New Interchange for Calgary

[Xtrema]

Originally posted by g-m
It still has 2 sets of lights

The whole merging to the right may be a bit alien to people if there isn't lights.

[phreezee]

Originally posted by dirtsniffer
Calgary cloverleafs generally suck and are not true cloverleafs to begin with as they usually encorporate two sets of lights.

This

[suntan]

There's only one true cloverleaf in Calgary.

Everything else is a diamond.

[triplep]

I wonder how much extra it would have cost to put a small bridge at the set of light? It would result in a basket weave type overpass, one lane of traffic goes over the top and the other goes over the bottom?

[SOAB]

a true cloverleaf only works with slower speed applications like the 16th & barlow one.

when you place an on-ramp and off-ramp too close together like 17th ave and Memorial for example, you get people trying to speed up and people trying to slow down in the same lane, which causes a giant clusterfuck of stupid.

in order to make a cloverleaf work at highway speeds, you would need a huge piece of land, lots of distance between on and off ramps which makes it unfeasible for this spot.

what they have planned looks like it will work. people in the area will have a little adjustment period and they'll learn.

since I've moved down south and use the Mckenzie Towne circle road more often now, I have noticed that people know how to use it now and there are no huge backups on there any more. traffic flows really nicely imo.

[Mibz]

Originally posted by dirtsniffer
Calgary cloverleafs generally suck and are not true cloverleafs to begin with as they usually encorporate two sets of lights. Also, they typically force on and off ramps to share lanes which creates slowdowns on the highest priority route.

Going 162 - sun valley blvd is probably one of the least travelled paths on this interchange.

Straight through macleod - no lights and ramps are far apart - no slowdowns - huge improvement
EB 162 to NB macleod - still 1 light, but only 2 direction flow instead of 4 - improvement
SB macleod to EB SVB - still 1 light, but only 2 direction flow instead of 4 - improvement
NB macleod to WB 162 - still 1 light, but only 2 direction flow instead of 4 - improvement

162 - SVB - 2 lights instead of 1, but only 2 direction flow instead of 4 so probably a wash if not an improvement.

Looks like a win to me.

Yeah, the biggest backups I see at this intersection are NB and SB MacLeod traffic around rush hour. This will totally alleviate that. It also means that there are no left turns on MacLeod, in either direction, from Anderson to 194th, which is nice, I guess.

Traffic going into Shawnessy is gonna stay fucked though, if for no other reason than the next set of lights where everybody lines up to turn left. And those going straight get screwed by trains constantly.

It would take a lot of effort to fix that area. I dunno. We'll see how it goes. I promise Beyond will hear all about it once it's built because I drive it every day.

[a social dsease]

Some of the comments in the article are classic Calgarian. CHANGE IS BAD! Seriously, if you have zero experience in traffic planning / engineering, then stfu. Let the engineers do the job they've been training for years to do. And if you don't like it, move back to Saskatchewan. /end rant

I will say that I drove through one of these in Salt Lake, and it was great. Very intuitive to use; I didn't even realize it was a diverging diamond until I was halfway through it... Great to see the city taking the initiative to come up with some creative solutions instead of just going with the same old stuff that doesn't work. More DDs and traffic circles! And bike lanes

[bspot]

You guys know cloverleafs suck, right? There is a reason some of our old cloverleafs got ripped out.

The only way to do them without sucking is like Crowchild and Stoney, where they have to build 2 extra overpasses in order to stagger the entering and exiting traffic far enough apart. It's expensive, and takes a massive amount of land, something they don't have for this.

This is actually a really efficient design, as there is no left hand turn movements. It's not like they are building an interchange between two massive highways here...

[GT.....O?]

Did anyone else get super annoyed watching the third video where the guy complains about how unfriendly the overpass is to pedestrians?

What a whiny little fuck... "There's weeds on one side, and fast moving cars on the other"........... exactly how is that different from any other over-pass???

One of the few times i wanted to reach through my computer and slap the shit out of the person who made that video...

[Mibz]

I haven't watched the videos but I'm not really sure what the pedestrian complaint would be. 99% of pedestrians are EB/WB on the South side of the intersection, so on one side they have fast moving traffic and the other they have (hopefully) non-moving traffic. As soon as they get to either side they have fast moving traffic on one side and, shocker incoming, weeds on the other.

[M.alex]

Originally posted by Mibz
Yeah, the biggest backups I see at this intersection are NB and SB MacLeod traffic around rush hour. This will totally alleviate that. It also means that there are no left turns on MacLeod, in either direction, from Anderson to 194th, which is nice, I guess.

Traffic going into Shawnessy is gonna stay fucked though, if for no other reason than the next set of lights where everybody lines up to turn left. And those going straight get screwed by trains constantly.

It would take a lot of effort to fix that area. I dunno. We'll see how it goes. I promise Beyond will hear all about it once it's built because I drive it every day.

Don't worry; at one of their planning session the engineers said their plan to alleviate that problem was going to be to build an overpass. LOL, WTF