Arena Negotiation Discussion v2

[Jay Random]

Originally Posted by marsplasticeraser

Hey jay Random.

How can I take your points seriously if you don’t even know what you do yourself?

Here you say you spend a lot of time in the inner city (maybe to show you understand the issue (full disclosure: you don’t)).

So because I don't agree with you, I obviously don't know anything? Right. Remind me always to defer to your proven omniscience from now on.

On post 991 you say “By the way, I never go downtown if I can help it. The train is virtually useless to me.”

What is it jay random?

Downtown is not all of the inner city. Swing and a miss. But as a person who knows everything, you obviously knew that already. Don't know why you wasted your time with an obvious lie.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Jay Random

So because I don't agree with you, I obviously don't know anything? Right. Remind me always to defer to your proven omniscience from now on.



Downtown is not all of the inner city. Swing and a miss. But as a person who knows everything, you obviously knew that already. Don't know why you wasted your time with an obvious lie.

Ok, but you work from home so you obviously don’t travel into the inner city compared to most people who work there and brave the traffic during rush hour, and you’d be wrong to suggest the train is virtually useless to you, it’s an easy train ride and bus/walk to anywhere in the inner city from Brentwood.

Just take the train.

And as someone who drives a lot, but tries to mix in the train during the winter and mix in a bike during the summer (from a little further NW than you) I can’t say you’re on point about traffic OR bike lane usage. It’s manageable, and the bike lanes are buzzing during rush hour (you know, when most of us are commuting).

[Roughneck]

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

Sounds good in theory, but how often is a wish-list much shorter than the budget attached to it? That said, if you can organize the wishlist into 'must-haves' and 'nice-to-haves', then the arena is certainly worthy of discussion among the other'nice-to-haves' when allocating any leftover funds.

Given that the main reason an arena wasn't able to use CRL funds before was because the last of the allocation was used for various infrastructure improvements in Victoria Park I think a good portion of 'must haves' are already funded.



To steal a post from Bunk:

Originally Posted by Bunk

20 year extension. Hmmmm.

I would guess:

$150m for BMO
$100m for Arts Commons
$150m for Vic Park improvements.

.
.
.

Then, $150m for Arena.

$550m in total borrowing.

His numbers are just speculation and ballparking so I'm not going to pretend they're anything more than that. But they're a good starting point: IIRC Victoria Park already had $150M committed to public realm/infrastructure improvements with the original CRL timeline funding (

• Extend 17th Avenue SE into/through Stampede Park, providing a new pedestrian and vehicular link to increase connectivity and create an attractive right of way for new retail and commercial development
• Complete another stage of RiverWalk – Calgary’s much-celebrated riverside promenade
• Extend the city’s popular Cycle Tracks program
• Develop streetscapes and development opportunity around the new Green Line LRT line.

https://www.calgarymlc.ca/news-full/...-victoria-park


Another $150M would put the amount of infrastructure spending in Victoria Park at roughly the same level as the East Village so that would cover a lot of needs and wants, with some of the big ones already covered (River Walk, Green Line stuff). BMO Centre expansion is the big one, so how much it would eat up of the city's portion of funding would be a big limiter of what the arena would see.



But given Arts Commons proposed a $400M Master Plan for the latest capital budget period (that included Olympic Plaza stuff) how much they'd be pushing for and how much people want to commit to may also throw a wrench into it. There may be a lot of people who see the value in prioritizing something like Arts Commons and Olympic Plaza for public money over a new arena, but I'd say more people would be against exclusively funding AC and OP over an arena, especially for that amount.

[Jay Random]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Ok, but you work from home so you obviously don’t travel into the inner city compared to most people who work there and brave the traffic during rush hour, and you’d be wrong to suggest the train is virtually useless to you, it’s an easy train ride and bus/walk to anywhere in the inner city from Brentwood.

Just take the train.

And then transfer to a bus to get to anywhere outside the city centre. Believe it or not, Bowness, Forest Lawn, and Elbow Park (just to name three communities that are officially part of the inner city) are not a short walk away from the train. To get to any of them by train, I would have to go downtown and transfer there, which easily doubles the distance and quadruples the time compared to driving.

