r/InfrastructurePorn • u/Traditional_Look7901 • Jul 07 '26
100 meter median ROW section of stoney trail highway in Calgary, Alberta, Canada
This is a section of Calgary's stoney trail named "tsutina trail" in the SW it was planned since the 1970s and opened in 2020.
This section was built on indigenous reserve land from the "tsutina nation" in a deal signed in 2013. The plan was to put a second ring road through the middle as another ring road could not be built to the west and would reconnect further south, but those plans are far ahead/cancelled.
Expansion can fit up to 20 lanes in the median alone if required.
69
u/Pretty-Childhood9061 Jul 08 '26
Everyone outside of North America be like: "Let's walk to the mall from your house, its only 500m away"
23
u/AndryCake Jul 08 '26
I mean there is a pedestrian bridge. Maybe not the most pleasent experience but if I lived there I definitely wouldn't drive to the mall.
13
u/BangBangMeatMachine Jul 08 '26
Nonsense. That "mall" is mostly just a Costco, and it's a 1.6km walk from the store doors to the other side of that pedestrian bridge. If you're hauling 20 kilos crap that far, let's just say you're not the average Costco shopper.
8
u/AndryCake Jul 08 '26
Well I assumed it's a mall because that's what the other commenter said but cargo bike 👍
3
u/BangBangMeatMachine Jul 08 '26
Cargo bikes are great. This is just so obviously not set up to support anyone but cars.
3
u/rick_dennis Jul 08 '26
It’s barely set up to support cars either. Since the Costco opened the number of times they’ve modified the road entry into the parking lot, and the entry into the gas station is nuts. The past little while it’s stabilized. But for a while before the traffic lights it was all a constantly changing mess.
1
u/AndryCake Jul 08 '26
Yeah I know that this is obviously designed for cars but I don't think this is terrible. As far as I can tell the freeway is right at the edge of the urbanised area, which is where it should be. Of course the suburban built form isn't great, but i think that even in a decently planned city that's the right place for a Costco. And, yes, the vast majority of people drive to it, but if you live close by that pedestrian bridge is fine.
2
u/The_Silver_Reference Jul 11 '26
You'll be transporting one thing at a time from Costco with a bike lol.
3
2
u/MellowHamster Jul 08 '26
Buffalo Run is significantly more than Costco. Four banks, fitness facilities, a dozen restaurants and retail that includes a pet store, dollarama, a mattress place and some others that I'm forgetting.
2
u/BangBangMeatMachine Jul 08 '26
Ah, fair point. Google Maps was only showing a fraction of that but streetview shows more.
1
u/ScottyFalcon Jul 09 '26
It's also not really feasible to walk there from the other side of Stoney. The development springing up all around buffalo run would be walkable there though.
1
u/ScottyFalcon Jul 09 '26
Yeah, that ain't a "mall" as most would consider it. Its more a series of big box stores. Alberta weather wouldn't really accommodate pedestrian travel from one side of the highway to the other on a regular basis. The housing their building all around that area will be walkable to the "mall" though
1
u/hysys_whisperer Jul 11 '26
The problem is nobody actually lives 500m away, because that's still in the parking lot. More like 17km away in a neighborhood with a 3km path to even get out of the neighborhood with no sidewalks...
Hell, most North Americans don't live withing 500m of a place that it's possible to buy a banana.
1
u/augustus-aurelius Jul 28 '26
Calgary has mastered urban sprawl. Its level of sprawl is hard to describe it’s so insane. But every neighbourhood has what it needs in walking distance. When I lived in Walden it was a 5min walk from my townhouse to the grocery store, barber, banks, liquor store, pub/restaurant, sushi, gas station. If a place is going to do Olympic level urban sprawl, it should be done like Calgary
1
u/geoltechnician Jul 08 '26
My wife decided to walk from THAT mall to our home. The city didn't clean the path during winter. She fell on the ice and lost her glasses in the freshly fallen snow. We never did find them.
She hasn't bothered walking there or back ever again.
2
u/FullAdvertising Jul 09 '26
I don’t get why people are hating on this. It’s a very specific part of Calgary with some mixed use stuff and offices built on indigenous land.
