Are suburban cyclists being forgotten in Calgary’s bike plans?

[RyLucky]

Originally Posted by ByeByeBaby

No.

I agree with BBB, but I'd like to add that often city planners miss the mark on how to implement a project. Idiotic survey design (ie peace bridge xwalk fiasco) and listening to a few loud voices at town hall/AGC meetings don't always get the best design. Curly-cue pedestrian overpasses are also idiotic. Try it yourself and use common sense. //endrant.

[MichaelS]

Originally Posted by Radley77

Just thought I would add that at current rate of maybe a half dozen cycling projects per year, that it would be ~ 40+ years before every community has a solid standard for cycling infrastructure. There just simply is nowhere near the human resources at the City of Calgary or capital to do anything more.

So Calgary is already "ignoring" the suburbs.

Personally, I think this is unfortunate that there is not enough funding such that every community in Calgary can be cycling friendly. I'd like to see a minimum standard of bike routes connecting to transit hubs\major activity centres and schools at a minimum in every community.

With new communities using the new "complete streets" standards, many on-street bike lanes will be constructed in the future, so this should alleviate the lack of cycling infrastructure in new communities.

http://www.calgary.ca/Transportation...eets-guide.pdf

[Tropics]

The thing that ticks me off about the city and bike travel is their singular "blinders on" focus on road travel and a lack of attention to updating and expanding bike path systems through green spaces. The new Bow River Pathway upgrades with decent lighting systems, decent scenery, marked lanes. This should be the standard along the entire route from Bowness Park at one end to Fish Creek Park at the other. The Elbow River pathway should be upgraded to the same level and be run to also run past the Glenmore Reservoir and eventually link up to the more western section of Fish Creek Park, thus creating a loop with the Bow River Pathway there.

The Nose Creek pathway should be built as yet another major route for bike travel.

More feeders along natural corridors should be built to minimize travel along shared roads as much as possible and whenever possible using light travel roads. There is almost no excuse for travel along busy shared roads in the non-downtown core for bike routes.

I lived in Spruce Cliff and the trail that goes from the west of the golfcourse down to the Bow River Pathway is gravel and not great for bikes, mountain bikes can handle it, a street bike would get detroyed. Paths like that should be graded, paved, and have lighting systems put in place.

I think fixing the bike paths and making them proper for actual commuting is a WAY better way to spend money on promoting biking. The thing that needs fixed are the idiotic situations where a person with a street bike has to actually ride their bike around the Shaganappi Golf Course on public roads to get to the Bow River Pathway system because the pathway system that exists the links directly into Spruce Cliff is gravel, has improper slopes, has alot of eroded/washed out sections and has no light so that travel after sunset is pretty much out.

[frinkprof]

The community-by-community way of providing servicing (or smaller-scale capital infrastructure such as the topic of this thread) has flaws and is already much too prevalent in Calgary. I'm speaking more in the sense that Radley77 speaks to and DizzyEdge alludes to (or at least one way you could interpret his post). This "standards for every community" sentiment.

The problem is that communities in Calgary are a collection of vastly different places. It's one of the peculiarities with the unicity model. Different ages, different origins, different populations and population densities, different character, different built form. It's a wide spectrum.

Blanket standards of service (either amount, type or implementation) will leave a lot of areas of the city with a solution that's a mismatch for their needs and the good of the city. Moreover, especially in terms of population distributions, the "every community gets X" approach can be problematic as well. In that light communities are a rather arbitrary drawing of lines and a far too simplistic model on which to base provision of service. Some have put forth the idea of providing service units per thousand population per square kilometer. That is, providing the most service units to the densest areas. That can be overly simplistic too, especially when it comes to transportation.

Once you get into transportation service or infrastructure, it gets more complicated and in addition to the factors above, you have to look at traffic patterns as well. Where do people want to go, from where and at what times? What land use changes and population changes will affect that in the future? It has to be much more nuanced than "community X should get Y length of bike lanes/paths because community Z also has Y length of bike lanes/paths" or "put X fraction of the total bike lanes here because this place has Y population density." It has to take into account where that population is going and how capital intensive that is to service.

[kw5150]

I think we can sort it all out through community involvement. Get the community involved to dream up a pathway system and then move towards funding it. I think there could be more cooperation than you think. If a community rejects something, leave and give the infrastructure to another community, then come back later.

People will begin to see the true costs involved and will be more mindful about how sprawl really does increase costs of even tiny things like bike infrastructure.

Originally Posted by ByeByeBaby

More specifically, planning transportation and other urban infrastructure requires skill and experience; as the number of people needing health care goes up, you can't just hand out "E-Z surgery" guides, you need to actually hire more doctors. Community associations are focussed on their very narrow local goals, which is what they're there for, but doesn't make sense in terms of broader planning.