When I am going about the city on business, I don't have the time to spend 90 minutes on buses.

And as someone who drives a lot, but tries to mix in the train during the winter and mix in a bike during the summer (from a little further NW than you) I can’t say you’re on point about traffic OR bike lane usage. It’s manageable, and the bike lanes are buzzing during rush hour (you know, when most of us are commuting).

I've never seen bumper-to-bumper traffic or multi-light waits on a bike lane. Ever. I'll wager you haven't either.

[Roughneck]

Originally Posted by Jay Random

I've never seen bumper-to-bumper traffic or multi-light waits on a bike lane. Ever. I'll wager you haven't either.

Light timing isn't based off bike travel, so I don't know what your point is here. We could bring driving to an absolute standstill if you wanted to get multi-light waits in the bike lanes for whatever reason. You don't see multi-light 'gridlock' with pedestrians either, even on streets that definitely aren't prioritized for pedestrian traffic.



These are the benefits of space efficient travel modes, not examples of prioritizing them over cars.

[Jay Random]

Originally Posted by Roughneck

Light timing isn't based off bike travel, so I don't know what your point is here.

The point is that multi-light waits are caused primarily by volume of traffic, and there isn't that kind of volume in any bike lane.

We could bring driving to an absolute standstill if you wanted to get multi-light waits in the bike lanes for whatever reason.

How the hell did you get that from what I said? Only a complete idiot would want multi-light waits. The point is that the bike lanes are handling much lighter traffic than the general-purpose lanes.

You don't see multi-light 'gridlock' with pedestrians either, even on streets that definitely aren't prioritized for pedestrian traffic.

Any intersection where there is a walk light is de facto prioritized for pedestrian traffic – as anyone can attest who has tried to make a right turn on a green light in downtown Calgary during business hours.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Jay Random

The point is that multi-light waits are caused primarily by volume of traffic, and there isn't that kind of volume in any bike lane.



How the hell did you get that from what I said? Only a complete idiot would want multi-light waits. The point is that the bike lanes are handling much lighter traffic than the general-purpose lanes.



Any intersection where there is a walk light is de facto prioritized for pedestrian traffic – as anyone can attest who has tried to make a right turn on a green light in downtown Calgary during business hours.

Part of it is that bikes take up less space. In order to have 1 lane of space back log with bikes would need at least 5 and probably 10 times the number of bikes than cars. So from a throughout capacity a bike lane is far more efficient and therefore inferring usage from the lack of multi light waits is flawed.

As far as traffic volumes in summer the only fair way to look at would be to assess average car traffic per lane on all lanes into the core both the high and low volume ones and determine the average cars per lane and then you could evaluate if devoting 4 lanes out of hundreds is reasonable or not.

[RM14]

I love bike lanes and all but.. I'd rather a new arena deal for Christmas

[dissentowner]

For the love of God nobody gives a tin crap about your bike lane discussion! Start an off topic thread.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by Jay Random

The point is that multi-light waits are caused primarily by volume of traffic, and there isn't that kind of volume in any bike lane.

Volume of car traffic has more to do with the actual physical volume of the vehicles and safe operating distances required between them than the number of people being moved. Through a little googling and application of common sense, it seems at most you could get 30 vehicles per lane per minute through an intersection on green (assuming the road ahead is clear).

Bike lanes are about half as wide as a car lane. I couldn't find a number, but I don't think you'd have any trouble clearing 15 bikes in 15 seconds, or 30 in 30 seconds (you could get a lot more than 60 tour de france riders through in a minute, but factoring variable speeds of commuters and following distances, it's probably less than 60 for a full minute).

So, per meter of lane width in a rush hour intersection, bikes are about 4 times more efficient than cars. Vehicles could make up for their inefficiency by carrying more passengers, but that seems especially rare at rush hour.

Basically, you're going to need more than 50 bikes in one place trying to go the same direction every minute before you see anything resembling congestion in a bike lane. But, as soon as you get more than 23 cars in a lane trying to get through a 45 second green light, the whole system starts to fall apart, and does not easily recover.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Jay Random

And then transfer to a bus to get to anywhere outside the city centre. Believe it or not, Bowness, Forest Lawn, and Elbow Park (just to name three communities that are officially part of the inner city) are not a short walk away from the train. To get to any of them by train, I would have to go downtown and transfer there, which easily doubles the distance and quadruples the time compared to driving.

