The city is working on plans to widen Country Hills Boulevard to six lanes between Barlow Trail and Harvest Hills Gate NE – a stretch along which it currently only has four lanes.
Country Hills Boulevard, which is already six-lane at most places except for this two-and-a-half kilometer stretch. widening of main road planning study Three supports widening of the remaining four-lane segments.
An update on the project was presented to the Infrastructure and Planning Committee on 11 January.
“Traffic is a problem. It really gets clogged out there because it’s one of our only arteries,” said Andrew Yule, founder of Save Nose Creek.
Yule, a Coventry Hills resident and member of the Northern Hills Community Association, sees the widening project as an opportunity to fix some of the issues around Nose Creek and promote bike commuting.
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He said previous road projects on the Deerfoot Trail and Nose Creek created barriers for pedestrians and wildlife.
“Let’s not just settle on more lanes. Let’s re-imagine the project so that it encourages both active mode transportation and the health of Nose Creek. My fear is that they are only going to meet the minimum standard. Minimum standards on rail. Minimum standards over the Bay and it’s not going to make a better Calgary,” Yule said.
A city briefing says modeling around the effects of widening Country Hills Boulevard shows a small city-wide reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of less than one percent.
In the study area, the data predicts a six percent increase in traffic volume and a five percent increase in greenhouse gas emissions “although greenhouse gas emissions per vehicle will decrease slightly.”
“We know from research that building more roads leads to more traffic,” said Noel Keough, author of Sustainability Matters – Calgary’s Path to Sustainability – and former associate professor of sustainable design at the University of Calgary.
He said the city used too narrow a range in determining greenhouse gas emissions reductions.
“Notably, in this case, they do not include how much greenhouse gas emissions were increased as a result of building these roads to serve urban sprawl,” said Keough, who is also a senior researcher at the Sustainable Calgary Society. .
Keough said the report did not include the total cost of urban sprawl that would require building larger roadways and said that while more traffic lanes may reduce greenhouse gases is unlikely in the long run.
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“A well-known phenomenon is that if you create more traffic lanes you will cause more people to drive because for a while your journey becomes a bit faster, but eventually those roads will become congested again in very short order.” and before you know it transportation planners are at City Hall demanding more lanes.
“If you’re stuck in traffic and we build these lanes for two or three years, you might be better off but then you’re going to be back in the same traffic and worse, there will be more people using those lanes.” With cars that’s causing sprawl. It’s attracting people to live in those districts of the city,” Keough said.
According to Yule, the project would provide an opportunity to replace the rail overpass at Nose Creek.
He says that there is no way to go from Coventry Hills to Harvest Hills because of the railway.
Yule said, “I see this widening project as an opportunity to change that and have an underpass for Coventry residents to actually reach Harvest Hills without crossing the road.”
“These seem like essential roads that need additional development because of the development we’ve already done but there is an important climate change tool in that valley – and that is Nose Creek, so don’t skimp on protecting Nose Creek If these are the key pathways to development that are predicted for these regions, then this wetland is important for the discussion of climate change.
“Don’t choke it. It’s our ecological backbone. Don’t do the minimum standard,” Yule said. “Nose Creek is a carbon sink. It is an important tool in combating climate change.”
The mayor of Calgary said Saturday that the project needs to include pedestrian and wheeling facilities.
“The way I feel about most of our roadways is that they need to be proper mobility corridors to accommodate pedestrians, people on wheels, and automobiles. We haven’t done a very good job on Country Hills Blvd. And we should do that,” said Mayor Jyoti Gondek.
Funding for the project has not yet been secured.
The city report says improvements to walking and wheeling are needed to close the gaps in the study area.
According to the report, “These connections could be made as part of road widening or a separate project.”
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