Ongoing Calgarians complaining about pedestrian bridges thread

[Magnum PEI]

Originally Posted by LeftWing

Sure but it's still packed, and sometimes you have to wait for a train or two to get on. That's not right.

I go to about 10 games a year and I've never had to wait more than 5 minutes for a train after the game. And yeah its packed, but what do you expect? Its purpose is to carry as many passengers as possible as quickly as possible.

[Muta]

Originally Posted by LeftWing

Yes.

NSFW!

[ranchlandsselling]

Originally Posted by Muta

We'd be able to upgrade our existing infrastructure more often, which is just as critical, if we didn't have to keep expanding outwards and putting massive amounts of money into those projects.

The inner-city, which is just as important, gets one bridge which upgrades infrastructure and beautifies this area of the city, and costs a drop in the bucket compared to other projects... and it's a big deal? Why aren't the inner city residents up in arms over the other projects that have been going on for years that they'll never use?

The bridge is built, it's awesome, it's going to be a great addition to our city... people need to start liking it and get on board with it. I'm happy we're thinking past basic functionality and developing our projects with world-class aesthetics in mind. We're a world class city... we're past the point of being Red Deer, High Level, North Battleford or Yellowknife.

Really, that's all the poor little inner city got? One bridge? That's all they wanted and won't ask for anything more? Sheesh.

The dramatics in this thread border on ridiculous!

I highly doubt no one could follow the point Left Wing was making. It wasn't that hard to follow.

Someone originally compared the bridge to an interchange in some so called parasite community and it's been used again and again. So he/she brought up that there was no one on the bridge and probably a ton on said stupid interchange. I find it hard to grasp the 1percentagers on this forum can't follow the point he was making whether it was statistically relevant or a perfect comparable.

It's a pretty thing. It was hardly necessary, I bike and commute to work in the summer and run on those paths probably more than 99% of Calgarians and I hardly think it was warranted, and even if it was, probably didn't need to be 25+ milllion and take that long to build. Am I going to use it, you bet. I'll see what it's like and I'l change up my routine and use it. It's interesting and neat and colourful and you can spit over the side or look for fish like any other bridge in Calgary. Chances are the numb-skulls who are taking pictures on it will back up onto the bike path and get in the way regardless that there's dedicated lanes. People with strollers, dogs, skateboards, children and old folks don't seem to get there's a different walking path and a bike path along a ton of memorial drive so how is this bridge going to be any different? It's not. . . It's not going to amazingly make the bike commute in the morning that much better. It's chilly, you have to peddle. you're only supposed to be going 20 kmph anyway and a big red bridge isn't going to make that much of a difference.

No the suburbs haven't been getting large interchanges at the expense of the poor inner city folks being punished. No the suburbs aren't going without an interchange because the inner city got some luxurious bridge. That's just silly.

But to claim it's a necessity that was needed is just silly too. The debate should be was it a waste of money to build a bridge that's pretty and architecturally exciting? Seems like a waste of money to me but I don't know much about those things. I'm just a troglodyte suburbanite who needed the spell check for "architecturally exciting". My next home will likely be in the SW around Marda Loop or out of the city limits.

For those all excited about the bridge thinking it's a terrible idea I'd say suck it up and move to somewhere more boring and lacking in colour. Perhaps Edmonton. For those inner city latte sipping whatchamacallits probably best to move to Tokyo and live in your high rise super density paradise that you seemingly want to live in... Or Vancouver, they'd probably take you too!

[Muta]

Originally Posted by ranchlandsselling

Lots of words

Not sure if dramatically happy, sad or butthurt....

If sad or butthurt, check frinkprof`s post above. Sums up Left Wing nicely. As well, the interchange argument is used as a comparison to projects for inner city and outer city residents, nothing more. Seems that people who aren't anywhere near it are the ones complaining the most about it. Inner city residents, on the other hand, have been dealing with outer city projects for years. Now that that table has been flipped, everyone's in a tizzy.

If happy though, use the bridge! In fact, drive a power wheels over it and pretend it's a freeway!

[ranchlandsselling]

Originally Posted by Muta

Not sure if dramatically happy, sad or butthurt....

If sad or butthurt, check frinkprof`s post above. Sums up Left Wing nicely. As well, the interchange argument is used as a comparison to projects for inner city and outer city residents, nothing more. Seems that people who aren't anywhere near it are the ones complaining the most about it. Inner city residents, on the other hand, have been dealing with outer city projects for years. Now that that table has been flipped, everyone's in a tizzy.

If happy though, use the bridge! In fact, drive a power wheels over it and pretend it's a freeway!

