Calgary's Adolescent Downtown Plays Show and Tell with the Big Cities

[lubicon]

Originally Posted by johnnyc

The liability is probably due to a tripping hazard or something, does anyone have a picture of the trees before they put the base on it?

I didn't realize they had bases now, how long ago did they do that? Maybe they put them on to 'discourage' or at least make an attempt to discourage people from climbing them, and the subsequent liability when these same people fell off??

[Calgarian]

Originally Posted by freeweed

The "trees" also act as a windbreak, or so is my understanding.

Remove them, and Stephen Ave turns into a wind tunnel.

Unless this is all just an urban myth.

There was a show on them on Access (does that channel still exist?) a few years ago and they did lots of water current tests and wind tunnel tests and it showed how effective those trees really are. I think it was called the snow eater or something (I believe that is what Chinook means in Blackfoot or whatever nation they took it from).

[Calgarian]

Originally Posted by lubicon

I didn't realize they had bases now, how long ago did they do that? Maybe they put them on to 'discourage' or at least make an attempt to discourage people from climbing them, and the subsequent liability when these same people fell off??

Not sure, I can't remember what they looked like before.

[SubwayRev]

Originally Posted by jeremy_haak

I have mixed feelings on this. The rail infrastructure could prove to be invaluable in the future when Calgary is even more expansive and commuter rail becomes a serious consideration. I know in the case of Ottawa, several problems could be addressed if rail still went downtown and commuter rail could easily be implemented. On the other hand, that would come at the cost of having unsightly rail lines along the canal. If they can be tolerated, I say leave them be.

It seems the occassion was quite successful for Calgary. I look forward to visiting myself in November.

That's a great point...if the rail is removed, it would be very difficult to implement any kind of commuter rail in the future, as you wouldn't really be able to get that close to the core without tunneling.

A much less expensive alternative would be a "beautification" project around the rail. As to what that would entail...I've got no idea.

[twsnagel]

Originally Posted by SubwayRev

That's a great point...if the rail is removed, it would be very difficult to implement any kind of commuter rail in the future, as you wouldn't really be able to get that close to the core without tunneling.

A much less expensive alternative would be a "beautification" project around the rail. As to what that would entail...I've got no idea.

A railway can be made quite beautiful. I can't find my photos of it right now, but the waterfront in Montreal retains the train tracks between downtown and the river, but they run through a beautiful park now.

Wish I could find those photos.

[sim]

Has anyone here heard of the Stuttgart 21 project? Well it is basically a project that has at least a couple similarities to what removing the tracks in Calgary would entail.

If you are interested:

http://www.stuttgart21.de/site/stutt...omaterial.html

Has some information but it is all in German. I can't find too much on it in English that gives any real detail.

Essentially, the project is to take the existing train station which is a enter-exist station make it a "drive-through" station (not sure if we have this kind of terminology and put all the tracks underground. Not to mention the fact that it would involve realigning the about 14 underground subway lines that currently run underneath the station. I think latest cost estimates are at something like 8 billion euro, but I was told that it might be more like 20...

The perks- turning the existing space for tracks into more park and developments, and cutting travel times by 30 min to an hour.

[lineman]

I had always remembered those bases being there, just that they were at first white. I don't know why they were painted green.

[ssiguy]

As Calgary will be getting more lines into downtown I hope the city has the vision to bite the bullet on the subway and make it two levels like in parts of the Bloor Line in Toronto.
It would make transfers easy and get rid of the LRT cars downtown once and for all. Once they finally get the North and SW lines up and going there will be 6 lines going downtown. The current 4 could do a regular subway but when the 2 others finally get downtown it will be just as big a mess as it is now.

[ssiguy]

Should have mentioned...............I went to the Calgary Communies profiles for the census of 2008. It has stated that the population of both the Beltline and Downtown haven't been growing at all. I know some of it is due to changing demographis but all the same you would think with all the condos going up the population would be rising as well. What gives?

[Wooster]

The population of Beltline between 2006 and 2007 grew by about 1100 due to projects like Sasso, Chocolate, Vantage Pointe, Stella and others finishing in that timeframe. 2007-2008 only grew marginally, but that largely had to do with the timing of completion of a lot of condo projects in this cycle (a lot was in progress but not completed during that year).

There were a number of projects finished in 2008 and early 2009 (Colours, Nova, Vetro, Castello, Xenex etc) that propably will push that 1 year growth number up again towards 700-1000 new residents.

I'd expect 2009-2010 also to see quite a bit of growth with projects like Nuera, Union Square, Keynote finishing up.