Quote:
Originally Posted by dmuzika
A tunnel could not borred to connect 16 Avenue to Glenmore Trail inside city limits. To do that it would have to be N-S orrientated and there are already some major routes that serve that purpose; Deerfoot Trail, Crowchild Trail, Sarcee Trail, and the future Stoney Trail on both the east and west perimeter of the city. Maybe an alternative would be to construct a NE/SW orientated connector somewhere between Calgary and Strathmore that could connect the Trans Canada with Glenmore Trail.
I've thought about an E-W tunnel between Crowchild and Deerfoot Trails under 16 Ave, but other than cost I don't know how practical it would be for inner city usage.
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Get the CPR to move their mainline into a tunnel with a West portal at Nose Hill Dr/Bearspaw Dam Rd NW and an east portal at 64 Ave/Hunterhorn Rd NE. This tunnel would connect the mainline at Bearspaw with the Calgary-Edmonton tracks beside Deerfoot Tr. which already connect to the CPR yards east and south of Downtown.
Its easier to build a tunnel big enough for one railway track that only has to get from the East Portal to the West Portal, than it is to build two tunnels with two or 3 lanes each for vehicles that will also need extra subsurface tunnels to connect with surface streets that they pass under (ie: Crowchild, Shaganappi, John Laurie, 14th St, Centre St)
With the CPR mainline out of downtown, you now have a swath of land 2 blocks wide from Crowchild Tr to Inglewood for commercial and residential development, and you can reuse some of the ROW for a high capacity roadway that can connect from the TCH / Sarcee Trail area of Bowness along the river past Shaganappi, through downtown to Blackfoot Tr, Deerfoot Tr. and 17th Ave.
Perhaps CPR can crunch the numbers and may discover that leasing all their land downtown for redevelopment and a high capacity roadway can more than cover the costs of building a new rail tunnel between Silver Springs and Huntington Hills.