Should Alberta Go Into Debt to Fund the Calgary SW Ring Road?

The first step to solving any problem is to identify exactly what the problem is. The Alberta government has failed to identify the problem before proposing the SW ring road as a solution. It sounds nice: "ring road" but there really is no reason for the road to be a ring. A bypass would be fine, especially as that has already been built on the north side of town. The Alberta government describes the problem quite simply: the Calgary ring road is not complete. The primary reason to study routes for the SW portion of the ring road is that the ring is not a complete circle. No other need has been identified. Albertans should be asking, "is drawing an 8 lane circle around Calgary worth going into debt over?" Yes, that's right, Alberta, there is no money to build this road.

Focus did the study of possible ring road routes and they provide a list of benefits of the SW ring road (SWRR). They start off with some really brilliant ones along the lines of:
1. With a ring road, we could drive goods around in circles
2. There would be no traffic lights
3. It was in the plan (how is this a benefit?)

Then they get into some benefits that get to the heart of the matter:
1. Removes many trucks and traffic from city streets
2. Ability to travel from one quadrant of the city to another without using roads which are closer to the city centre
According to the Focus only 7% of the traffic that might one day use the SWRR is trucks. Note that there is nothing in the benefits about traffic being able to avoid Calgary altogether. The focus is on moving traffic inside the city. The point that the study completely misses is that there are other more effective ways to move traffic inside the city.

Let's talk about where the traffic for the SWRR will come from. Eleven percent of it will come from SE Calgary. Only 25% of the traffic will come from outside of the city. The remainder, a whopping 64% will come from SW Calgary, south of Glenmore Reservoir.

Where are all of these vehicles trying to go? A tiny 8% are trying to go somewhere outside of the city. For those of you who thought a ring road was about bypassing a city, think again. Twenty-one percent of the traffic is actually trying to go downtown. The ring road by its very nature avoids downtown so it's not clear why anyone would use the ring road to go downtown. They will get stuck in traffic part of the way there. Thirty-one percent are heading for MRU and Westhills, while 24% are trying to go all the way to NW Calgary, including UofC and Foothills Medical Centre.

Now we can identify the problem: People south of Glenmore Reservoir are trying to get to downtown, MRU, Westhills, and NW Calgary and it takes them a long time to get to these places because they are trying to drive on congested roads. There 3 ways to limit congestion on roads:
1. Build more roads
2. Stop adding neighbourhoods in the wrong places
3. Use fewer vehicles to move the people

Building more roads is like giving candy to children. The want is never satisfied. People like the roads so much that they want to use them more and then the new roads are full and the people ask for more roads. It is a bottomless pit. Beware of spending your tax dollars on roads.

Why don't we destroy a few more farms/acreages or knock down Spruce Meadows to build a new neighbourhood with no schools or grocery stores? How about because the roads are full? Neither Calgary nor Alberta can afford the infrastructure. If we keep going like this, roads like Macleod Trail and Bow Trail will need to be double-decker freeways just to get people to work. There is actually a surprising amount of space within existing infrastructure to build new homes. That space should be used before new neighbourhoods are added.

Using fewer vehicles to move people is a bit of a puzzle. Why don't people just take city transit? Then we wouldn't need so many roads. Let's think back to where the citizens of SW Calgary are trying to go. Is there a single direct bus from SW Calgary to downtown? No. Is there a direct bus from SW Calgary to MRU and Westhills? No. How many different transit vehicles would one have to use to get from SW Calgary to Foothills Medical Centre? Three.

How about cycling? Calgary has some beautiful pathways around Glenmore Reservoir and along the Elbow River. The speed limit is a bit too low to be ideal for commuting and the pathways don't link up all that well with the places people want to go.

The essence of the problem is that we have not given people any real alternative but to sit in traffic jams in SW Calgary wishing they had a giant freeway with no traffic lights. The giant freeway won't solve the problem for most of the people. They will just sit in different traffic jams a bit closer to their destination. Why don't we ask the province to fund some BRTs for SW Calgary before we start knocking down neighbourhoods? Then people would have choices. It would cost a lot less to buy and operate some bus routes than it would to build an 8 lane freeway through a beautiful recreation area. Why don't we try buses and see if it helps before we start pouring a concrete monster that we may regret? A little bit of investment in the right places could elevate our bike paths to a useful transportation network.

Reframe the question with your MLA. What if we gave you the choice of having a SWRR or BRTs for the SW,SE, and airport? That really could be the choice we are facing. Although I haven't been able to find a cost for the SWRR, the offer to Tsuu T'ina just to acquire land for the road was ~$240 MM. I imagine buying and knocking down hundreds of Calgary homes would be quite expensive, as would building an 8 lane freeway. We could probably have BRTs for everyone every 5 minutes for that price.

Open houses tonight and tomorrow night. Attend and make sure your voice is heard. Details at http://www.transportation.alberta.ca/4043.htm