Quote:
Originally Posted by Roughneck
1st Street SW was shot down because of businesses not wanting to give up parking and because there weren't lanes to give up. That's why 1st Street SE was proposed, because it has the capacity to handle it. But most figured that was just put in the proposal so they could take something away in order to justify the one they really wanted, which was 5th St. Heart of the Beltline, meaning more access for more people, easier.
8th St SW wasn't put in because they could get a cycle track put in as part of its redevelopment that wasn't tied to the Pilot Project, so adding it would have been actively fighting against the self-interest of the pro-bike planners. I honestly don't remember if one did make it in the end, certainly not as good as the 5th St underpass lane anyway.
13th Ave has problems as a commuter street, which didn't make it popular (doesn't have the priority that 12th and 11th do), and all the parking meant they'd be making their Green Belt into a commuter zone which wasn't the intent of the project. Similar to 1st St SE, 12th Ave had capacity so it was recommended. Unfortunately a lot of interests meant they had to give into a lot of demands which led to the ridiculous lane jogging that goes on. Parking is also the reason the 5th St track stops at 17th Ave. Can't take away parking. Especially with that Mission-Cliff Bungalow community association.
Basically they took the streets they were allowed to by the Roads people (lane kilometres and whatever else they track) and everything else had to keep the stakeholders happy (better let people get run over than take away a parking spot). So its all politics, which isn't pragmatic.
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Further:
I was deeply involved in a lot of those decisions and discussions with Stantec and the City staff that proposed the network:
A few key principles drove the network design - useful links to destinations, a dense enough grid of routes and minimizing traffic flow and parking disruption.
1st SW and 1st SE were considered on the east end North-South. The attraction of 1st SE over SW was it's one way, and thus only one traffic lane/parking lane, as opposed to two is needed to serve it. Can't do do a two way cycle track on a two way road for reasons that still escape me, but I believe it's complexity of turn movements. 1st street SE was a real and important part of the proposed network, but was just a bridge too far for many on Council, including the Mayor - more due to perception than any technical or real capacity constraint. It could have handled it with relatively minor traffic delay modelling showed.
8th Street - there is a raised bike lane component of the 8th street SW master plan. It's a road well under capacity overall south of the tracks. It may form an eventual route, at least between say 12th and 17th, if not through the underpass as well. that was tabled until later to see if 5th and 11th combined would work well enough.
12th. Many east west routes through Beltline were examined. Basically every single Avenue. 13th as a two way street, to create a track would have taken virtually 100% of the parking away west of 5th Street. For many of the heritage homes and small apartments along there, the street is the only parking they have. It also is a lot slower to cross main north south routes because of signal priority. This is why 12th was attractive - much better as a commuter route because of signal priority. It also has extra-wide carriageway which minimized parking disruption. The jog is slightly annoying, but through the pilot they figure they have a way to eliminate the jog and consolodate parking on one side. It's just expensive to do during the pilot phase, but that is what they intend to do and are recommending if turned permanent.
8th Avenue - there again was vigorous debate about this. Lots were pushing for 6th Avenue because it goes through the geographic centre of the CBD, but again traffic and transit disruption were huge concerns. Would have been a nightmare IMO. 8th still is pretty central and touches more destinations like the Core mall.
5th Street - 4th was a favourite for many - but again, 2 way in the Beltline. Lots of disruption to parking and key transit routes.
As for the connections at the end of routes. They will become better connected over time. There was just only so much that could be designed and implemented in such a short time. Even doing all these routes at once as they are was a pretty impossible task. The City staff did incredible work under almost impossible scrutiny.
Every single route was excruciatingly scrutinized, tested, weighed - what have you.
Is the network perfect? No. But in many ways it was an simultaneous exercise in finding the best routes and the least bad. It's very, very hard to retrofit streets with so many competing interests.