Like many Calgarians, I've been wondering about whether we really need another pedestrian bridge, particularly in the Eau Claire area. A quick look at The City's bike and pathway map shows that there are already several pedestrian bridges over the Bow River and one would assume that those existing bridges would be able to handle the existing pedestrian and bike traffic.
According to Don Mulligan, director of Transportation Planning, pathway traffic into and out of the downtown core continues to grow and Peace Bridge is needed to handle this increased pedestrian and bicycle traffic, particularly in the Eau Claire area.
The location of the bridge, at approximately 7 St S.W., was selected because the area sees the most pedestrian and bike traffic of any portion of the 660 km of paved pathways in the city. According to The City's Transportation Department, more than 13,000 pedestrians and cyclists cross the Bow River daily using the Louise Bridge, the LRT bridge near 10 Street S.W. and the Prince's Island bridge.
Once Peace Bridge is completed, it's expected to transport more than 5,000 people a day, or 1.3 million people per year. While that's a relatively impressive number, Mulligan says that the Peace Bridge will truly be of asset to Calgarians as the downtown core grows - another 60,000 jobs are anticipated in the downtown core by 2025. That's on top of the 120,000 Calgarians that presently work downtown and the 30,000 that live there.
Mulligan adds that an additional 30,000 people are expected to be living in the core by 2025 with a number of high density residential projects scheduled to be built in the Eau Claire, East Village, Hillhurst-Sunnyside and The Bridges communities. These high density projects are expected to have a large impact on the number of citizens entering the downtown core using the pathway system.
Check out my interview with Don Mulligan, The City's director of Transportation Planning below.
Friday, July 31, 2009
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I am against the Peace Bridge. I can accept construction of A bridge in that location (although I am surprised that is even a current priority). That does NOT justify the extravagant cost or grotesque design of the proposed bridge! Quelling critics with arguments of why we need a bridge, or calling it "peace" will only distract people for a short time.
ReplyDeleteI think the Peace Bridge is going to be one of the structures that defines Calgary as a forward-thinking, global-minded city. I think the design is inspiring and we need more projects like this. The price might seem high to some people but it is more than just a bridge - it is a legacy and a step towards a more architecturally diverse city.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments Sara. I'll be looking at the cost of Peace Bridge in a conversation with Mac Logan, Director of Transportation Infrastructure on Tuesday.
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to understand the real world impact of all of these random numbers that are being thrown at us here in an attempt to ensure they're not baseless.
ReplyDeleteThe Louise Bridge, Prince's Island Bridge and 10th St. bridge allegedly transport 13,000 people a day. I'm not sure how they're defining "day" here but given that most people sleep, I'll offer the benefit of the doubt and say it's a 24-hour day. Which works out to 542 people crossing the bridges every hour--or about 10 people per minute. Every minute, of every day.
Obviously it doesn't actually work out that way because people sleep and there are clearly differences in the volume of pedestrian traffic depending on the time of day. Once again, giving the benefit of the doubt, I'll hypothetically say that maybe 40% of those pedestrians cross the bridge between 6 PM and 6 AM. That's probably a gross overestimate, but for the sake of argument, this reduces the number of pedestrians crossing the bridge during a typical working day to about 325 per hour--or, about 5 people per minute. Less than one person per bridge every 60 seconds.
But realistically, there aren't 5 people crossing the bridges per minute. The majority of the traffic occurs during rush hour times, 2 maybe 3-hour windows at the beginning and end of everyone's work day. If the rush hour is two hours long on either end of the day, that means that the majority of the pedestrian traffic absorbed by these bridges occurs in a 4-hour window.
Now, taking into consideration my fabricated condition to this argument regarding 40% of people crossing the bridges at night, if I hypothetically say that ALL of the daytime traffic occurs during that 4-hour window, that means that during rush hour, about 2000 people cross those three existing bridges. Or, 32.5 people are on those bridges at any given minute. Which works out to what? 11 people per bridge, per minute, during the busiest times of day.
But hey, let's add the 40% back into the argument and say that ALL of the people that cross the bridges on any given day do so during the rush hour periods. 13,000 people in 4 hours on 3 bridges. Which is 3,250 people per hour, or 55 people per minute. Which is 18 people on each existing bridge per minute.
