McKnight widening project

[speedog]

So work has begun on adding a third lane in each direction on McKnight Boulevard between 12th and 19th Streets NE plus some new pathways - a welcome infrastructure addition but there will still be the bottleneck between Deefroot and 4th Street NW which will remain for years to come. Hopefully, they rip up and redo everything on McKnight in the project area so they can properly address the annual frost heave problems.

Link to CoC project page.

[suburbia]

Originally Posted by speedog

So work has begun on adding a third lane in each direction on McKnight Boulevard between 12th and 19th Streets NE plus some new pathways - a welcome infrastructure addition but there will still be the bottleneck between Deefroot and 4th Street NW which will remain for years to come. Hopefully, they rip up and redo everything on McKnight in the project area so they can properly address the annual frost heave problems.

Link to CoC project page.

Driving by there a couple times and looking at the City's information, it looks like this is a very basic project that is picking some low hanging (cheap) grapes, but is not dealing with anything substantive. There are no new interchanges, as an example. This may actually not be a bad thing, as over-doing things at this stage could limit big-picture responses for this "difficult" part of the road network. That piece west of deerfoot will still take a long time, given the property hodge-podge there. It was within this context also that I aksed a recent question about the DI stepping back from their hotel reno project there. That location is extremely prime, but will likely not see proper fruition till that piece of McKnight is dealt with, so some interesting dominoes for the future I think.

[ByeByeBaby]

Originally Posted by speedog

So work has begun on adding a third lane in each direction on McKnight Boulevard between 12th and 19th Streets NE plus some new pathways - a welcome infrastructure addition but there will still be the bottleneck between Deefroot and 4th Street NW which will remain for years to come. Hopefully, they rip up and redo everything on McKnight in the project area so they can properly address the annual frost heave problems.

Link to CoC project page.

This sounds trivial, but actually one of the big improvements I'm excited for with this project is the addition of the pathway. I remember going through there some years ago, and the only option was a well-worn goat path on the top of the berm by the airport; you're riding in this narrow path, with a chain link fence on one side and a fast downhill into 80 km/h traffic on the other. The nearest east-west pathway is 2 km south of there, and the intervening roads aren't exactly bike-friendly. (Although I have ridden on McKnight before, loads of fun.)