Quote:
Originally Posted by milomilo
That's not actually what I wrote - I said any road, but especially ones which which aren't being used as high speed corridors (to clarify though, I meant 4 lanes in each direction). I'm sure there are plenty of examples of 4x4 roads in urban areas, but I don't agree that so much space dedicated to vehicles is in any way conducive to a pleasant environment.
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I partially agree. But the Macleod Trail from Cemetery to Chinook suffers from a uniquely poor design for anything else other than cars. It would be hard to shit on pedestrians more next to a high-capacity and well-used LRT line. 39th Ave station comes obviously to mind, but Chinook station is a close second (until the recent renovation). But it is more than the stations themselves that need to be redone:
- 60km/h next to a 1.5 metre sidewalk with no fringe
- partial or closed ped crossings everywhere like Chinook where although most peds come from the station, they are forced to divert north to cross the 10 lane configuration of Macleod
- Every light gives priority to through commuter traffic at the expense of crossing to the LRT stations. Forcing peds and cross traffic to wait in a shitty, loud and concrete environment for up to 4 minutes to cross the road.
- channelized turn lanes promote high-speed turns at intersections, reducing the feeling that you should be walking here
- countless developments have many exit-extrance ramps to front parking lots creating even more conflict zones and no pedestrian oriented anything.
Hopefully the pedestrian bridge at Macleod by Chinook and some ped improvements there will help in the coming years, at least in that area. The problem isn't that it is just a big road - it's a shitty big road that could hardly try harder to make it unpleasant to be a pedestrian, even though the LRT is literally metres away.
Blackfoot Trail I get it if there is resistance to making it nicer because it sucks and will always be a low-pedestrian, industrial 6-lane road until land-use patterns change dramatically. That may never happen. But Macleod is next to a 100,000 person per day transit system that has pedestrians using it, including one of the busiest stops outside of downtown.
South of Glenmore, the case is much less strong given the (somehow) even greater amount of crappiness around the road. But north of Glenmore improvement is not only doable but is required.
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