Let's use Tuscany as an example, since that's where we started. There is already a small shopping centre in the middle of the community well connected by bike paths. The next nearby major shopping area is Crowfoot. But Crowfoot is in Arbour Lake, and presumably Arbour Lake wants to spend it's community-bike-access-to-node money on things that will help Arbour Lake residents, like building a trail connecting Arbour Lake Way to John Laurie via Crowfoot Park (NW of Crowfoot), or adding a pathway to Arbour Lake Dr. Those would help Arbour Lake residents north of Crowfoot, but it won't help Tuscany residents. What will most help Tuscany residents bike to Crowfoot would be to build a path through the utility corridor running due E-W from the ped bridge over Stoney Trail, connecting around to the bus-only bridge at the Crowfoot LRT. But that is in Scenic Acres, and I'm not sure Scenic Acres would necessarily be happy about that.

Or what if Westgate and Rosscarrock both want improved east-west access to Westbrook, but Rosscarrock wants to improve 13th Ave and Westgate wants to improve 8th Ave?

And that's not mentioning that Tuscany's share of the city bike budget is around... what is it exactly? Should it be prorated by population? By the area to cover with pathways? What about communities with through trips; an improvement in Hillhurst will be used by the residents of Capitol Hill more than an improvement in Capitol Hill will be used by the citizens of Hillhurst. What about the amount of pathways already present? Tuscany has 12.5 km of pathway (in fact, as it happens, it has 1.8% of the city's population, and 1.8% of the pathway length), and Bowness which is a similar size and 2/3 the population has basically nothing. Should they get the same amount still? When Bowness gets a check the first year with enough money to build 500 feet of pathway, what are they supposed to do with that?

It's almost like there needs to be an agency of some sort, with a mandate to take a broad look at this stuff. I think there might be some room for the initial idea phase of bike projects to be crowdsourced a little, but you will quickly wind up with the crazies, NIMBYs and YIMBYs running the show.

[frinkprof]

Originally Posted by RyLucky

Most of Calgary's suburbs have great trails. The single greatest need is a N-S bike path straight through Downtown and the Beltline.

Working on it.

[RyLucky]

Originally Posted by frinkprof

Working on it.

Hopefully everyone will love the 7th Street W project, so that this happens (prepare yourself for my dream bike path system):

-7th St W bikeway extends all the way to 17th Ave S
-2nd St W bikeway extends from the Bow to the Elbow
-an 8th Ave S bikeway extends from "the Rift" (in EV), through the new library and City Hall, all the way to Millenium Park
-the 13th Ave S Greenway goes all the way from Inglewood to 17th St W
-a new 17th St SW bikeway from 13th St S through the formative West Village and continues over the Bow River to link with 19th St NW

All of that would only be 12-13 km of infrastructure (though involves 3 new CPR ped/cyc crossings, and 1-2 new river ped/cyc crossings [$$$]). The city already has 700 km of pathway, 138 km Calgary Greenway loop, and 290 km of onstreet bikeways. Given our commitment to suburban pathways, I think 12-13 km of high quality separated bikeways through the densest, most populated, most dangerous-to-cyclists part of the city is reasonable. Not every street has to be a "complete street", but if we are going to have busy, autocentric roads, we ought to have safe places for cyclists too.
img from http://www.beezodogsplace.com/2012/0...s-secret-sect/

[kw5150]

Perfect.

Originally Posted by RyLucky

Hopefully everyone will love the 7th Street W project, so that this happens (prepare yourself for my dream bike path system):

-7th St W bikeway extends all the way to 17th Ave S
-2nd St W bikeway extends from the Bow to the Elbow
-an 8th Ave S bikeway extends from "the Rift" (in EV), through the new library and City Hall, all the way to Millenium Park
-the 13th Ave S Greenway goes all the way from Inglewood to 17th St W
-a new 17th St SW bikeway from 13th St S through the formative West Village and continues over the Bow River to link with 19th St NW

All of that would only be 12-13 km of infrastructure (though involves 3 new CPR ped/cyc crossings, and 1-2 new river ped/cyc crossings [$$$]). The city already has 700 km of pathway, 138 km Calgary Greenway loop, and 290 km of onstreet bikeways. Given our commitment to suburban pathways, I think 12-13 km of high quality separated bikeways through the densest, most populated, most dangerous-to-cyclists part of the city is reasonable. Not every street has to be a "complete street", but if we are going to have busy, autocentric roads, we ought to have safe places for cyclists too.
img from http://www.beezodogsplace.com/2012/0...s-secret-sect/