Neither happy nor sad. Just interested in the overall thread but watching two sides fight over meaninless garbage.

I think the interchange vs. bridge is a terrible analogy. But Left Wing didn't start it. And nowhere do I see anyone getting such a hard time about it as him. The inner city pro Bridgies are all over him. It wasn't a wonderful perfectly comparable scientific analogy but everyone posting on this thread is clever enough to know exactly the point he was trying to make regardless if it was a good one. It was more like everyone was piling on pretending they had no idea what he could be talking about because it was a poor analogy.

Are you even in Calgary? You're profile says something else but you've used "we" a few times. Not that it matters, just made me wonder.

[GreatWhiteEbola]

Asinine comments about the bridges use, are what started it for LeftWing, so he is not being persecuted without justification.

[jammies]

You can't make a decision on whether the bridge is a waste of money or not without knowing:

- How long it is intended to last
- How much it will cost in maintenance
- How much it is used over its lifespan
- How much it increases pedestrian/bike trips to the core

None of the bridge opponents care about anything but the upfront price tag as compared to some theoretical "cheaper" bridge, or no bridge at all. If the bridge lasts 100 years and costs its original price in maintenance over that time, that's a heck of a lot better than one costing $15 million that ends up costing triple that in maintenance and lasts 40 years (not that I'm saying this is necessarily the case but WE DON'T KNOW), or a bridge that has to get built 10 years from now to handle the pedestrian/bike overflow for $50 million and costs a million a year to keep up.

Never have so many been so opinionated about something so unknowable. Give it 10 years and we can maybe decide if it was a good idea or not. Trying to hold this bridge up as a symbol of waste and the city administration's cluelessness NOW just shows how people get focused on one or two easily understandable "facts" about a subject and are then content to extrapolate from that to confirm their already formed opinions on a tangentially related issue.

[Stay Golden]

Dru $$$Farrell shedding tears over her bridge is laughable. What a typical sickening drama queen.

[frinkprof]

Originally Posted by ranchlandsselling

Really, that's all the poor little inner city got? One bridge? That's all they wanted and won't ask for anything more? Sheesh.

The dramatics in this thread border on ridiculous!

I highly doubt no one could follow the point Left Wing was making. It wasn't that hard to follow.

Someone originally compared the bridge to an interchange in some so called parasite community and it's been used again and again. So he/she brought up that there was no one on the bridge and probably a ton on said stupid interchange. I find it hard to grasp the 1percentagers on this forum can't follow the point he was making whether it was statistically relevant or a perfect comparable.

It's a pretty thing. It was hardly necessary, I bike and commute to work in the summer and run on those paths probably more than 99% of Calgarians and I hardly think it was warranted, and even if it was, probably didn't need to be 25+ milllion and take that long to build. Am I going to use it, you bet. I'll see what it's like and I'l change up my routine and use it. It's interesting and neat and colourful and you can spit over the side or look for fish like any other bridge in Calgary. Chances are the numb-skulls who are taking pictures on it will back up onto the bike path and get in the way regardless that there's dedicated lanes. People with strollers, dogs, skateboards, children and old folks don't seem to get there's a different walking path and a bike path along a ton of memorial drive so how is this bridge going to be any different? It's not. . . It's not going to amazingly make the bike commute in the morning that much better. It's chilly, you have to peddle. you're only supposed to be going 20 kmph anyway and a big red bridge isn't going to make that much of a difference.

No the suburbs haven't been getting large interchanges at the expense of the poor inner city folks being punished. No the suburbs aren't going without an interchange because the inner city got some luxurious bridge. That's just silly.

But to claim it's a necessity that was needed is just silly too. The debate should be was it a waste of money to build a bridge that's pretty and architecturally exciting? Seems like a waste of money to me but I don't know much about those things. I'm just a troglodyte suburbanite who needed the spell check for "architecturally exciting". My next home will likely be in the SW around Marda Loop or out of the city limits.

For those all excited about the bridge thinking it's a terrible idea I'd say suck it up and move to somewhere more boring and lacking in colour. Perhaps Edmonton. For those inner city latte sipping whatchamacallits probably best to move to Tokyo and live in your high rise super density paradise that you seemingly want to live in... Or Vancouver, they'd probably take you too!

I don't have a problem with most of your post, save for the bolded parts:

I highly doubt no one could follow the point Left Wing was making. It wasn't that hard to follow.

LeftWing wasn't jumped on because no one understood what he was trying to say, he got jumped on because of two reasons:

1. The angle he was coming from and the illustrations he used were at best tenuous and at worst just as extreme and as much a gross oversimplification of the Peace Bridge vs. [Insert typical and generic "suburban" road interchange, or all such interchanges as a group] is in the first place.

