[Freedm]

Two lanes in each direction is fine for travel, but then we lose the parking and that will hurt businesses.

 

[darwink]

Two lanes in each direction is fine for travel, but then we lose the parking and that will hurt businesses.

Downtown is lacking in parking? 2 lanes with plenty of loading zones (that take up the lane) that are flagged as no loading during rush should be fine. The volume on Jasper isn't anywhere close to the limits of 2 lanes in each way, so outside of rush having much less capacity could work.

 

[Platinum107]

@Freedm I can assure you that taking away the few zones along Jasper designated for street parking will barely dent the parking supply in downtown. In fact, I believe that the wider sidewalks with better landscaping and new bus lanes will totally compensate for that, if not even help businesses more down the line.

 

[_urbanite]

Some fencing has come down and some intersections have been opened up. I'll try to grab a few pics at some point this weekend. I will say there is a massive "bulb" of sidewalk on the NW corner of 114 street & Jasper Ave. I'm curious to know why they felt the need to have so much space on this corner. Public art piece forthcoming perhaps?

 

[thommyjo]

Hey, I just wanted to revisit this topic, (not so) briefly. I've been working weird hours recently and because of that I've decided to drive though Jasper Ave for my commute, just to get a feeling of how the construction is going, overall. But I noticed one thing that wasn't intentional: currently Jasper only has 1 lane on each way + turning lanes, between 114 and 109 streets and surprisingly enough, regardless of the hour, it's never grid locked. It might be fairly congested, at times, but nothing that would make me change my usual route, unless I'm in a hurry, and that inclusdes rush hour, on both directions.
Now, thinking of that and considering that they didn't redirect the buses from the avenue during construction (which means they very often stop the whole traffic, when they're picking up/dropping passengers), I can't help but imagine that, even if we had just two car lanes + turning lane, with completely segregated bus lanes and slightly larger sidewalks, it would flow even better than it does now (as we wouldn't have the constant bus stopping), it would probably improve bus services and make a very positive impact on the avenue, overall (I'm not even mentioning an extremely unlikely, if not impossible, LRT line instead of a BRT corridor).
Driving the whole stretch from 121 street to 109 street every day, at least twice a day, made me certain that Jasper Ave doesn't need 3 lanes in each direction and that it could very well be more of a destination, rather than just a thoroughfare.

Agreed. Having lived in Grandin and driving to the west side to see friends and family regularily, jasper was empty at that stretch. You had to be careful to not accidently go 70km/hr cause that felt possible. Only during peak hours would it ever slow, hut certainly not to a gridlock type amount.

I think the high level bridge is the primary challenge for downtown traffic. Not sure how that can be fixed besides increased transit ridership

 

[Platinum107]

@thommyjo You're right, and the city better figure out the Festival and Energy Line situation soon to alleviate the issue, as the direct LRT connection from Whyte to downtown will take more vehicle traffic off of the bridge for sure. I'm honestly not sure what the city would to to cross the river, because who knows, building a whole new bridge may work out better than restoring and repairing the High Level

 

[danimori]

@thommyjo You're right, and the city better figure out the Festival and Energy Line situation soon to alleviate the issue, as the direct LRT connection from Whyte to downtown will take more vehicle traffic off of the bridge for sure. I'm honestly not sure what the city would to to cross the river, because who knows, building a whole new bridge may work out better than restoring and repairing the High Level

Right?! This is why I am sad that they seem to be moving away from the Festival/Energy line concept. We need an inner LRT loop!

 

[ChazYEG]

I made a pretty poor sketch of what I think Jasper could look like, using measurements from Google Maps for width. The typical block is actually a lot longer than my A4 paper allowed me to draw (roughly 100m, not 40m as this scaled drawing shows).

This would provide for roughly 70m of street parking every block, 60m of 7.8m sidewalks on the north side of the street, with the other 40m and the south side having 4.8m of width. The road would also have a 1m median and turning lanes.
There would be 1 car lane in each direction and 1 bus lane, completely segregated in each direction, in what could be a BRT corridor.
I'm not an urban planner or an architect, by any means, so if there's something really wrong and unfeasible, please, educate me on that, I would love the opportunity to learn.

 

[archited]

Diagram doesn't make sense to me.

 

[ChazYEG]

Diagram doesn't make sense to me.

Give me a break, hahaha, I've got no idea on how to make a decent version of what I thought

 

[Platinum107]

@archited Jeez, it may not be a city planner level diagram but at least he put in the effort to demonstrate his thoughts and ideas to us....

Good going @ChazYEG , I think you've got a real neat idea there. The only thing I'd suggest is to get rid of the on-street parking entirely from your block on Jasper, because then traffic would flow just that much easier

 

[archited]

@ChazYEG it isn't the quality of the drawing -- the sketch is just fine. I just don't understand the workings.

 

[ChazYEG]

Good going @ChazYEG , I think you've got a real neat idea there. The only thing I'd suggest is to get rid of the on-street parking entirely from your block on Jasper, because then traffic would flow just that much easier

@archited On the right side of the drawing (which would be the south side of Jasper) you have one lane on each direction + turning lanes and parking, on the left side you have 1 bus lane on each direction + a really large sidewalk. That's the summary.
The sidewalks would feature 4.8m from the current 4m, on the south side and 7.8m on the north side.

@Platinum107 thanks for the feedback as well, I left the parking, there, as a way to prove that we could still have it, at least in a first moment, and have enough space for larger sidewalks and dedicated bus lanes, in a way that's favourable for business in a city that is still too car centric. As time goes by and the area becomes more transit and pedestrian oriented, we could get rid of parking and turn the space into larger sidewalks.

And btw, I only thought of this for the stretch from 109st to 124st, as I'm not sure it would be a great idea for the downtown core to have Jasper set up like this (on the other hand, I don't believe there's need for on-street parking there).

 

[Freedm]

Only two driving lanes, with two dedicated bus lanes? The bus lanes will be mostly empty and the driving lanes will be jammed full of frustrated drivers. I like the outside the box thinking, but practically speaking that's a terrible idea.

 

[ChazYEG]

Only two driving lanes, with two dedicated bus lanes? The bus lanes will be mostly empty and the driving lanes will be jammed full of frustrated drivers. I like the outside the box thinking, but practically speaking that's a terrible idea.

We currently have only two driving lanes and no bus lanes and, yet, it's hardly jammed full of frustrated drivers, even though the buses frequently stop and slow the flow, take that off and I don't see a big problem there.
I drive through bit every single day, both ways, different times of the day, rush hour or not, and it rarely takes me more than 5 minutes to go from 121 street to 109 street, even with all the construction, bus stops, etc...
Also, the idea would be that the two segregated bus lanes, would be part of a BRT corridor, not regular bus lines, which would make it not only busier, but also more useful for whoever lives within 2/3 blocks from Jasper, in terms os transit.