Quote:
Originally Posted by Iginla
This is exactly my point with the ring road. Most of the places where you have to get on the ring road is so out of the way that most people who would normally take Deerfoot or whatever wouldn't drive out of their way to use the ring road.
I've got the ring road near 84 st SE by my house and have never used it once. That road is nice for Chestermere though so I'm glad we could at least help another community out.
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Ring roads are not built to make it easier to get around inside the ring. They're built to make it easier for people who want to get from one end of the city to the other without stopping. In turn, those people no longer need to drive through the middle of the ring, decreasing traffic volumes for those who do need to get around inside the ring.
Right now, a certain percentage of the traffic on Deerfoot is driving from the north end of the city to the south end (or vice versa) with no desire or intention of exiting Deerfoot. A high percentage of those vehicles are large trucks (and during the summer RVs) that slow down and clog up Deerfoot.
It is easier and cheaper to build Stoney Trail on undeveloped land on the edge of the city than it would be to add the same vehicle capacity to existing roads inside the city, and should have the same effect on traffic that adding more lanes to existing roads would have.
Stoney Trail won't directly make it easier to drive from Douglasdale to downtown. What Stoney Trail will do (when it's fully open on the east side) is make it possible for people to get from the south end of Calgary to the north end of Calgary without driving on Deerfoot. By transferring those vehicles off of Deerfoot, the volume of traffic on Deerfoot will decrease, bringing it closer to what it was designed to handle.