2. After getting nowhere with his poorly-supported analogies, his posts very quickly devolved into trolling tactics of thinly-veiled mocking sarcasm and being purposely obtuse and side-stepping to evoke emotional responses. To be fair, this didn't go without similar retaliation.

Just the same as Left Wing's point should be apparent from today's conversation, so too should the point behind the Peace Bridge vs. interchanges qualitative comparison 90% of the time it's been used in this thread. Most of the time it's been brought up is as a higher-level qualitative comparison involving some of these criteria that have been brought up in discussion:

- Prone to cost overruns
- Generally only practically useful in the day-to-day lives of relatively small group people who live in or visit very small areas of the city.
- Prone to procedural missteps on the part of the City
- Associated with a niche transport mode that has correlation with particular lifestyle choices


Outside of being used to illustrate the above, the basis of the Peace Bridge vs. Interchanges comparison deteriorates rapidly. It is true that some people have been careless in alluding to this comparison in this thread, but I think most would agree that it's ridiculous beyond the boundaries of discussing the above. It's quite apparent that LeftWing was either being purposely obtuse or legitimately didn't understand the intended (and narrow) point of what he ended up trying to refute.


No the suburbs haven't been getting large interchanges at the expense of the poor inner city folks being punished.


I don't like the suburbs vs. inner-city false-dichotomy debate, but any reasonable assumptions made in defining what one means by "inner-city" and "suburbs" (i.e. where the imaginary line is) would make what you just said a falsehood.

This is bordering too much on a sweeping generalization than I'm usually comfortable with, but this, almost to the point of being a rule, has been false for the last 60 years and will be for at least a few more years.

[topfiverecords]

Originally Posted by LeftWing

Well, it's been a fun dog pile but I gotta head to bed. Please, I encourage everyone to enjoy this marvel of architecture - I really do hope that it gets used extensively.

You're not allowed to go to bed. Shouldn't you be on night watch counting bridge users (or lack of in your opinion).

[jayswin]

Arguments can be made for and against this bridge, but god damn does the pro bridge side have all the heavy hitters in this thread or what?

"Bridge sucks, no one's on it right now"

"4 paragraph rebuttle with tons of facts and great analasys of the debate"

"Too much money spent and it's fancy. Should have been less fancy and less money"

"3 paragraph rebuttle with tons of facts"

This thread is fantastic to follow along with. Thanks everyone.

[Sr. Mints]

frinkprof, I notice in your sig a link to Transit Camp. Do you know if the two Jarrett Walker events being put on by the City (April 12 & 14) are the same presentation? I'm registered for the Saturday morning one, but the other is news to me.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by LeftWing

Because your place is all built you expect no one else should build anywhere else? That's not really fair. If there was 200000 more people trying to live in your community I wonder if you would have even found a place.

I'm not saying don't build any new stuff in the surburbs. I'm saying the suburbs should pay for the suburbs, and that's absolutely fair.

And yeah, reducing/eliminating suburban subsidies would increase demand in the inner city, but that effect is smaller than the cost of the subsidy. ECON 101.

[LeftWing]

Originally Posted by GreatWhiteEbola

Asinine comments about the bridges use, are what started it for LeftWing, so he is not being persecuted without justification.

Asinine? What's asinine? I made some observations:

1) I observed over the course of a day, whenever I turned my head to look at the bridge there was rarely any real activity. Do I think the results of that analysis are scientific? Um, no.

2) I commented that the comparison between interchanges and the bridge is not a good one - because interchanges seem to get a lot more traffic. Some folks say that interchanges cost a lot more - but as I've said before, I don't know how much they cost. I've spent a lot of time on interchanges, I know that there's a considerable larger amount of traffic on a regular basis than there was on the bridge yesterday. That's an observation. Please note - I didn't commission any studies, I have no empirical data - just some observations. Now in fairness, no one else has presented any numbers to the contrary.

Once again, do I think that they should give the bridge back? No, of course not. They should simply widen it enough to get two lanes of traffic in - that's all. See, perfectly reasonable.

[LeftWing]

Originally Posted by frinkprof

Disingenuous sarcasm, unbecoming mockery and poorly articulated and supported attempts

Poorly articulated? Now come on. This part is bang on though:

Originally Posted by frinkprof

attempts to call into question one extreme and ridiculous argument (the qualitative generalization of Peace Bridge vs. interchanges)

You're so right, I've been attempting to call into question that ridiculous argument. Unfortunately I don't have any hard evidence, and neither does anyone else. So it's just down to observations. Yesterday I observed that there were not many people using the bridge. Yesterday I also observed that there were *a lot* of people on the McKenzie Towne interchange.