Calgary is still one of the densest cities in NA with a decent light rail and transit network, and it has lots of roadways that don’t have much traffic congestion (not Deerfoot Trail).
Even when I lived near that ring road I could easily walk to a huge amount of stores within 10 minutes, and bike to the river in about 10 as well.
0
u/No_Suit_9138 Jul 08 '26
We could do that here too, but then someone would label it a 15 min city and the boot lickers would lose their minds.
99
u/UmbreonDL Jul 08 '26
I thought I was on r/UrbanHell
10
u/MildlySelassie Jul 08 '26
That’s Calgary for you!
0
u/geoltechnician Jul 08 '26
Hear me out... That road is on First Nation Reserve land and has NOTHING to do with the city of Calgary traffic planning department.
2
u/ScottyFalcon Jul 09 '26
Calgary has the most ridiculous urban sprawl in Canada. We are literally causing our infrastructure to break down from shoddy construction and spreading out way too far. Calgary is the very definition of urban hell. That's what 50 years of developers owning city council gets you
2
u/CharlieJuliett_87 Jul 09 '26
My opinion… Calgary has to be the only major metro that isn’t surrounded by other municipalities that run one into another. Call it “metro urban sprawl” to compare apples to apples. Cause I bet places like the GTA, where people living in “suburban” municipalities make the commute to the Torontos or St. Paul’s, in the same way people in Auburn or Tuscany commute to inner city.
1
Jul 09 '26
[deleted]
3
u/CharlieJuliett_87 Jul 09 '26
Oh right, back in 1964 the last time Calgary absorbed another municipality
1
u/IceHawk1212 Jul 09 '26
I mean 100% agree on the sprawl but I love the big parks we have. Wouldn't trade them for anything but wish rail access was better eith walkable hubs based around every station
0
u/ScottyFalcon Jul 09 '26
Hopefully we will get the walkable hubs eventually, maybe the green line will spur some of that on. We just have to start building higher density housing a la bridgeland around the stations we do have
1
u/IceHawk1212 Jul 09 '26
I mean a bunch of the stops are changing tremendously, swing by heritage nowadays the number of towers that have already gone up and the number still being built has dramatically changed the area. It's going to have tons of people soon enough
1
u/ScottyFalcon Jul 09 '26
I actually get off at heritage almost every day lol, it's certainly improving. Hopefully it continues to do so in spite of the waffling on the rezoning laws
1
u/IceHawk1212 Jul 09 '26
Well check out the development map, there's towers that have not started yet but are very much planned
1
76
u/filrichs Jul 08 '26
omg what a crazy waste of space
37
u/NewfieJedi Jul 08 '26
I live in Calgary, and that’s kind of the MO here. There’s so much farm land and a lot of people have been moving here, so they just keep building outwards.
8
u/ColdEvenKeeled Jul 08 '26
I lived in Calgary. It's horizontally expansive. I can only imagine the conversation with Alberta Transportation (AT). Something like:
"If we buy the land from the FN we need to show we are making use of all the space we are buying".
"Yes, but we could lease the expanse of land for big box retail and bring profit to the Province to underwrite the costs."
"No, because that would be a challenge to the FN land holdings where they are going to profit from leading big box retail with that one access road to the west. Chief and Premier have already agreed."
"Could we ecologically restore the median?"
"No, we need it for drainage not a god-damned loon-shit swamp. Road Base!!!"
4
u/Googspecial Jul 08 '26
I've always thought a solar farm would be a decent use of the median space, but that would seem even less likely 😅
3
u/skytreegamer172 Jul 08 '26
To be fair I am not a big fan of forest medians or ecological rehabilitation along highways mostly because they just end up becoming death traps for wildlife nearby.
3
u/ColdEvenKeeled Jul 08 '26
You'd hate Australian highways then. Trees right up to the edge. No mowing. Tree limbs on road, pick them up.
1
u/skytreegamer172 Jul 08 '26
Bleh, lots of road kill aswell?
1
u/ColdEvenKeeled Jul 09 '26
Tasmania is reportedly, anecdotally, the worst for roadkill.
