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Originally Posted by Acey
Whether or not the expense is justified is one thing, but whether or not an interchange of any variety improves the situation is a resounding yes. 100% green time for through traffic on Sarcee more or less fixes the intersection.
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Of course an interchange would fix that intersection in particular, but I'm not sure it's a significant improvement in the bigger picture when you factor in the expense/disruption (exacerbated by topography and space constraints).
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This is an easier question to answer than you are making it seem. We do not build free-flowing interchanges anymore except for on freeways because they are catastrophically expensive and take up a ton of space, it'd therefore be a 6-ramp partial cloverleaf, the same as the ones we have been building everywhere else in Alberta for the last 20 years. A lesser cost option is a 5-ramp variant of that with the WB-SB loop ramp removed, like what we just built at 212 Ave SE and Deerfoot. Sarcee/Bow is not really a place you attempt to reinvent the wheel.
Sarcee is the free-flow and Bow goes over or under.
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The free-flow choice doesn't really matter that much, but I don't think it's actually that clear-cut of a choice. Topography and space constraints likely inform the choice more than the actual traffic numbers...
I managed to find the two most recent counts for this intersection:
There's a whole lot to unpack there, but I think a notable takeaway is that the west approach (ie. Bow EB coming down the hill) generates more traffic at all hours than Sarcee.
The south approach actually generates the least traffic (at least on this particular day); yet it seems to suffer the worst backups.
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The point of the WRR is to connect Highway 1 to Highway 2, which is the point of every quadrant of Stoney Trail hence the disregard for local connectivity you see in the vicinity of Cranston, Somerset, and Silverado.
Calgary and Edmonton rely on their ring roads for intracity relief more than they should, because proper intracity freeways were not built to begin with.
That said, the completion of Stoney Trail does not bail out Sarcee Trail which I expect to remain in an objective level of failure due to induced demand and other factors.
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I think the bolded is definitely true for the east legs, but I don't agree it's such a simple case in the west, where geography (both physical and political) have prompted significant gaps [that are only plausibly solved by Stoney].
I'm obviously not going to have much winning friends or influencing people in a thread about a freeway, but I see this as a perfect opportunity to resist the perpetual trap of induced demand.