Quote:
Originally Posted by Acey
AB Trans has been conservative in their estimates on the ring roads thus far. They underestimated volume on SW Henday by about half. NW Stoney estimates were off, resulting in the widening to the current six lanes a few years sooner than they anticipated. NE Stoney estimates were off, and will need widening sooner than they had hoped. The eastbound to northbound movement at Glenmore Trail was significantly underestimated. The Campbell Road situation on Henday. The Crowchild situation in the NW. There's so many tangible instances of them using conservative estimates on the ring roads... it is laughable to even consider the possibility that a plan might not have existed and they intended to throw away those hundreds of millions for literally no reason.
This is the Calgary thread so I don't expect you to know the intricacies of what has gone on with Henday since 2000, but it's clearly had a big impact on what has gone on here. To develop this system on what I erroneously called a "non-zero chance" would be such an outlier based on the decisions made thus far... I honestly don't understand how you could even take that position even knowing nothing about Henday.
For what it's worth, the plans for that ROW that you unsurprisingly call a waste are neatly detailed on the AB Trans website, as is pretty much everything else.
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I travel the SW Henday regularly, I agree it is underbuilt and needs another lane. But that is a completely different scale - there is a big difference between a 4 lane freeway needing a few more lanes, and planning for a 4x4 collector/distributor for what will likely be the least traveled section of ring road. How much traffic does Deerfoot handle with 6 lanes? Close to 200,000 vehicles a day? It cannot possibly be reasonable to plan for a future where the only solution is a road with more than twice that capacity, when we can decide where future growth goes.
I am also aware that Highway 2 into Edmonton was built with a future C/D system planned (that's why I used it as an example...) - I have much less of a problem with this because the Province actually has plans, unlike this nebulous concept of outer ring roads which appears to have never had much thought put into it. The Province has released all the plans for countless other road projects they have, even ones they don't plan on building for decades. Why is there next to no mention of an ORR in any of these? You're right, it is laughable that the province has wasted money on future proofing for a plan that never appears to have existed.
Anyway, there's not much point labouring this, we both know each others positions. My question is do we think the express lanes will ever be used? Since they will be graded and the overpasses mostly built, the marginal cost of adding them later won't be huge, but I can't see how their use would ever be justified unless we put another Calgary sized city at either end.