What the heck is going on? (Calgary's job market.)

[Spoons]

@featherlou

And the closure at the north end of Centre Street - I can barely think about it, it is so completely illogical. If I came to Calgary and experienced it, I would think the City was playing a massive joke on us. “You see where you and 10,000 other people need to go? Well, you have to go four kilometres out of your way to get back to exactly where you started.” This is all relatively new development. It could have been planned and engineered as a model way to build, instead of looking like a bunch of afterthoughts thrown together.

The only reason I can see for Centre Street’s northern closure is to keep traffic from passing through the neighbourhood between Beddington Boulevard and the closure itself. Usually, that’s something that local property owners ask for. I cannot say for sure if that happened in this case, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Still, one wonders how the property owners on Beddington Boulevard feel about traffic that would have taken Centre Street going through their neighbourhood instead.

You have a good point though–this could have been better planned, and acted as a model for how to do it right. It does look like a quick-n-dirty slapdash solution, and improvements will have to be made at some point, if only to accommodate the increasing amount of traffic that is currently/will be coming from the new developments north of Country Hills.

As for the buses, if you’re not going to and from downtown, you’re pretty much hooped. There is supposed to be a north-south C-train line going in that will parallel Deerfoot, but who knows when that will be built? Sometime about 20 years after it was needed, is my guess.

I’m not holding my breath. There’s an old sign north of the Centre Street closure at the corner of Harvest Hills and Country Hills Road that says “Future Site of LRT Parking,” but no indication as to when that “future” might be. At any rate, it doesn’t seem to be any time soon, but it would seem to me that the longer you wait to build such a thing, the more expensive it will be. Why not get started now, while it’s still possible to move heavy equipment into and out of the neighbourhood without causing undue fuss?

I’ve heard from friends who live over near Whitehorn that the eventual plan is to extend the Whitehorn LRT westward, and get it to the airport. But at the rate construction is happening, that won’t be for some time yet. Still, if Calgary is expecting more people to move in to take advantage of this boom, they may want to consider speeding up the schedule; otherwise, north-end roads from 36th NE to Stoney Trail will be choked.

[Cat_Whisperer]

I’m fairly sure the reason for the closure is the block of residential houses that would be affected, but for 20 or fewer houses to dictate that literally tens of thousands of other people should be so inconvenienced is practically inconceivable. As a famous Vulcan once said, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. You know, if I were the City, as each house on that street turns over, I would have the new owners signing an agreement that they understand their street will be a major thoroughfare some day. Eventually, it’s not a problem any more.

[Sunspace]

[QUOTE=Spoons]
And what is this “rail” you speak of? Seriously, Calgary does have a LRT, not a subway, but it has a lot of room for improvement. Firstly, it doesn’t run that often, at least not from this former Torontonian’s point of view. Sorry, folks, but a train every fifteen minutes outside of rush hour doesn’t cut it. You want to get people out of their cars, run trains more frequently. I don’t think, for example, I ever waited more than five minutes for a Toronto subway train, even on a Sunday.

@Spoons

I don’t think, Sunspace, it’s a matter of catch-up so much as a matter of dithering. “Hmmm…this seems to be a problem; let’s talk about it for the next year. And then, if we decide to go ahead, we have two years to do it in. No rush.” Well, with this oncoming boom, there is a rush. And Calgary will have to deal with it somehow.

I was hoping that it was only Toronto who had ‘extremely-long discussion syndrome’.

At least in Toronto’s case, there’s a fairly-good reason: it’s politicking to get all the funding sources lined up (something that doesn’t happen as often as I’d like). For example, the Ontario provincial government just announced 600 million in funding to extend the Toronto subway to Highway 7 and Jane Street. Now Toronto and Vaughan have to scare up their shares of the funding, and they have to convince the federal government to kick in its share before there’s another election and policies change (again). If anything changes, negotiations may have to start all over again.

So no-one’s ever quite certain whether anything will actually go ahead, and when it does, it will take twice as long as necessary because of cash-flow problems. When will they be boring subway tunnels under York Univeristy? Og alone knows. But if it was anything like the Sheppard Avenue subway, I’ll probably be retired by the time the thing is finished.

At least in Alberta, you folks have enough money to just go out and buy a rail system, roads, bridges, bikeways, power lines, buses, etc, etc. Why not take advantage of your present prosperity, and invest in the infrastructure that will carry you into the future, instead of giving it away in the form of tax cuts and rebates?

@Spoons

On another note, Sunspace, I’ll be in Toronto in May. Any chance we might meet up?

Most definitely. I’d be delighted. I was planning to come out and visit at some point (and maybe scope out the job market myself), but that might not be until a little later.

[Cat_Whisperer]

@Sunspace

<snip>
At least in Alberta, you folks have enough money to just go out and buy a rail system, roads, bridges, bikeways, power lines, buses, etc, etc. Why not take advantage of your present prosperity, and invest in the infrastructure that will carry you into the future, instead of giving it away in the form of tax cuts and rebates?<snip>

You’d think so, wouldn’t you, but the politicians are still trying to cry “Poor!” at the municipal and provincial levels. And, of course, there’s the finger-pointing back and forth from each level, saying it’s the other level that’s responsible for paying for everything.

[Spoons]

@Sunspace

At least in Alberta, you folks have enough money to just go out and buy a rail system, roads, bridges, bikeways, power lines, buses, etc, etc. Why not take advantage of your present prosperity, and invest in the infrastructure that will carry you into the future, instead of giving it away in the form of tax cuts and rebates?

That I cannot answer. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of long-range coordinated plan to address the question of improving the infrastructure. Various bodies will hold various talks to discuss various projects, but nobody seems to realize that the people planning Project X will need to coordinate with the people planning Project Y in order to make Project Z work. And if by chance, people are working on long-range planning and coordination, they certainly are not publicizing it.

At any rate, tax cuts and rebates are extremely popular out here–there were some grumblings about the Ralphbucks distributed last January, but nowhere near as much complaining as when Mike Harris rebated $200 to Ontarians a few years back.

@Sunspace

Most definitely. I’d be delighted. I was planning to come out and visit at some point (and maybe scope out the job market myself), but that might not be until a little later.

Sounds good; let’s get in touch via e-mail over the next while and set it up!