Quote:
Originally Posted by milomilo
It still doesn't mean the Northland lanes are well used though and the anecdotes are wrong, we simply don't have the data. And I would be very surprised if they are well used - why would they be? They don't go anywhere.
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When driving on Northland this morning, I did see a cycle, and I tracked where it was going. The cycle lane crosses over Crowchild, then goes on to a separated bike path that takes it to the cycle lane on 37th street that goes directly past the university research park employment hub and continues all the way to the University of Calgary. Looking at the map, it is an extremely efficient path, and more direct than what cars have to do. So it looks like the Northland cycle track connects a large mall, at least two schools, the university research park (Smart, Shell Tech Centre, Canadian Food Inspection, CLS, Alberta Core Research Centre, Geological Survey of Canada, etc.) as well as UCalgary (enrollment of over 30,000 students + several thousand staff). Arguably it also connects to the Foothills Campus via the separated path along West Campus Blvd (Health Sciences and the Foothills Hospital, the largest hospital in Alberta with thousands of employees) which is another huge hub.
As such, I'm perplexed when people say this track doesn't lead anywhere. The above is my reconnaissance on site.
I also wanted to highlight once again three points that some may have missed or might have been ignored:
1. The reserve for the cycle lane in both directions of Northland is about the width of 1.3 car lanes (est. but is definitely much wider than a regular lane), so in total the cycle lanes in both directions take up at least 2.5 car lane widths (30' or so I'd say). This is part of the reason so much concrete had to be poured to create these lanes - the concrete blocks of a lot of width. Can this be made more efficient?? See
https://goo.gl/maps/2Sgw2h8EMtz (I'm including the wide concrete, as it was installed for this)
2. Given the large employment centres, the university and the hospital that this piece connects, I think we need to make it work for the long term, however, as I had articulated in my earlier posts, the major issues are actually in winter. That is when there are challenges and costs with snow clearing, all the signposts get destroyed even by the buses, and the concrete they have laid down takes a beating (because no one knows where it is and the buses repeatedly go over corners). As such, is it possible to design a track that is dedicated in the warmer months, when the usage is many fold higher (though still meager compared to all of our wishes)?
3. The last piece, which I had highlighted a year or so ago and only got dumped on without people responding thoughtfully, is the fact that where the cycle lane crosses over the car lanes they have a stop sign, however, the cycles that do use this lane always cut across lanes of traffic immediately before the stop sign, and then re-join the cycle lane after the stop sign. The experience I witnessed was that a car almost hit a cycle purely because they didn't expect the cyclist to jut out of their dedicated lane. The cyclist did not slow down and yield into the car lane, and I thought about why that may have been, and realized it was going northbound approaching —, so there is a slight uphill. The cyclist would have needed to expend more energy, so instead, just hopped in front of a car. So all the editorial aside, is there a better way, as the fact in reality the cyclists are jumping the stop signs is a foundational issue. Here is one of the spots - the curved portion on the right is meant for cyclists to make the slight turn in and then stop to wait for a space between the cars (and this is a busy area in during rush hour):
https://goo.gl/maps/yFvMqJ3e1DF2
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