Quote:
Originally Posted by powderjunkie
It's probably silly for myriad reasons (like $$), but I've often wondered if we wouldn't be better off adding a brand new N-S toll freeway with a dedicated ROW into downtown (between 9 and 11 Ave SE)...instead of the expense and looooong headaches of putting lipstick on Deerfoot.
North would follow the CP tracks across the Bow River and then Nose Creek up to Airport Trail (with an entrance and exit at 16th Ave). A lot of the length could be surface level. You could theoretically add a rail-line for regional passenger rail, too, but in the mean time an express bus for the airport would be plenty nice.
South could follow green-line ROW for the most part, and in my sim-city fantasy it would be built to include BRT stations instead of rail. A 4 lane freeway wouldn't be that much wider than the green line, so the scope and elevated segements wouldn't be that different (though to achieve 100kph it might be tough). Obviously integrating pedestrian-friendly transit with a free-way would be the challenge, but I don't think current Green-line design will be very effective, anyways.
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Money is the least of the problems with this post. Please don't bring us back into the 1950s era of Calgary planning which had insane ideas like moving the train tracks to the river and building a highway through the middle of downtown.
Car-focused planning was the death knell of North American cities. Roads, individuals in cars, and parking lots are the least efficient and most desolate use of space.
Cities like Vancouver and Seattle are just now ripping out their elevated concrete highways from the 60s as they realized they acted like giant Berlin walls separating halves of their cities and created desolate places of crime and poverty beneath them.
For a microcosm of that, look at what's happening to the Victoria Park station being moved to grade instead of the original design that created a concrete mess of bridges, ramps, and isolation because the priority then was moving as many cars as possible down MacLeod.