When I am going about the city on business, I don't have the time to spend 90 minutes on buses.



I've never seen bumper-to-bumper traffic or multi-light waits on a bike lane. Ever. I'll wager you haven't either.

You have as much time as you make for yourself.

Clearly traffic isn’t enough of a convenience that you need to take transit, which is nice. Plus, there are no trips from Brentwood to Bowness or Forrest Lawn where bike lanes play a big factor, and certainly not on the roads you were complaining about earlier.

And of course nobody has seen multi-light waits on a bike lane. But I’ve never really seen multi-light waits going from past Brentwood to Bowness or Forrest Lawn either (maybe on Shag near the mall in rush hour once in a while) but any place I have isn’t related to a bike lane issue.

At this point, I’m not even sure how bike lanes impact you at all. You work from home, you drive to places where you should rarely encounter a bike lane and where multiple routes exist to avoid them, and you don’t drive downtown. So... complaining for the sake of it?

[Roughneck]

Originally Posted by dissentowner

For the love of God nobody gives a tin crap about your bike lane discussion! Start an off topic thread.

The new arena site is directly on a bike lane, so it's neatly tied into the project. Cycling may not be a main mode of transport to the arena itself, but it will be very important to the success of an entertainment and cultural district and any sustainable, long-term success it would hope to have outside game times.

People keep throwing parking revenue around when talking about arenas when parking is becoming more and more irrelevant to the process than ever before (because you can't have a bustling entertainment and cultural district and also have ample amounts of close, inexpensive parking options). Even the Stampede is accepting that losing parking will be necessary to have a better vision, and even when it came to the NEXT location the Flames weren't really factoring it in as a significant revenue source either. Moving people from the arena to their cars (which will be far more spread out than they ever were with the Saddledome) or to transit or to whatever other mode they use will require a much different look for how infrastructure is built than people are used to, and will involve the kind of thinking that has been promoting bike lanes more than it involves taking them away, so I'd say the more discussion that can clear up misconceptions the better.

[Bill Bumface]

Any intersection where there is a walk light is de facto prioritized for pedestrian traffic – as anyone can attest who has tried to make a right turn on a green light in downtown Calgary during business hours.

Then how do you explain all the right turn advance green signals downtown?

[GioforPM]

[Weitz]

Originally Posted by Bill Bumface

Then how do you explain all the right turn advance green signals downtown?

All 2 or 3 of them?

[Traditional_Ale]

Clearly traffic isn’t enough of a convenience that you need to take transit, which is nice. Plus, there are no trips from Brentwood to Bowness or Forrest Lawn where bike lanes play a big factor, and certainly not on the roads you were complaining about earlier.

Just fyi, the #53 bus leaves Brentood LRT station and stops outside of Hexters (in Bowness) 15 minutes later.

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by Weitz

All 2 or 3 of them?

That's enough to shoot 2-3 holes in a shallow argument.

[Bunk]

For whatever it’s worth, I’ve heard the City’s contribution to the arena building is most likely to come from capital reserves (cash), rather from the CRL.

[Freeway]

That'd be consistent with the funding sources available with their offer last September.

[Bownesian]

Originally Posted by Traditional_Ale

Just fyi, the #53 bus leaves Brentood LRT station and stops outside of Hexters (in Bowness) 15 minutes later.

Right now according to Google Maps, it's 16 minutes to drive from Hexters to Downtown (6 Ave./ Ctr St.), 38 minutes on the Number 1 bus, and 48 minutes taking the 53-LRT.

Having ridden the #1 (and the so-called BRTs that takes the same route and stops at 80% of the same stops), the bus is slower than that during rush hour (maybe 40-45 minutes average). I imagine the Brentwood route is about the same, and driving is ~20 minutes on average.

Bowness is not well served by transit, and probably never will be because we are separated from other communities by the bow river escarpments.