Calgary Identifies Roads To Be Part of HOV Lane Network
May 10th, 2009
The City of Calgary has identified the roads that would be part of a 220km network of HOV lanes throughout the city. Last September, Ald. John Mar asked for a report on the feasibility of HOV lanes in Calgary and the report has been in the City’s hands since January. When I wrote about the HOV lane idea back in January I was worried that the city would assume the newly designated lanes would magically solve the traffic congestion problem but it appears that the City will at least consider adding new lanes instead of converting existing lanes to HOV lanes (at least on some roads).
While that is a step in the right direction, I still feel that if ANY existing lanes are converted over to HOV lanes it would have a negative impact on traffic congestion. In 10 years, traffic will only get worse as the City has no plans to add any major roads to the road network for at least the next 25 years.
Some of the roads identified as part of the HOV lane network will have bus-only lanes as a conventional HOV lane would not work. Center Street North, and Macleod Trail are examples of such roads. Like I mentioned in my HOV lane post, only free-flowing roads such as Crowchild Trail, the new Ring Road and possibly Glenmore Trail would be good candidates for HOV lanes. Some of the roads that the city has identified as part of the network include:
- Country Hills Blvd
- John Laurie Blvd
- Macleod Trail
- Glenmore Trail
- 52 Street East
If a city committee approves the HOV lane network, the proposal will be tabled at a city council meeting later this month.
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I am wholeheartedly AGAINST this nonsensical idea. HOV lanes are useless; if you’re going to expand the roadway, expand it, but don’t make everything into HOV lanes.
Wait wait wait…. If there is multiple occupants in my car I can go 220Km/hr in these lanes?
Yes Please!
this is such bs, we need more major roads with less traffic lights than this crap. There should be a serious alternative to Crowchild when going from the NW to DT and SW. Or at least get rid of the 3 traffic lights at crowchild 24th ave/kensington/mchmahon stadium so traffic doesn’t get conjested in the morning.
I love how they run around wasting time talking about making these fancy lanes and all that crap when they could just over engineer our transit network in key areas and have no problems. People now are so caught up in the constant load of bullshit around them every day that they can’t even see that there’s a simple solution.
Although I’m sure they have a couple excuses for why they don’t do that but still I think the idea has a lot of merit.
I’m all for adding HOV or HOT lanes to our road network as long as they aren’t converting existing lanes. For example, paving 2 new lanes on Deerfoot that are designated as HOV/HOT lanes would help and allow those that want to cut their travel times to utilize the new lanes while everyone else is unaffected.
That’s awesome, I’m all for clearing up the roads a bit more!