Council supports three new separated bike lanes downtown

[Temporary_User]

[Bigtime]

So here is the trial network as approved on Monday:

Spoiler!

Looking at it I can't see why they wouldn't do 4th St SE from the river pathway right down to 12th Ave. Also 12th should definitely connect east right to the Elbow river pathway system, that stretch of 12th is pretty desolate and low use, so the time to put a bike lane in would be now.

[Table 5]

Yeah, there definitely seems to be a N/S street missing on the east side. They need to connect it all the way to the St. Patricks Island bridge.

[Bigtime]

I threw it out on twitter, the replies are that administration said 4th St has no connectivity because it ends at the Stampede grounds. Yes, but it would connect to the freaking 12th Avenue section of the track, and guess what? You are building a community around 4th that is hoping to house something like 10,000 people. Maybe we should put the lane in now instead of fighting an epic battle later to get it in place (kind of like the airport tunnel but at a ridiculous fraction of the cost).

Edit: Chatting with Druh on twitter now about it, she says the roadway has the allowance built in on 4th to easily accommodate the bike lane and that the CMLC could move on it faster with their own funds. She also agrees it would be best to get the bike lane in place sooner rather than later, as EV will have residents much sooner than they were expecting.

[GGG]

What about 1st SW instead of 1st SE. 1st SE seems like a ridiculous Road to reduce capacity on. It is Mcleaod Trail. 1st SW runs right from River to 17th where it is basically a block away from the elbow pathways.

Then you would have a pretty good N/S network with routes along 4 SE, 1st SW, and 5th SW,

[Addick]

Originally Posted by GGG

What about 1st SW instead of 1st SE.

I think there are a couple of reasons IIRC:

• 1 Street SW just improved their streetscape.
• Similar to 4 Street SW, it would provide too many conflicts with busy bus routes.

I might be wrong on the last point.

Originally Posted by Bigtime

I threw it out on twitter, the replies are that administration said 4th St has no connectivity because it ends at the Stampede grounds. Yes, but it would connect to the freaking 12th Avenue section of the track, and guess what? You are building a community around 4th that is hoping to house something like 10,000 people. Maybe we should put the lane in now instead of fighting an epic battle later to get it in place (kind of like the airport tunnel but at a ridiculous fraction of the cost).

I like. East Beltline looks like its missing out and your idea make sense. If the East Beltline N-S spine started down 4th, merged with 12th and then funneled onto Centre it could work. However, Centre does have uncontrolled intersections.

[SebC]

Strava (GPS app) has released their data map:

http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#11/-...4601/gray/bike

7th Street doesn't seem particularly hot, but I'm guessing their user base skews towards recreational bikers rather than commuters.

[morgin]

Oh no, she's gone full Rick Bell! You never go full Rick Bell!

http://www.calgaryherald.com/busines...tml?id=9806805

[Bigtime]

DO NOT click on that Herald link. No matter what side of the debate you were on you will NEVER get that time back reading that crap.

[habernac]

I got a good laugh about it. What a useless human being. And she has a regular column. Awesome.