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Mountain Man said:
Hopefully something decent goes in the retail, this area needs something other than shitty traffic lol.
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Macleod is a great example where off-peak street parking would be a one of the better interventions you could do to chill out the street and move a step away from it's car sewer characteristics. This would reduce travel speeds off-peak, but make walking and visiting businesses a lot easier and more comfortable.

Of course, politically that's a tough sell. You will have commuters hating change that treat Macleod like a quasi-freeway in this stretch, a very small (or non-existent until the developments are build) benefitting group in the local retailers going in that will struggle to advocate for themselves, and about 50 years of informal rules, standards and traffic planning practices in this city fighting you.

Part of that problem is it isn't sexy - street parking is just minor functionality change. It's cheap to do and will have a big impact, but isn't interesting enough to be able to attract a political champion to push a different future vision of the area through all the inevitable headwinds.
 
Off peak parking is great for parking fine revenue, but terrible for traffic because people can't read the no parking signs. Every rush hour on 10th St the lane is never clear so it's never used as extra road capacity. There's anywhere between 4 and 10 ticketed cars when I pass by every single day and it's getting worse and worse. So many complete idiots. It also causes extra chaos as people get a bit of lane that ends and starts again at arbitrary points every time they drive it.
 
haltcatchfire said:
Off peak parking is great for parking fine revenue, but terrible for traffic because people can't read the no parking signs. Every rush hour on 10th St the lane is never clear so it's never used as extra road capacity. There's anywhere between 4 and 10 ticketed cars when I pass by every single day and it's getting worse and worse. So many complete idiots. It also causes extra chaos as people get a bit of lane that ends and starts again at arbitrary points every time they drive it.
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I really do not understand why we even have parking restrictions on 10 Street NW or why the BIA in the area wouldn't want to get rid of it. Peak hours are also the time that most people would be stopping for dinner or to patronize the shops on weekdays. Don't restrict on-street parking on 10 Street on peak hours, let it be a busy area that pushes drivers to choose 14 St or Crowchild as a faster option. I would say for Centre Street, 11 Ave, 12 Ave, 9 Ave (Inglewood) stop doing the lane reversals and on-street parking restrictions. They aren't arterials even though they are classified as such (but we classify way too many streets as arterials, which is the root of the problem).

There are a lot of freeways, we don't need to turn our main streets into quasi-freeways just to move people back to the suburbs slightly quicker. People in these inner-city or established neighbourhoods still need to be able to stop and patronize these shops at rush hour, and maybe some of these commuters will stop and shop or have dinner if parking is actually available.

In my opinion, we should be doing the same thing with the Main Street portions of Macleod Trail and 16 Ave North as well. If we want street-oriented retail, then we need street parking to support these businesses.

By having Macleod Trail be called a Main Street, but having mobility engineering retain all of the characteristics to maintain excessive car throughput forces new developments to maintain or add curb cuts which is a bad scenario.
This building added a side parking lot which should've been at the back of the building:
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Same thing with this one, plus a drive-thru:
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This isn't a pattern of Main Street development we should be repeating, and this Mission Landing development at least oriented itself correctly. So give the retail a better chance at success and give them on-street parking. You would still have two continuous car lanes and dedicated turn lanes (each direction) and wouldn't impact traffic flow dramatically at all. We have to stop treating Macleod Trail and 16 Ave north as lost causes, fix the problems and development will come and orient itself correctly if we refocus these areas as actual main streets and not just dangerous car sewers. We should be closing curb cuts on main streets, not adding or maintaining them.

Can you imagine how positive an impact an improved pedestrian realm and the addition of on-street parking would be for these businesses?
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This condition for a main street is completely absurd.
 
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