Well it looks like there may be one thing is not on the list for those looking for what was cut out of the project. There was a plan to replace the whole Calf Robe section with a much better and more direct alignment where everyone's car can keep speed without feeling a little wobbly. I guess they like having people drive a bit slower.
I just don't see what a buffered HOV lane will accomplish to make it worth the money. The road is a disaster because of bottlenecks and also because the volume is high enough for a 6 lane road that if you get into a lane, you're gonna have a hard time getting out of it again. For any given volume of traffic, you will have a certain percentage of drivers these days doing 10-15 under the limit and with the volume on Deerfoot if you try to avoid them (assuming you are lucky there isn't one in the left lane) good luck getting back to the lane you do need. This means Deerfoot cannot function properly as a highway because there is so much volume on it that the left lane is plugged full of slowpokes because there is just that much traffic that they end up in that lane. You could say the same about other roads in the city, but it easily is the worst when it should be better than the rest due to its importance. The traffic may warrant a full continuous 8 lanes from Beddington to Stoney in the south where you can enter and exit the new lane any time you choose. That way it can handle the volume AND have some lane continuity sanity. An HOV or toll express lane doesn't exactly solve that problem. Those exist as a cheater lane for those who have the privilege of using it and don't really contribute very well to the reduction of congestion and in the case of toll express as a way of saying "don't like traffic, you can make it go away with a little extra $"... sounds a lot like the argument against two (or more) tier healthcare. A buffered HOV lane sounds like a vanity project to say "look we are improving the road AND in an environmentally friendly way" when in reality neither is really the case. In that case I would almost rather them leave it at 6 lanes, make the lanes 100% continuous, and use the money to properly fix the design flaws and bottle necks. I don't get how they can say Deerfoot only needs 6 normal lanes at most and that some of the bottlenecks are fine if Tsuutina Trail has portions that are 8-10 lanes wide, you know, just cause we can. Oh and not to mention south of Barlow it's 8 lanes wide just because it is newer even though that isn't the busiest stretch of the road... just watch one of those will become HOV too.
Another less addressed problem with bottlenecks is that when you reach the 2 lane wide per direction bottlenecks you also get this effect where it's like drivers get claustrophobic and slow down. I don't imagine our city minds that though.
On another note I want to know what is happening with speed limits these days particularly in the SW.
So it appears that they left the 60 signs up on Glenmore EB just west of Tsuutina/Sarcee and last time I went by had covered the 80 signs just next to the casino. Most of us don't bother doing 60 here because it is outrageously slow for a road that clearly was designed better than other roads that are 100... Deerfoot. Similarly the other direction that heads toward the WCRR is 80 when the rest of the 201 is all 100. Is this due to it being an incomplete connection or do they seriously plan on leaving part of our bypass below what we expect for a large provincial highway/freeway?
The next disaster is what Crowchild has become. As you enter it from its south terminus so to speak, it is 70 until past 50th and I don't remember it being that way before the changes. Is it seriously because they left the access to 54th or is it because they left that terribly unsafe bus stop? I thought the point of a road like this was to not have direct access to wherever you like to go. As a side note, anyone know when they plan to come and complete the double turn here and open the extra lane that's currently blocked?
Then more recently I noticed that they set up another 70 sign just as you go past 26th and then they moved the 60 back to just before 17th. Again most people that have been driving on these roads for years ignore it and go the designed speed limit of 80, but you get the few by the bookers that go at or up to 15 under the posted limit. What, oh what, stupidity is running this city? If you spend the money to "improve" the road and following the improvements you have to lower the speed limits, maybe you just are admitting that you succeeded at making the road worse? Or is it so that they can confuse us and collect more photoradar tickets?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Corndogger
What do you mean by "non-standardized traffic light designs"?
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Some lights the arrows go first; some the arrow follows the straight through. Most left turn signals are mounted on those low vertical poles so that if you have 2 or more cars in front of you, you cannot see the light at all and some of the newer ones are mounted on the main light fixture vertically where they are easily visible (but they may not be over the correct lane). Some go yellow as soon as the crosswalk timer ends, some wait a while longer, and some still don't even have a timer.
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