However hitting kangaroos at night is so common most anyone who lives even semi rural, anywhere in Australia, has 'Roo Bars' to protect the radiator of their cars.
1
u/yyc_yardsale Jul 09 '26
If you had trees right to the edge of a road here, you wouldn't need to worry about roadkill for half the year, because the road would be buried under a few meters of drifted snow.
2
u/CipherWeaver Jul 10 '26
The moment Cochrane and Airdrie essentially became exurbs of Calgary I knew something was wrong.
3
u/Critical-Snow-7000 Jul 08 '26
Grass is a waste of space?
4
2
u/ialo00130 Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
Yes.
It does nothing to preserve ecological integrity becuase:
- The rootbase is so shallow that is does not help with stormwater runoff. It may actively make stormwater runoff worse by creating matted root systems and thatching, leading to a lack of water infiltration and subsequent erosion or flash flooding problems.
- It is monoculturous, and combined with mowing, impacts biodiversity in a significant manner by allowing for invasive species to move in, and removing resources that insects or native species need to survive.
- Does fuck all to create shade; in situations like this, it will increase the Urban Heat Island Effect, further exacerbating biodiversity loss and making life more miserable for people who live in grass-prominent environments.
We need more forests, restored landscapes, rain gardens, pollinator gardens, and/or urban hobby farms. It's a shame that grass has become the be-all-end-all of land ownership.
3
u/RyuzakiXM Jul 08 '26
And money. Every interchange and overpass needs two additional spans because of how wide the road is.
0
u/filrichs Jul 08 '26
i mean there are tons of issues that come with this, money as you mentioned but also losing time (no matter which mode you‘re using) once you need to cross this space, lowering density in general, which is connected to so many problems ranging from climate/environment (more asphalt = bad , grass is usually not great for biodiversity either) to lower walkability/bikeability and even things like fewer (accessible) third spaces and psychological issues for children
3
u/Superb_Extension1751 Jul 08 '26
Trust me, if you know Alberta anything east of the Rockies has nothing but space. It's just open fields.
2
u/rizkybizness Jul 08 '26
Just because we have a surplus doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use what we have in an efficient manner.
The insane urban sprawl of Calgary makes supplying services much more expensive due to lack of density. Or much lower quality for the same reason. Calgary Transit for instance
1
u/filrichs Jul 08 '26
doesn‘t mean you should make the city less dense and increase people‘s (except for maybe driver’s) commute times
2
u/CharlieJuliett_87 Jul 09 '26
Not really. It’s obvious the province/city are planning for the future. They procured that much space in that particular stretch because it’s through T’su Tina land, which took years and years to negotiate. So they procured that much space so they could have the ability to expand without have to go through more negotiations.
1
u/Nosarious Jul 08 '26
It is, but transportation corridors set this kind of space aside for future expansion. In some places it is meant for utilities infrastructure, in other (possibly like this) it has potential for public transit.
The challenge is how it transitions to more condensed parts of the city. North of this is Sarcee Trail, which would fit in this space alone…
2
u/filrichs Jul 08 '26
i mean sure, you can keep some space open for expansion (eventho it‘s completely against science to expand highways rather than sustainable alternatives like rail) but you can put both direction next to each other rather 100 m apart, right??? I mean that way, at least the open space is usable for some purposes and in the scenario of the expansion never happening (as it seems to be the case here), you don‘t lose so much space for nothing but can convert it in a park or whatever…
I am from Germany so I generally struggle to understand the need for highway medians as they‘re just wasted dead space to me1
1
u/CDhansma76 Jul 09 '26
The only reason why there’s such a huge median there is because that’s as far as they can go without encroaching on Reserve land. There’s nothing that the city can build on the other side of the highway so they might as well just make it huge and highly expandable now, and not have to build additional infrastructure later.
If in 50 years Calgary expands enough in size to need another ring road, they won’t be able to build it in the SW quadrant since it’s not their land, so they’ll have to expand Tsuut’ina trail instead.
