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Originally Posted by Hakan
I agree Rhettzky. It's a failure in city planning to be honest.
All too often cars dominate planning divisions because of path dependency and the advocacy of powerful groups in city hall. For example, city engineering has the highest budget of any department and the most powerful union. They use this influence to divert most of the municipal money into road maintenance feeding the cycle into itself.
It takes a brave city politician to re-orient planning priorities away from the automobile or an electorate that vocal and strong enough to make more bikeways in urban commuter zones. Sadly Calgary lacks both of these ingredients.
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It's a huge lack of foresight. They can put a new lane to increase traffic volumes (3.5m) but can't think to add a shoulder for future uses? In most cases all it would take is an extra 1.2m shoulder added into the design.
I can see where it stems from though, most people scream at their Aldermen about commuting times. So that's where the City planning departments focus their energy. Traffic flow, traffic models, traffic studies... instead of trying to find ways to get the most out of their exisiting systems.