Centre St and Edmonton Tr are great options for the east side of Downtown and the Beltline. For the west side, 10St is not a great option as it dies at 9 ave (the strange little detour to 8 St is terrible, need a better option) but 14 St already has the infrastructure at 14 / 16 aves to make it a commuter street. Bypassing downtown is a whole different conversation and not really relevant to what I'm saying.

Once the green line does start to move north of the river, Centre Street will be a total shit show for many years. I do look forward to something happening there though, one of the ugliest streetscapes in the whole city!
 
christopherplace said:
Frankly, the concerns of North Central Calgary should not dictate the land use of downtown Calgary.

If people in Evanston find it difficult to drive to downtown Calgary, that's a feature, not a bug. Take the train.



This is because we continue to make planning decisions which prioritize the suburbs and the roads on which they depend.

Induced demand. Calgarians are not somehow biologically different than the residents of more pedestrian friendly cities. They have become accustomed to the transportation network built for them.

The big house in the suburbs is simply not effective urban planning. When we look at the housing crisis, a massive contributing factor is our car dependent infrastructure. In order to build housing, we first need to invest in millions of dollars of roadway. It's not efficient design.

The big house with a big lawn is an unreachable goal for pretty much every member of Gen Z. I have zero guilt about telling boomers they need to sit in traffic because they decided to move to the middle of nowhere.
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I love your enthusiasm/ideas and I share your desire for improving 14th as a main street, however I feel like there's some naivety embedded in these comments.

There's obviously a lot of improvement to be made but it's also important to strike a balance between the functional needs of the transportation network with improvements for active modes. As I'm sure you're well aware, high density developments still require vehicular connectivity and changing 14th Street to two lanes north of 12th as you suggest would cause permanent gridlock based on the traffic volume handled. For neighbourhood residents like myself, 14th is the way we access anything in the north central and NE part of the city including the airport (an important trip generator). It's certainly possible to slow traffic and provide a buffer for pedestrians while still accommodating an important transportation link - that's the feasible path forward here.
 
There's always major skipping over complexities of people's lives when blanket comments get made like just take the train instead.

Not every vehicle on 14th street is a one segment replacement for a S/NW red line station to downtown red line station.
 
If you think 14st is easy traffic flow, then I question whether you have ever driven that road in rush hour. 14th is brutal traffic and people are willing to deal with it, induced demand is not really relevant in this context.
 
christopherplace said:
Uncoupling Calgary from the clutches of car-dependency won't be easy. But that doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.
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It's a great ideal but we're truly hundreds of billions and over a hundred years away from having the transit system that resembles the types of European/Asian systems where you can get within walking distance to anywhere you need to be.
 
Just anecdotal, but I live a couple blocks off 14st, up the hill south of 17th, and i very rarely need to drive down 14th through the beltline. Say if im going to visit a restaurant in bridgeland, its actually faster to take Crowchild and memorial than to take 14th. Going to Kensington, it adds 2 minutes to the drive. I dont see why that area of 14th cant be reduced to 2 lanes
 
To say this thread has gone 'off the rails' would be an understatement. You could say it just needs to stay in its lane.

In all seriousness, this is kind of the problem, 14th tries to do too many things that it does none of them well. IMO it just needs to be better defined.
 
Mountain Man said:
If you think 14st is easy traffic flow, then I question whether you have ever driven that road in rush hour. 14th is brutal traffic and people are willing to deal with it, induced demand is not really relevant in this context.
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Brutal is an understatement

PXL_20230907_232603224.jpg
 
whatchyyc said:
Brutal is an understatement

View attachment 504983
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Whether 14th should be better or worse, 4 lanes or two, holy hell can we consolidate some signs and street furniture.

The street experience and pedestrian environment is appalling for a rapidly growing and high pedestrian traffic area - partially because it’s a loud, polluted car sewer sure , but also partially because the sidewalks look like this and the consensus is a shrug.
 
The dt section of 14th is overbuilt as the remainder of the once planned 14th street freeway never happened. The bridge is too critical to restrict to local traffic. It would be fairly easy to free up land on either side of the bridge by removing some or all of the interchange loops. The pedestrian experience could be vastly improved with minor impact to vehicle flow.
 
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