Henday kicks Stoney butt!

[Darren Dirt]

Over the last 10 years Edmonton's city council members have shown they apparently care more about commuters than Calgary's does?

http://www.transportation.alberta.ca/1701.htm -- almost done!




vs.


http://www.transportation.alberta.ca/804.htm






Edmonton ftw! AINEC.

[Tom]

If it was actually up to city council, we still wouldn't have any of the henday. The province pretty much forced it through.

[Darren Dirt]

Doesn't stop Mandel etc. from implying credit is due to them I am sure...

Anyway, cool to say there's still something -- and something quite everyday-practical! -- about Edmonton that kicks ass over the equivalent in Calgary. Since our sports teams are certainly not in that ever-shrinking bucket of brag-worthy things...

[Mr. Analog]

The Ring Road plan was a plan started by the Province in the 70s, the City constructed the western half in the 90s and the Province took over the rest in the 00s.

If you ask me though, the City and the Province came together and finally got things rolling. I DO appreciate City Council's push to bring Transit up to speed.

I think the bus fleet is now 100% low floor / disabled access, the oldest machines I still see rolling around are the '87 GMCs. New and refurbished LRT, line extensions, platform upgrades, power upgrades, new bus routes and hubs... it's a hell of a lot easier to get around town than a decade ago.

[Thorin]

Having driven in both Edmonton and Calgary during winter the last couple of years, I can tell you that a ring road around the city is not nearly as useful as multiple fast corridors through the city.  The Henday routinely backs up and slows down to a crawl in the southwest, and what's the option to get northwest to southeast (the path the Henday supposedly fixes for Edmonton commuters)?  St Albert Trail / Groat Road / 50km/h roads?  170th St to Whitemud to 91st St?

Also, Calgary did not make the boneheaded move of putting weird grooves both lengthwise and across the roadbed, like Edmonton has done to about a third of the Henday.  Seriosuly, WTF?  All of the west, southwest, and south have these stupid grooves and they make every car I drive on that road shake like a baby rattle.  I've driven old cars, new cars, cars with long wheelbases, short cars, trucks, minivans, everything but a @%&#ing bicycle, and it happens to all of them.  And why?  I don't know.  Maybe it's supposed to improve the drainage on the road?

Seriously, drive that road sometime and see how fun it is to be rattled by the road for 15 minutes straight.

When the Stoney Trail gets finished in Calgary (and Henday still isn't done in Edmonton, either, don't forget), it will still be way easier to get around Calgary than it is to get around Edmonton.

[Tom]

There is supposed to be more than just the outer ring road done by the end of all of the construction. They had started on making an inner ring road as well. Joining a bunch of existing freeways and large roads.

But I agree, more direct routes through the city would be a good thing. It's too bad there was no serious effort put into making sure there was a place to put such things.

50th could be turned into a nice direct shot straight through the city, but the people on the river have fought hard against that every single time it came up. Though I think a large east<->west road would make more sense. since 50th would just parallel the henday.

[Darren Dirt]

...and Henday still isn't done in Edmonton, either, don't forget ...

No argument here; looks like late 2016* is the expected time for the massive bridge to be completed! Which is pretty soon, considering how long-term some of the LRT expansion plans are looking ahead to...

* see http://www.transportation.alberta.ca/content/doctype353/production/01%20Project%20overview%20map.pdf

When the Stoney Trail gets finished in Calgary it will still be way easier to get around Calgary than it is to get around Edmonton.

Funny choice of words... "get around".

To get from "X" in Calgary to "Y" in Calgary, that's unquestionably true. Almost entirely because of Deerfoot, imo.

But maybe there's an inherent cultural difference when it comes to Ring Road E-Town vs Ring Road Cowtown; Edmonton seems to a have a lot more people who want to "circle around" the city rather than "get around" (i.e. get across it from one edge to another within the city); hence RRE is designed as very much outside of most of the city. Folks who need go through one of the "spokes" (e.g. St. Albert to downtown or further south) will be stuck with plenty of lights along the way, at least until LRT gets to that stretch -- that "spider" map I posted a few months back comes to mind. But the reality is with the RRE sometimes heading 5 minutes along the Whitemud or Yellowhead to get "outside" the city and then circling along its permiter via The Ring is actually faster than going "through". Which seems to work for a lot of people, if that's the way it was designed.

Strangely though, since the south and west stretches got completed and opened, there's been a huge amount of residential and retail development on the "rim" so it's not exactly fully on the outside anymore...



PS: yeah those grooves are teh suckz. WTF +9000!

[Thorin]

There is and will continue to be all kinds of construction outside the ring road.  It was planned for a long time ago (that's why there were sewer and water lines underground before the Henday even got to final planning).

You haven't tried driving the Henday during rush hour too much, have you?  One accident somewhere in the south and suddenly my 35 minute drive from St Albert to Beaumont becomes 60+, at which point it would've been faster to go through the city and hit all the lights and be able to take a side road to get around a slowdown.  It was way worse with all the light-controlled intersections, the bridges and interchanges have made it quicker, but still...  There's no quick detours if there's a slowdown.

And the Henday does nothing for the majority of commuters, who are heading from the suburbs into the inner city for work and back.  Nor even for people who are heading from the south to the north and back for work.  The only ones it seems to be helping is southeast or southcentral to west.  And the transport trucks that transition west-to-south or south-to-west.  Any trucks going west-east or east-west just go straight through town hitting the lights.

It has nothing to do with culture - lots of Edmontonians would love quick transport corridors through the city.  It just wasn't planned for 50 years ago when Edmonton was much smaller (when 149 St was the west border and next door was Jasper Place).  And now it would be political suicide to try and buy up everyone's houses to build roads through the city.  This is one thing they got completely wrong in SimCity.