I don't have the stats and I don't know how they collect them, but the wording suggests that it's 13,000 people, not 13,000 commutes. Odds are, about half the people who take the pedestrian bridges IN to work are probably also going to use them to go home at the end of the day. So let's just double our bridge population density at any given time and say there's 36 people on every existing bridge during rush hours.
It sounds pretty busy, but on a pedestrian bridge that's oh...100 metres long, all 36 people could still stand on it simultaneously, perform the Macarena, and not hit each other.
But PLEASE bear in mind that I am taking their "13,000" pedestrian number, adding as much as I possibly can to it in order to support their argument by turning a 24-hour day into a 4-hour one and coming up with a number that doesn't even come CLOSE to rivaling some of the busier pedestrian bridges in metropolitan areas around the world.
Building the Peace Bridge reduces the number to 27 people per day, who could not only do the Macarena while commuting to work without touching anyone, they could probably do cartwheels as well.
And since I've ripped apart these numbers to the point that they don't mean anything, let's ask a practical question: when you're driving by the bike paths and passing the pedestrian bridges along Memorial Drive during rush hour, does it REALLY look like we need another bridge? Are the bridges so packed that the need for another one is obvious?
I don't know about you, but I drive to work along Memorial Drive and pass those three bridges EVERY single day during BOTH rush hours and I have NEVER seen more than about 10 people on any one of them at a time.
Why do we need this again?
Thanx for the additional info on who will use this bridge, it does clear some stuff up. However to speak to Steve's comments, bridges and buildings don't define cities as forward-thinking or global-minded, actions and people do. I am all for bold exciting designs, but this bridge seems to reject the surroundings and the cities style. And not to beat a dead horse but the cost, imagine how many other projects could have been done to make this a world class walkable, bicycle friendly city.
ReplyDeleteHi Randall:
ReplyDeleteTo try to find some of the answers to some of your questions about the numbers, I contacted Don Mulligan and he let me know that:
- The City has counted the number of people entering and leaving downtown for more than 30 years.
- These counts record the number of people traveling as pedestrians, cyclists, driving and taking transit.
- The City conducts these counts every May, and the counts are for 16 hours a day - between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. (when you'd assume the bulk of users would be using the pathways)
- As you assumed, peak pedestrian and cyclist traffic occurs between 7:15 - 8:15 a.m.; noon-1 p.m. and 4:45 - 5:45 p.m.
- Between 1994 and 2008, pedestrian and cyclist traffic entering or leaving downtown has more than doubled on all roads and bridges from 29,000 trips per day in 1994 to 68,000 in 2008. Obviously volumes vary and depend on weather, the day of the week and time of year.
- Recent peak pedestrian and bicycle traffic was measured at 700 trips per hour on the 9A Street LRT bridge and 1,200 trips per hour on the Prince's Island bridge. That works out to a pedestrian or cyclist on the bridge every 5 seconds throughout the peak hour on the 9A Street bridge and every 3 seconds on the Prince's Island bridge. The breakdown is approximately 80% pedestrians and 20% cyclists.
These numbers are based on what is occurring now. The need for Peace Bridge takes into account the anticipated growth in employees and residents downtown as mentioned in the blog post.
Hope this provides some clarity on these numbers.
Hi, Randall, thanks for your thoughtful analysis. I think what what you might be missing, is that unlike roads which have issues with thoroughput due to traffic density, that pedestrian areas have issues with mobility and connectivity. The pedestrian bridge fits with another component of onstreet biking and can be seen on the City of Calgary Pathways & Bikeway Maps, and the detour between these two points is about 1 kilometre. For a pedestrian, the walk around that extra 1 kilometre (or about 10 minutes) is equivalent to sitting in traffic for a long period of time. At the City of Calgary's estimate of 5,000 people per day, this adds up to a time savings of about 180,000 manhours per year.
ReplyDeleteAlso, over the course of the next two years, the City of Calgary is spending only 3.2% of it's $1.3 billion transportation budget on pedestrian infrastructure. Excluding the Peace Bridge, would bring this to only 1.3% according to the City of Calgary Transportation Investment Plan.
Yet 8% of the City of Calgary gets to work each and every day by these "alternative" transportations like walking and cycling.
I think the pedestrian bridge is an important component of transportation infrastructure. What I don't like about it was that the process was so unclear, and Calgarians weren't presented with other potentially more cost-effective options.