Quote:
Originally Posted by 4X4
Well, it seems silly to me to go digging an expensive-as-frack tunnel, when upgrading existing roads is much cheaper and benefits way more people. I'm staring at a big map of Calgary on my wall as I write this, and there's no way that this shortcut does anything more than give Saddle Ridge, Martindale, Taradale, falconrigde and castle ridge a 10 minute short cut. To everyone else, it would be business as usual. $150 million could widen CHB and the north portioon of Barlow to accommodate all this traffic you're correct in predicting, once the rest of the quadrant is filled out.
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I think you are underestimating how much work it would take to upgrade CHB to handle all of the (future) traffic, and like I said in an earlier post, crosstown traffic would be affected too. So, the traffic that could use Airport trail to get from the NE to the North Central area would have to use CHB as well. I'm guessing that everything on CHB between Harvest Hills Blvd and at least Metis Trail may have to be full freeway. At the very least, a fairly substantial widening to 4 lanes each way and some key interchanges. I can see the cost of that running to $300 million in today's dollars easily.
Plus, like I said, I think it might force McKnight to be a little wider than it might otherwise need to be. McKnight will need to be freeway in the future anyway, but it would need to be built to handle a little bit more traffic, adding some cost there too.
Further, the community plans of the planned developements would have to be revised to give more room and less lights on CHB, and could allow more lights and less room to 96th Ave East of the Airport, so it may actually be useful for something.