the tunnel would be cool. If the city bought the TBM they could use it for this project, then the Centre street subway and then tunnel under the runway. Then, when it's not being used in Calgary, rent it out! . ...But realistically speaking, I think the only real option is to negotiate with the province to narrow and slow the RR to a Crowchild style road with a simple bridge over the Weaslehead. If that happened, the existing allowance would go much further. Fewer homes would have to be bulldozed and much less invested up front. If or when Tsu Tisna decided they want to develop along the roadway, the City/Provence can re-open negotiations to expand the road to full fledged 100k free flow.

[kw5150]

Originally Posted by fusili

I am saying I would much rather spend the however many billions from the ring road on LRT. If the scenario was that no Ring Road was built and instead we had two more spur LRT lines, we would definitely see a lot more development along places like centre street than in places like Symon's valley. People make housing decisions all the time based on the level of instracture. A condo on Centre street today isn't really that appealing. A condo adjacent to a subway stop that takes you downtown, is another thing entirely.

I am not saying we starve people of infrastructure, but that we shift our funding priorities to transit rather than roads.

perfect! the ring road does encourage sprawl. I agree. With all of the amazing roads, im even tempted to live out there in the boonies now...........so that means I have been "encouraged".

Obviously, you have much more open and informed view of how a city should develop and not a one sided "git er done" attitude. Cities need to be well thought out, they are a complex organism and there are so many ways to eff them up. I still cant believe we are chasing the ring road model!

The new west LRT line could not be finished fast enough.......that line will be a game changer for how people see the direct effects of transit on a community.

and the statement in the above comments................ring roads are people AND goods movers...... that is a strangely persuasive comment but I have found the holes in the reasoning. If we have more people with access to transit, there would be more room on our EXCELLENT road system to transport goods. I can only tell people so many times how great our road system actually is......even before the sprawl-encouraging ring road. I also dont see why we didn't upgrade more of the existing roads (that actually cause the delays and problems) and do the ring road in more phases.....

I have yet to see some interesting development near the ring road. It is all cookie cutter planning...............though the house plans are very nice!

[DizzyEdge]

Originally Posted by kw5150

The new west LRT line could not be finished fast enough.......that line will be a game changer for how people see the direct effects of transit on a community.

You mean zombie infestation?

[Mazrim]

Originally Posted by kw5150

I also dont see why we didn't upgrade more of the existing roads (that actually cause the delays and problems)

That's a fine idea, but then the onus is on the City to fix the problem spots, as the Government run roads are not the issue. Building NE and SE Stoney Trail is probably cheaper than upgrading Deerfoot Trail to handle that through traffic.

[DarkKeyo]

This is quite a messy discussion now, but I'll throw in an opinion or two.

I think we should have a SWRR.

Because there are so few routes crossing the diagonal barrier that is the Elbow River, then the resevoir, and then the reserve. Because a ring road functions much more effectively if it's a ring. Because it supports the city's freeway network, and reduces the need to build more roads elsewhere. It will be used. I don't think any extra sprawl development from it will outweigh the benefits to existing development, and I think that environmental concerns can be handled if it is designed properly.

I currently support a 37 St alignment. I know we don't want to go back to negotiating with the Tsuu Tina, but I bet it would be easier to get a strip of land on the eastern border of the reserve between Glenmore and the resevoir just wide enough to fit a 6-lane road between the reserve and 37 St/Lakeview (plus land at the NE corner of the reserve for the road to curve south from Glenmore) than it would be to try and resurrect the previous alignment. From there, a bridge, and from there, I assume we can fit that size of road in the narrow gap between the reserve and Oakwood/Cedarbrae.

If we're already committed to spending a ton of money on it, we should spend it wisely.

And, fusili's comments have made me think that a transit link from the west side to the south side of the city is going to be needed sooner than later, especially to combat buildup of traffic on both existing roads and this somewhat compromised SWRR. Therefore, some of this money should go towards temporary BRT but ultimately LRT connections between the WLRT, MRU, Rockyview, the SLRT, and the SELRT. We've been discussing a ring LRT to death in the Transit thread; it can relate to this.

Either way, all the arguing and debate over this road both in this thread and in the city in general is not helping it get built, or get built properly.

[kw5150]

Debating is important.

[freeweed]

Endless debating over solved issues is why infrastructure projects are often delayed by years (if not decades, in the case of the SWRR).