Terwillegar Drive Expansion

[BASE]

Just seems very very incremental in benefit. Good to see intersection upgrades at AHD and Whitemud but seems like it was so teed up for freeway between the two. The pedestrian/cyclist bridge 142 street over the Whitemud will be interesting.

 

[yeggator]

I gotta say, I'm super excited for the bike infrastructure upgrades along Terwillegar Drive. I can already imagine being able to swiftly commute from my house to the uni by bike.

 

[IanO]

Just seems very very incremental in benefit. Good to see intersection upgrades at AHD and Whitemud but seems like it was so teed up for freeway between the two. The pedestrian/cyclist bridge 142 street over the Whitemud will be interesting.

And has been teed up for 40yrs... that's the real shame of all of this. Not connecting a rather short section between our busiest intra-city freeway with our ring road with a proper freeway extension is so incredibly shortsighted.

 

[CaptainBL]

So excited for my “fiscal conservative” relatives and friends who whine about bike lanes to still be stuck in traffic after we spend 400mil on this to exit keswick and windemere.

What people often tend to ignore in the car vs. bike vs. transit is that it completely ignores the other growing uses of roads...transportation of goods and services

You like your Amazon packages delivered to your house? A delivery van is going to drive that to you.

You like your Skip the Dishes? Someone is going to deliver that to you.

If you are any kind of business in Windermere like Safeway, PF Changs, Walmart, Canadian Tire, etc and you rely on products to stock your shelves or restaurants, none of that is coming on a bike or a bus in a bus lane.

The SW is the most explosive growing side of the city and to suggest that Terwilliger Drive should or shouldnt be expanded because of passenger vehicle use vs bike vs transit use completely ignores a massive other reason that roads need to be built...the transportation of goods and services, especially in the fastest growing area of the city.

 

[Airboy]

I think some of the work Graham is doing is the section coming off the Whitemud. The new Rapid bus lane. Trees are already down.

 

[thommyjo]

What people often tend to ignore in the car vs. bike vs. transit is that it completely ignores the other growing uses of roads...transportation of goods and services

You like your Amazon packages delivered to your house? A delivery van is going to drive that to you.

You like your Skip the Dishes? Someone is going to deliver that to you.

If you are any kind of business in Windermere like Safeway, PF Changs, Walmart, Canadian Tire, etc and you rely on products to stock your shelves or restaurants, none of that is coming on a bike or a bus in a bus lane.

The SW is the most explosive growing side of the city and to suggest that Terwilliger Drive should or shouldnt be expanded because of passenger vehicle use vs bike vs transit use completely ignores a massive other reason that roads need to be built...the transportation of goods and services, especially in the fastest growing area of the city.

I don’t disagree. Do you know what the breakdown of traffic is though for transportation of goods vs people movement?

The solution to more efficiently moving goods around is less car dependent infrastructure. The SW is the definition of car dependency, meaning almost all trip types become cars…impacting the ability for stuff that has to be moved by vehicles to move freely. When we build better for transit, walking, and biking, it makes the roads more free what uses that require cars. Most traffic out there though is 1 person making a trip under 10kms and not carrying anything a backpack/bag couldn’t hold. Those all being done in cars is what backs up delivery vehicles and business operations.

 

[trevorhayden]

if you want to reduce commercial traffic gridlock, get personal users out of their cars and onto mass public transit, bikes, and their own 2 feet. I can't believe I am saying this but I actually agreed with David Staples this week that we need to mobilize our society for healthy living. This is one of those mobilization steps!

 

[jason403]

Great news. We need to add a lot more traffic capacity in edmonton as we grow towards 2 million people. Hopefully a portion of the budget that has been devoted to bike lanes that will be sparsely used can be reallocated to more transportation infrastructure that is actually used.

 

[YEG imagineer]

My big problem with the Whitemud/Terwillegar portion is they are not addressing the left exits from east and west Whitemud to Terwilligar. Especially from 122nd Street to get onto Terwillegar drive during heavy traffic times is a near death experience as you are accelerating down a hill to a bridge and have to go over 3 lanes going up a hill. Much of the problem with Whitemud to Terwilligar access is the decision to build a left exit and that is not being fixed at all. Another shortcoming. Oh and when Whitemud has the extra lane on it, means an extra lane to cross to get to Terwillegar. Accidents are frequent westbound on the Rainbow valley bridge and I expect it will get much worse in the future.

 

[ChazYEG]

Great news. We need to add a lot more traffic capacity in edmonton as we grow towards 2 million people. Hopefully a portion of the budget that has been devoted to bike lanes that will be sparsely used can be reallocated to more transportation infrastructure that is actually used.

Yeah, of course... Let's double down on more lanes, roads, etc. And ignore all of the studies on induced demand, etc.
Transit and active transportation ARE the infrastructure that is actually needed.

 

[thommyjo]

Great news. We need to add a lot more traffic capacity in edmonton as we grow towards 2 million people. Hopefully a portion of the budget that has been devoted to bike lanes that will be sparsely used can be reallocated to more transportation infrastructure that is actually used.

Come on my guy. We spend hundreds of millions on residential roads that serve a few dozen homes. Roads that are 4x the width of bike lanes. We know that tens of thousands of people use bike lanes in our city each year. The 100mil for bike lanes could barely do 25% of the terwillegar project haha.

 

[The_Cat]

I hope there is more Bus Rapid Transit to follow.

 

[roe_]

There is no limit to the amount of roads people will demand and it only makes the problem worse. What the SW needs is options for moving around the city, other than driving. The city could pour billions into a fully grade separated free-flowing Terwillegar and it would still become fully congested eventually with people driving further and further south. The city should never have allowed the type of development that has been approved to this point, but the solution now is to try to overlay other transport options and hope it works -- attempting to catch up to the ever expanding demand for road infrastructure is a mug's game.

 

[BrettB]

I hope there is more Bus Rapid Transit to follow.

ETS is planning Route 31 Rapid Express from Leger to South Campus and the University to launch in the fall, per their 2023 service plan.

 

[TAS]

Great news. We need to add a lot more traffic capacity in edmonton as we grow towards 2 million people. Hopefully a portion of the budget that has been devoted to bike lanes that will be sparsely used can be reallocated to more transportation infrastructure that is actually used.

With the inevitable population growth it is definitely going to put more demand on our roads as you note and the thing is a lot of our mainstreets and other key roads where there are no bike lanes can't be widened any more for vehicles either. Adding more vehicle lanes will just not be an option in many areas of the city.
I think that is one of the strongest arguments for ensuring there are other viable transportation options to keep people moving.