Calgary Roads

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by Corndogger

What did he have to do with what I mentioned? The use of "Trail" came about long before him and I'm pretty sure he had nothing to do with road stopping and ending.

Oh, he messed up road alignment all over the place by interfering in the city's plans for roads over Fish Creek.

[Doug]

Originally Posted by Corndogger

What did he have to do with what I mentioned? The use of "Trail" came about long before him and I'm pretty sure he had nothing to do with road stopping and ending.

Rerouted Deerfoot from the current Bow Bottom alignment to the Barlow alignment. The Sarcee gap was due to NIMBYism. The section of Sarcee through Silver Springs from Bowmont Park to Crowchild was renamed to Silver Springs Gate.

I don't know if the Barlow gap between Memorial and Peigan has always existed.

[MalcolmTucker]

From an old Soviet map:

[milomilo]

Glory to the Motherland! How old is that map and why does it exist?

[milomilo]

I'm confused with numbering. If it's a city road, does it still have the provincial highway number? Is Glenmore Trail still Highway 8? Crowchild Trail is the 1A, but only to Banff Trail, which then continues until 16 Ave NW and disappears into the void to reappear at 17th Ave SW? That doesn't serve any useful purpose to drivers, so what's the point?

[Corndogger]

Originally Posted by Acey

I've made my thoughts clear on this matter; I have no issue with "trail" and agree that it's unique and our own thing. In case you didn't notice Corndogger, major highways are numbered, it's just a matter of getting signs and common folk to refer to them by their number instead of name. You don't need to entirely eliminate the name.

Eliminate the name and people would use the number. I know that's not going to happen anytime soon because politicians in this country are obsessed with assigning names to stretches of highway to score cheap political points.

[s211]

Originally Posted by milomilo

Glory to the Motherland! How old is that map and why does it exist?

Cold war relic? Where to nuke next?

[speedog]

Originally Posted by milomilo

I kind of like the 'trail' name, it's unique to Alberta. I'd rather it was more consistently for major roads though, and the little stubs and obsolete roads were renamed (Banff Trail etc)

And I don't care what the reason was why there are two Sarcee Trails and three Barlows. It doesn't matter, a road should be one continuous piece. Pick one to keep the name and re name the rest.

So which name would you keep for the continuous road that is Memorial Drive/Parkdale Boulevard/3rd Avenue NW/Bowness Road/85th Street NW?

Better yet, 20th Avenue becomes 10th Avenue on the east side of 16th Street SE..

This is just shit that has to stay with us although if you're living on Sarcee Road SW, how do you explain to a driver delivering you some pizza at 1am in the morning that I'm on the west side of the western Sarcee Road or would it be the lower Sarcee Road because the one Sarcee Road is lower than the other Sarcee Road.

[milomilo]

That's not much of an issue to me, as if you are driving on Memorial you know it will take you to anywhere on Memorial, which is not the case if you are on some other roads.

[DizzyEdge]

Originally Posted by speedog

So which name would you keep for the continuous road that is Memorial Drive/Parkdale Boulevard/3rd Avenue NW/Bowness Road/85th Street NW?

Memorial Drive<->Bowness Road in my opinion.
If that causes issues because there are parts of the old Bowness road now running parallel rename those parts to numbers, or if you want to retain the historic naming rename those parts to 'Old Bowness Road' like Old Banff Coach Road.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by s211

Cold war relic? Where to nuke next?

The map has all sorts of interesting information. The bridges are marked with weight carrying ability not width. Every building is marked. Every public building is marked, all of the utilities. Industrial buildings which are part of the military supply chain are noted differently than regular industry. When a slough has lots of bugs, it is marked bugs (wouldn't want to build a camp near there!).

The maps were a way for the Soviets to plan, assemble information in one place, and in some cases try to figure out how capitalism works through interrelated firms in clusters versus state firms with linear supply chains. I think Wired did a big piece on them awhile back.

[milomilo]

What numbers would you use? Do the provincial numbers even apply? Highway 8 would work fine for Glenmore, but 1A doesn't for Crowchild. I guess 2A works ok for Macleod, but 16th needs to be stripped of any reference to the TCH or highway 1.

[Porfiry]

Originally Posted by Corndogger

Eliminate the name and people would use the number.

I fail to understand why you would care. A name or a number, it's just an identifier. All that matters is if it's broadly accepted and understood.

[lubicon]

Originally Posted by Doug

I would agree except that the SW ring road will massively alter intracity trips by bridging the bottlenecks created by Fish Creek Park, the reservation and Glenmore Park. I suspect suburban development will boom in the Providence area and commuter patterns will shift dramatically for all SW areas south of Glenmore Park. Stoney Trail to date has been a bypass. The SE segment has also opened up warehouse development.

Totally agree. W and SW Stoney will completely transform how I get to work, and how I get from my quadrant of the city to the south part of Calgary.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by Porfiry

I fail to understand why you would care. A name or a number, it's just an identifier. All that matters is if it's broadly accepted and understood.

Agreed. I quite like the actual road names here. Also if someone says 'Deerfoot' you know they're talking about the road in the city, but if they say highway 2 they are not.

[Corndogger]

Originally Posted by Porfiry

I fail to understand why you would care. A name or a number, it's just an identifier. All that matters is if it's broadly accepted and understood.

A properly implemented numbering system can let people know the type of road, what direction it goes, if it's a bypass road, etc. Important stuff if you're new to the area or not familiar with it.

[milomilo]

No normal people actually know or care about this stuff and I think you'd actually be hard pressed to find a numbering system that is actually a whole lot more useful than ours - not that I think ours is much good.

The one change I'd like to see made is a separate classification for our 'freeways'. If they were a distinct class of road (unlike now where they are the same as any other road) then we could actually set some proper rules and driving standards for them and police those.

[Mazrim]

Originally Posted by Corndogger

A properly implemented numbering system can let people know the type of road, what direction it goes, if it's a bypass road, etc. Important stuff if you're new to the area or not familiar with it.

You've chosen a pretty strange hill to die on.

[ClaytonA]

Originally Posted by Acey

...



Nobody important is saying it will.

...

Calgary and Edmonton's ring roads have different utility, i.e. ours is less useful for intracity trips. Just the geography of the city.

Your tone detracts from your message. It's not geography, the roads are pretty much a series of continuous interchanges providing so much access to the city. The majority of trips on these roads are intracity, because the highways were designed to facilitate people driving single occupant vehicles for work commutes/etc.

An argument could also be made that the other legs also predominately have intracity trips too, not bypasses, don't have the data, again because so much access was provided with interchanges. Almost every single arterial road has ring road access, not just main roads for example like 1/16 Ave, 8/Glenmore, and I'd throw in an Airport Trail/564 Delcour. Lots of land for freeways and people have to money to pay higher taxes making up for that land not earning property tax for the city.

[milomilo]

We wouldn't get any property tax at all without roads to move stuff around on.