get into the Canyon Meadows/lake Bonavista/Parkland area if you can. It's still pretty reasonable to get downtown from this area (Especially if you go anderson, deerfoot, blackfoot, I have a route that works perfectly during rush hour). Once you get down to the evergreen/shawnessy/sommerset area, you get 50 000 people bottlenecking into the two exits onto Macleod, ....and just staw away from Cranston/Chaperell (which ever one is right on Macleod) if possible. Trying to get downtown from there on a bad day (stalls/minor accidents/bad weather) is enough to make a sane man go greyhound on someone's ass. I drive the other way to Okotoks each day, and during the winter somedays those guys are stopped before Highway 2 even turns into Macleod, lol.
* As a side note, be careful with your "anything but the NE comments" on Calgarypuck. you can start a war on here when that quadrant of the city is singled out as being any different from other places. You don't want one of those NE'ers to introduce drive by shootings to your new quiet SW neighborhood do you?
*joke*