And why would it matter that it's the third day of operation? Are you implying that there's still a bunch of people that haven't heard about it yet? I'm thinking just about everyone has heard about it (again, just an observation - I have no data to support the assertion that every person in Calgary does or does not know that the bridge exists). However, isn't there a novelty factor with something this new? Shouldn't more people be on it now than if it was the same weather conditions / time a year down the road when it's not such a big deal?

[LeftWing]

Originally Posted by topfiverecords

You're not allowed to go to bed. Shouldn't you be on night watch counting bridge users (or lack of in your opinion).

Nah, that's the day job.

[LeftWing]

Originally Posted by frinkprof

I don't have a problem with most of your post, save for the bolded parts:

I highly doubt no one could follow the point Left Wing was making. It wasn't that hard to follow.

- Prone to cost overruns
- Generally only practically useful in the day-to-day lives of relatively small group people who live in or visit very small areas of the city.
- Prone to procedural missteps on the part of the City
- Associated with a niche transport mode that has correlation with particular lifestyle choices

And my argument is that when you say relatively small, it's actually relatively tiny. It's about use. Maybe someday the bridge will be used a heck of a lot more, but since it's opened, there's barely been a whisper. Also, the interchange I traveled over in the wee hours of the morning had a number of vehicles on it. For the last 10 minutes or so, the bridge has been empty. Just an observation.

[LeftWing]

Originally Posted by SeeBass

^yeah how much in taxes does your wife pay for her house.

Good thing you don't have to worry about your imaginary taxes being wasted.

Um, ... right. Phew.

[ranchlandsselling]

Originally Posted by frinkprof

I don't have a problem with most of your post, save for the bolded parts:

I highly doubt no one could follow the point Left Wing was making. It wasn't that hard to follow.

LeftWing wasn't jumped on because no one understood what he was trying to say, he got jumped on because of two reasons:

1. The angle he was coming from and the illustrations he used were at best tenuous and at worst just as extreme and as much a gross oversimplification of the Peace Bridge vs. [Insert typical and generic "suburban" road interchange, or all such interchanges as a group] is in the first place.

2. After getting nowhere with his poorly-supported analogies, his posts very quickly devolved into trolling tactics of thinly-veiled mocking sarcasm and being purposely obtuse and side-stepping to evoke emotional responses. To be fair, this didn't go without similar retaliation.

Just the same as Left Wing's point should be apparent from today's conversation, so too should the point behind the Peace Bridge vs. interchanges qualitative comparison 90% of the time it's been used in this thread. Most of the time it's been brought up is as a higher-level qualitative comparison involving some of these criteria that have been brought up in discussion:

- Prone to cost overruns
- Generally only practically useful in the day-to-day lives of relatively small group people who live in or visit very small areas of the city.
- Prone to procedural missteps on the part of the City
- Associated with a niche transport mode that has correlation with particular lifestyle choices


Outside of being used to illustrate the above, the basis of the Peace Bridge vs. Interchanges comparison deteriorates rapidly. It is true that some people have been careless in alluding to this comparison in this thread, but I think most would agree that it's ridiculous beyond the boundaries of discussing the above. It's quite apparent that LeftWing was either being purposely obtuse or legitimately didn't understand the intended (and narrow) point of what he ended up trying to refute.


No the suburbs haven't been getting large interchanges at the expense of the poor inner city folks being punished.


I don't like the suburbs vs. inner-city false-dichotomy debate, but any reasonable assumptions made in defining what one means by "inner-city" and "suburbs" (i.e. where the imaginary line is) would make what you just said a falsehood.

This is bordering too much on a sweeping generalization than I'm usually comfortable with, but this, almost to the point of being a rule, has been false for the last 60 years and will be for at least a few more years.

Both I can agree with.

I think the burbs vs. inner city is just a silly - but again, it's what half the battle seemed to be about, which is just ridiculous - so I was working with what I had.

[Rhettzky]

Originally Posted by LeftWing

And my argument is that when you say relatively small, it's actually relatively tiny. It's about use. Maybe someday the bridge will be used a heck of a lot more, but since it's opened, there's barely been a whisper. Also, the interchange I traveled over in the wee hours of the morning had a number of vehicles on it. For the last 10 minutes or so, the bridge has been empty. Just an observation.

I don't know about that. Both times I have been by the bridge it was completely packed, one time it had a line-up of people waiting to cross. I think we need another ped bridge somewhere near by to take the load off this new one.