Best city to drive in? Calgary apparently?

[ercchry]

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Disagree, the commute from the SW/SE to NW will be cut in half. 45mins to 20mins. I can't wait.

I’m going to be easily under 10min to west hills! Can’t wait... but the best will be the completed, and less volume filled 14th st... it’s such a bottle neck right now. Bet it will be 20min to DT once that’s done... well... depends what crowchild construction looks like by then I guess

[Swank]

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Disagree, the commute from the SW/SE to NW will be cut in half. 45mins to 20mins. I can't wait.

I suppose it all depends on how close your origin and destination are to the RR, and hopefully RR takes a lot of congestion off existing east/west major roads. I need to be more optimistic like you

[mr2mike]

Too many lights. I'd say any freeway in the US is much better than Calgary in off hours.
Or from all those Midnight Racing videos I see, Japan after hours is epic.

[blueToy]

Driving is subjective. Some people get stressed getting dressed in the morning, so its not surprising that their lives is a constant treadmill of anxiety. The thing about Calgary driving is the few hours a day that the roads get busy it can be disheartening to be around others that are stressed too. Drive outside of the rush hour and its a easy city to get around.

[mr2mike]

Meh too few of lanes, corners aren't banked for optimum cornering.

[rage2]

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Now we’re comparing 12-24m in London and ??????m in India to calgary?!?

You know what really high density areas have in common that Calgary doesn’t? ...no need to move more than walking distance for all amenities

This is about best driving city. Not density and amenities. With that said, Bangalore is fucked, traffic of high density and amenities like sprawl. Nothing is walking distance, and if it was you’d be chased by rabid dogs lol.

For those that care, the source data. https://www.mister-auto.co.uk/driving-cities-index-usd/

[ercchry]

But that’s not what the criteria was

[tonytiger55]

London has a air quality score of 91.92... I think that is a bit wrong...

[shakalaka]

I drove around in Houston and Austin area a couple of weeks ago when I went for F1 and I can tell you I would much rather drive in Calgary and Edmonton over that any day regardless of how many idiotic drivers we have here. Fuck the congestions in the middle of the day on a 5 lane highway is just damn brutal. It takes them easily hour and half to cover 30 miles. I can see why Calgary would be up there on the list like that. Austin is approximately similar size as Calgary population wise and Austin was a PAIN to get around in and I am not just talking about the part where it took me almost 3 hours to cover 30 miles after leaving the race track.

[FraserB]

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I drove around in Houston and Austin area a couple of weeks ago when I went for F1 and I can tell you I would much rather drive in Calgary and Edmonton over that any day regardless of how many idiotic drivers we have here. Fuck the congestions in the middle of the day on a 5 lane highway is just damn brutal. It takes them easily hour and half to cover 30 miles. I can see why Calgary would be up there on the list like that. Austin is approximately similar size as Calgary population wise and Austin was a PAIN to get around in and I am not just talking about the part where it took me almost 3 hours to cover 30 miles after leaving the race track.

Houston traffic is idiotic. Nothing like sitting in absolute gridlock at noon and wishing you were stuck on Deerfoot instead. The worst was a 40 minute Uber to go 11 miles and not hit an interstate once.

[ExtraSlow]

Houston has rough traffic 24/7/365, even on the toll roads.

[OTown]

People that complain about Calgary traffic have clearly never driven in any other large city.

Want shit traffic? Go to Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, hell even Ottawa (smaller city than Calgary) has traffic nightmares. Go to the states with similar or bigger cities and you will see anger, gridlock and frustration.

I mean sure, Calgary roads are nowhere near perfect. And I doubt we are best in the world. But theres at least some planning to our roads. Stoney has sure helped out quite a bit. Just need deerfoot to be properly designed instead of the civil engineering joke it currently is.

Drivers on the other hand seem to be shitty in every city and every province.

[Misterman]

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People that complain about Calgary traffic have clearly never driven in any other large city.

Want shit traffic? Go to Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, hell even Ottawa (smaller city than Calgary) has traffic nightmares. Go to the states with similar or bigger cities and you will see anger, gridlock and frustration.

I mean sure, Calgary roads are nowhere near perfect. And I doubt we are best in the world. But theres at least some planning to our roads. Stoney has sure helped out quite a bit. Just need deerfoot to be properly designed instead of the civil engineering joke it currently is.

Drivers on the other hand seem to be shitty in every city and every province.

This^ I hear the same thing in Edmonton, about how shitty it is and how bad the drivers are. Right away I know I'm dealing with someone sheltered that hasn't ventured far from home.

