Not always. Southbound Deerfoot is completely gridlocked and usually at a virtual standstill before the first Calgary exit at Country Hills BLVD in the North because of people coming into the City from Airdrie.
I'm working on a petition to charge Airdrie drivers a $15 toll per trip into Calgary made between 6:30 a.m. and 9 a.m. Monday - Friday. If they choose to exit Calgary between 3:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m., it's another $15. It is obsene we let people from another city obstruct our roads while dodging our civic taxes and hampering our own citizens' abilities to travel freely.
I have to do more research on the subject, as I'm not sure what proportion of Deerfoot trail is paid for by Calgary municiapl taxes (I'm assuming some, but I could be wrong). Regardless, there are solutions to the Airdrie problem, and I think they need to be persued aggressively.
Sounds like there may be similar problems with Okotoks, Chestermere and Cochrane, which I had assumed, but as I said I'm still at the early stages of putting my proposal together. I'll make an effort to draft my petition to incorporate these parisite cities/towns as well.
The toll should be fairly economical to enforce. I'm thinking a multi-nova sort of system that can flag license plates from these satellite communitites. The commuters would receive a bill at the end of each month.
The goal of this plan is to encourage these people to take one or more of the following steps:
- adjust their work hours out of peak times
- work from home
- carpool to share costs
If you guys are interested, I'll post my petition package here in a few weeks for comments/feedback. I will also be circulating petitions for people to sign and send in to the appropriate authorities once my research is complete. Normally I wouldn't have posted this on here as I don't have all my information straight, but I see no harm in letting you guys know that there are people looking seriously at this issue in hopes of coming up with an immediate (relatively speaking, we are talking about government lol) fix.