Ring Road To Nowhere

[Acey]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

It’s actually surprising how little time it took for it to turn into this.

To be fair, the ring is done. Nothing else really to discuss unless we talk about what could be better and where they came up short. 95% of it is good. Signage on Stoney and Henday has been dogwater from the start, so I don't even fault them for that at this point.

[Nancy]

Originally Posted by Acey

There was a ton of concern from some engineers working on the project about the whole Glenmore/Stoney complex as it was going up. Concern about the merge zone with 37th which we've talked about, concern about signage, and concern about the radius of this WB-SB loop. It's a tough one because now that's it up I see no real easy way to fix it, not that my observation is some grand indication that there is no easy way to fix it. Forget "easy", I don't see any way to fix it all unless you start knocking bridges down, or try some sorcery with the Westhills Way bridge.

A full WB-SB flyover would have required a redesign of pretty much the entire interchange and an incredible increase in cost but we're going to pay for it now and forever.

Completing TT parkway and maybe also replacing or redesigning the southmost roundabout could help a bit?

[Acey]

Originally Posted by Nancy

Completing TT parkway and maybe also replacing or redesigning the southmost roundabout could help a bit?

In the interim it'll provide brief relief but those roundabouts aren't build to a handle a ton of cut-through volume and once people discover the shortcut it's going to be bad news for everyone involved.

[Flamescuprun2018]

Anyone aware of plans for a major commercial development west of Stoney Trial on Bow Trail or Banff Coach Road?

Access would be ideal for such.

Just not sure if space or zoning for such with the acreages in the area?

Also not sure if that is still within city limits?

[Acey]

Originally Posted by Flamescuprun2018

Also not sure if that is still within city limits?

101 St (and its extended centreline north of OBCR) is the city limit over there. Not much between Stoney and 101 St.

[Weitz]

Originally Posted by Flamescuprun2018

Anyone aware of plans for a major commercial development west of Stoney Trial on Bow Trail or Banff Coach Road?

Access would be ideal for such.

Just not sure if space or zoning for such with the acreages in the area?

Also not sure if that is still within city limits?

There’s a couple car dealerships being built west of Stoney on 101 at OBCR. West of 101 they have the land listed for development.

[Jimmy Stang]

I was thinking that maybe the eventual Sarcee-Richmond interchange could provide a u-turn of sorts to give WB Glenmore to SB Stoney another option. But after looking at the latest plans (from 5 years ago), that isn’t going to happen.

https://www.calgary.ca/planning/tran...sarceerichmond

[Mathgod]

Originally Posted by Nancy

Completing TT parkway and maybe also replacing or redesigning the southmost roundabout could help a bit?

Any answer would have to involve retrofitting the bridge to make it wide enough for 2 lanes. The room is definitely there to make it happen - it's just a question of are there logistical constraints that we don't know about, that make it impossible?

[D as in David]

I'm still somewhat dumbfounded by this engineering screwup. You'd think they would have designed this with current and forecasted vehicle traffic in mind and the need to have it flow well in all directions. Trade-offs need to be made but how they do not foresee this with modeling of the current and forecasted traffic? It had to be known that one of the significant benefits of this portion of the ring road was to move some (a lot?) of the traffic from 14th St SW during the evening rush hour.

[Acey]

I guess there's two kinda major fixes it (prior to all construction) and they must have decided neither is worth it from a cost-benefit perspective. Option A is you move the substation which gives room for a much bigger 2-lane loop. Option B is you redesign the entire complex so it's essentially a copy of Henday/Gateway Blvd in Edmonton, where WB-SB is instead served by a high capacity 2-lane flyover and not a loop. If you check out that complex at the south end of Edmonton, it'll be apparent that it's exactly what we needed.

Option A seems poor relative the improvement you gain, and presumably option B was just too high in terms of absolute cost, so we got nothing.

[D as in David]

Originally Posted by Acey

I guess there's two kinda major fixes it (prior to all construction) and they must have decided neither is worth it from a cost-benefit perspective. Option A is you move the substation which gives room for a much bigger 2-lane loop. Option B is you redesign the entire complex so it's essentially a copy of Henday/Gateway Blvd in Edmonton, where WB-SB is instead served by a high capacity 2-lane flyover and not a loop. If you check out that complex at the south end of Edmonton, it'll be apparent that it's exactly what we needed.

Option A seems poor relative the improvement you gain, and presumably option B was just too high in terms of absolute cost, so we got nothing.

I only had one year of engineering so IANAE but wouldn't the design go through more than one iteration? Doesn't the design frequently get changed after the initial design to find cost savings? And wouldn't the design include some knowledge of the expected traffic patterns? They couldn't possibly have designed it without somehow including that in their requirements for the intersection. There should have been multiple options for the ultimate design of this intersection.

I guess this may be the best design out of all the options available to them but to have one of the directions fail so early after completion has got to be seen as a pretty big disappointment for the money spent.