[ercchry]

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This^ I hear the same thing in Edmonton, about how shitty it is and how bad the drivers are. Right away I know I'm dealing with someone sheltered that hasn't ventured far from home.

Name one piece of infrastructure that’s better here than any major city... or one piece of legislation that has actually improved the driving experience in this city... ya can’t, at least LA allows lane splitting for motorcycles which greatly improves the driving experience in that city, they can also bang out infrastructure improvements quickly with around the clock shifts, unlike the years long projects here that keep the majority of this city in a perpetual construction zone... fact is this city is only “good” due to lack of volume despite the city trying to ruin the commuting experience at every turn.

[pheoxs]

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Name one piece of infrastructure that’s better here than any major city... or one piece of legislation that has actually improved the driving experience in this city... ya can’t, at least LA allows lane splitting for motorcycles which greatly improves the driving experience in that city, they can also bang out infrastructure improvements quickly with around the clock shifts, unlike the years long projects here that keep the majority of this city in a perpetual construction zone... fact is this city is only “good” due to lack of volume despite the city trying to ruin the commuting experience at every turn.

Downtown being nearly all one ways with proper light timing makes a huge difference. Aside from the odd cluster fuck when lanes are shutdown for construction, our downtown core flows very quickly. It's rare to ever get stuck in gridlock and barely be able to move.

If you ever drive in another major city as soon as you get to the downtown core its a nightmare of inching forward one car length at a time. I can hit the memorial flyover at 8am and be on the other side of downtown in 5 minutes on a typical day. That doesn't happen anywhere else.

[bjstare]

Yeah I'm in mtl for work for a couple days this week. The traffic is garbage... but the drivers are way better. Everyone pays attention, aggressive, etc. This volume of traffic would be absolute chaos with all the shit drivers we have in Calgary.

[Misterman]

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Name one piece of infrastructure that’s better here than any major city... or one piece of legislation that has actually improved the driving experience in this city... ya can’t, at least LA allows lane splitting for motorcycles which greatly improves the driving experience in that city, they can also bang out infrastructure improvements quickly with around the clock shifts, unlike the years long projects here that keep the majority of this city in a perpetual construction zone... fact is this city is only “good” due to lack of volume despite the city trying to ruin the commuting experience at every turn.

There is a number of things that make driving in Calgary or Edmonton better than other cities. Less congestion being a major one. The ring roads allowing you to freely flow anywhere in the city are pretty convenient. Edmonton did a major revamp on it's deadliest intersection(23rd Ave and Gateway) that reduced accidents by like 8% a year in the city. Legislating traffic lights to not allow left turns across traffic. etc.

[ercchry]

DT is quicker to walk than drive at 9am every weekday, one way street are not exclusive to calgary. Rings roads aren’t either. The fact that ours isn’t even done yet when it was originally planned 25yrs ago is laughable

Again, every single argument for here comes down to volume. Fact is we’d be fucked if we had more people, hell. We’d be fucked if DT was even close to a decent occupancy rate. There is nothing special about the infrastructure or legislation in this city and that is clearly quoted as being the criteria for this “award” in the first post. If anything legislation is fighting the car with every single change city hall makes... hey! How’s 12ave treating everyone??

Infrastructure moves at a snails pace and is still not caught up to the boom from the early 2000s.

Oh, and speaking of construction... in Ontario, they have machine to rapidly move around j-barriers and run hwy improvement projects without even reducing speed limits to travellers!

[snowcat]

I disagree, lol.

[firebane]

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DT is quicker to walk than drive at 9am every weekday, one way street are not exclusive to calgary. Rings roads aren’t either. The fact that ours isn’t even done yet when it was originally planned 25yrs ago is laughable

Again, every single argument for here comes down to volume. Fact is we’d be fucked if we had more people, hell. We’d be fucked if DT was even close to a decent occupancy rate. There is nothing special about the infrastructure or legislation in this city and that is clearly quoted as being the criteria for this “award” in the first post. If anything legislation is fighting the car with every single change city hall makes... hey! How’s 12ave treating everyone??

Infrastructure moves at a snails pace and is still not caught up to the boom from the early 2000s.

Oh, and speaking of construction... in Ontario, they have machine to rapidly move around j-barriers and run hwy improvement projects without even reducing speed limits to travellers!

Funny thing is... walking through Downtown can actually take a long time simply because of all the stupid lights you wait for. As an example try walking down Stephen Ave at lunch time and you waste a lot of time waiting or lights and crosswalks. Walking is obviously faster than driving, but it still takes a bit of time unless you plan cross when you shouldn't.