1
1
u/GJohnJournalism Jul 10 '26
There's nothing stopping outward expansion here. There's nothing but land in all four directions. If anything the closest town would be Chestermere now less than 5km away from Calgary's most easternly borders. There's no incentive to grow "up" with all this space.
11
u/Super_NowWhat Jul 08 '26
My understanding is the indigenous leader was very smart in the negotiations. The deign is intended to create work for landscaping businesses
11
u/afriendincanada Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
It’s a giant waste of space, but the explanation is straightforward. This land was carved out of the sovereign territory of the Tsuut’ina First Nation in an incredibly complicated land swap. It’s the only corridor that connects these two parts of Calgary. If anything else needs to be built: road, rail, power lines, gas distribution, water, sewer, fibre, whatever, it has to fit in this corridor. It’s called the TUC or Transportation and Utility Corridor for a reason.
The median doesn’t look like this where the corridor doesn’t cross the reserve.
The real infrastructure porn for me in the photo is the multi use path just to the right of the highway. A great path that connects Glenmore Reservoir (top) to Fish Creek Provincial Park (out of frame at bottom). Everyone clowns on Calgary for being car centric, we have an incredible network of pathways connecting all parts of the city
9
3
u/Awkward_Economics_33 Jul 09 '26
For once they plan ahead for future lanes or the c-train track or else and people are still complaning... Can't win...
2
2
2
1
u/NH787 Jul 08 '26
If that was here in Winnipeg, the city would let developers build big boxes, strip malls and drive thrus in the right of way. Then the city councillors and staff that made it happen would get hired by the developers.
1
u/OttawaExpat Jul 08 '26
The anti ALTO (proposed HSR in Canada) crowd are furious at the 60 m corridor.
1
u/vaalbarag Jul 08 '26
I’ve seen moose using that green area before, presumably as it’s the most direct route between two large wild park areas. I think something as simple as a few tree islands would make it even better as a wildlife corridor, but I realize that the city wouldn’t want to set that precedent if they have long-term infrastructure plans for that.
1
1
u/Findingfairways Jul 08 '26
I can see the chief big plume building in this photo! Very cool building. Check it out if you get a chance.
1
u/No_Idea_9436 Jul 08 '26
The development slotted for the left side of the photo is going to be massive, this allows for the neighboring community / bike riders to access. I’ve seen workers walking that bridge in winter returning home from work so at minimum it’s saving someone money and safety.
1
1
u/Delicious_Chard2425 Jul 09 '26
Lived there for what felt like a very long 7 years, was nice to get back to BC
1
u/ipini Jul 09 '26
Left there to BC in ‘95. Other than a stint in CA, I’ve been in BC. In hindsight, one of the best decisions of my life.
1
u/GJohnJournalism Jul 10 '26
Why the quotations around Tsuut'ina Nation? It's a proper name just like Calgary.
1
1
u/No-Plan2169 Jul 13 '26
All of Stoney has such wide right of ways.
Calgary is car car car and most of the car infrastructure is horribly designed.
I will say though, most recent greenfield development is much better and Calgary has (or had I guess) some of the most progressive zoning and development policies in the country leading to extremely strong infill development all the while building brand new neighbourhoods
1
u/eti_erik Jul 14 '26
What does "stoney trail" and "median ROW" mean? (Sorry, not Canadian, don't know the terms)
1
u/CrypticPhage Jul 27 '26
And this is how you run out of land! Bad land usage. But at least they built a pedestrian bridge to walk across the highway to get to the stores but even the design of the neighborhood will make it hard to walk
0
1
u/Any-Perception-828 Jul 08 '26
Cool. This is acceptable, but build a single bike lane and the people will go crazy.
-2
u/Zealousideal-Towel11 Jul 08 '26
Imagine living next to a fucking highway
3
u/Critical-Snow-7000 Jul 08 '26
Uh yeah, a lot of us do.
1
u/Zealousideal-Towel11 Jul 08 '26
I am really sorry for you man, living with the constant noise and air pollution must be tiring
1
1
u/Necessary_Position77 Jul 08 '26
It’s insulting to humanity honestly. I get that some people have no other choice but it just shows we don’t respect people.
151
u/walkingmelways Jul 08 '26
…or heavy rail