[Acey]

Originally Posted by D as in David

I only had one year of engineering so IANAE but wouldn't the design go through more than one iteration? Doesn't the design frequently get changed after the initial design to find cost savings? And wouldn't the design include some knowledge of the expected traffic patterns? They couldn't possibly have designed it without somehow including that in their requirements for the intersection. There should have been multiple options for the ultimate design of this intersection.

I guess this may be the best design out of all the options available to them but to have one of the directions fail so early after completion has got to be seen as a pretty big disappointment for the money spent.

The interchange there now is what has been in publicly available plans in the depth of AT's website since maybe 2005. Pretty much nothing has changed, including the massively wide median that they said was too expensive to redesign and would take too long for the segment of the road through Tsuut'ina. I have no doubt that plenty of modelling would have been done since then for the purposes of noise and everything else, but a decision was made very early on that no signficant changes were going to be made to the original plan.

[Joborule]

Originally Posted by Acey

I guess there's two kinda major fixes it (prior to all construction) and they must have decided neither is worth it from a cost-benefit perspective. Option A is you move the substation which gives room for a much bigger 2-lane loop. Option B is you redesign the entire complex so it's essentially a copy of Henday/Gateway Blvd in Edmonton, where WB-SB is instead served by a high capacity 2-lane flyover and not a loop. If you check out that complex at the south end of Edmonton, it'll be apparent that it's exactly what we needed.

Option A seems poor relative the improvement you gain, and presumably option B was just too high in terms of absolute cost, so we got nothing.

Ideally the NW loop should've been bigger, and the reasons you mentioned is likely why it's not, but it should still be possible to make a tight 2-lane loop if it will help the traffic flow there? Would require twinning the bridge beforehand, but if it's the speed of the loop that's causing the issue, then doubling the capacity of it could help.

[Acey]

Originally Posted by Joborule

if it's the speed of the loop that's causing the issue, then doubling the capacity of it could help.

I have been through this movement at about 3 pm on a weekday and it wasn't backed up at all, but that was in early summer so clearly things have changed. My guess is that there's a minimum radius that Alberta wants for 2-lane loops and this wouldn't meet that criteria. Completely guessing on that. Of course exceptions to the design guide can be made in certain circumstances, and it sounds like this is a place they really have to look at innovating and finding a solution that might be out of the box.

[Nancy]

Originally Posted by Joborule

Ideally the NW loop should've been bigger, and the reasons you mentioned is likely why it's not, but it should still be possible to make a tight 2-lane loop if it will help the traffic flow there? Would require twinning the bridge beforehand, but if it's the speed of the loop that's causing the issue, then doubling the capacity of it could help.

It is fine the vast majority of the time, it's just that when the backup happens, it builds quickly. In all honesty, it is not that bad compared to other locations (e.g. Eastbound Glenmore @ Deerfoot) but what also makes it bad is that the line-up is in the center lane, so it also creates issues with traffic trying to get off to Sarcee or on from 37th etc..

Probably heartbreaking for those deep SW commuters who thought they'd had that "life changing" improvement to their commute to downtown, only to see it gradually evaporate.

[Nancy]

Originally Posted by Joborule

Ideally the NW loop should've been bigger, and the reasons you mentioned is likely why it's not, but it should still be possible to make a tight 2-lane loop if it will help the traffic flow there? Would require twinning the bridge beforehand, but if it's the speed of the loop that's causing the issue, then doubling the capacity of it could help.

It doesn't look like there is room?

https://maps.app.goo.gl/iMhs9q1YFEwaYu599

[Acey]

Trucks on a two-lane loop with a radius that tight... bad news for everyone involved. A second lane for the loop would have to go to the inside, but the bigger problem remains the bridge approaching the loop being only a single lane.

[Joborule]

Originally Posted by Nancy

It doesn't look like there is room?

https://maps.app.goo.gl/iMhs9q1YFEwaYu599

Originally Posted by Acey

Trucks on a two-lane loop with a radius that tight... bad news for everyone involved. A second lane for the loop would have to go to the inside, but the bigger problem remains the bridge approaching the loop being only a single lane.

If it were to be feasible, I would assume that the bridge could be twinned on the south side, and then the second lane would merge onto the single lane roughly around 1/3 into the loop. Kinda similar to how the North Deerfoot/Stoney NW loop functions. Granted, that one is a lot bigger of a loop, and gives plenty of time to merge.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/VJGQXjfmFQfp8L7L7

[GGG]

The bridge looks like it could fit two lanes at 3.5m each. Not sure what the rules are though for min lane width on bridges. But reducing speed to 60 km and lowering lane and shoulder width should increase through put.

Winter might be a challange.

[lazypucker]

Typical Calgary/Alberta infrastrucutre building strategy - they have years/decades to plan and design, and at the end building a less than adequate product to save a few bucks. I would think if it was a dual-lane loop at the get go it would cost maybe an extra $3 mil, now if they want to twin the loop, it probably will cost $30+ mil