I don't know why the city and developers do it but I HATE those curved streets in suburbs. Take a straight-line walk of 1km to the local store then curve the road all over hell and make it 4 km walk.
Agreed. That's one of the things I prefer about Edmonton. It was a much bigger city in the mid 20th century when the circuitous roads to nowhere bullshit started, so a lot more of the city is a logical grid layout.
Mill Woods has a robust path network though, so even though the streets curve, you can still cut through the most direct routes on foot/by bike/etc. Most of the neighbourhoods have schools, parks, convenience stores and other amenities within the neighbourhood (without having to cross a busy street). It’s very walkable in the scheme of late 20th century development.
It certainly is. They even screwed up the major roads outside the Henday. 127 St on the north side used to go straight, now it randomly goes sideways at the Henday. On the south side, 99 St and 91 St meet each other. 91 St should have continued straight south, and 99 St should have followed the tracks then turned into 101 St.
They even started doing this in my small town of 5000 people. Original town is all straight line roads. New areas are all curved roads and pie shaped lots.
> Take a straight-line walk of 1km to the local store then curve the road all over hell and make it 4 km walk.
And have zero sidewalk shortcuts between houses to get around all that chicanerous nonsense.
I grew up in suburbia and I'm sure glad I don't live in suburbia anymore.
The curved streets are actually better for pedestrians, as the purpose of their design is to make drivers be slower.
*That being said* they are also supposed to be paired with walking paths separate to those streets that are designed to cut down on the total distance pedestrians are walking. That’s the part our city planners always seem to ‘forget’. 🫠
Forgetting isn't the issue.
Remember, every walking path is lost profitability for the developer.
3 walking paths? That's a whole extra house they could put in!
It's incorrect, though. It allows for traffic funneling and greater aesthetic appeal. Well, not entirely incorrect but it turns out it's more of a secondary perk.
Curvy streets are actually better for cars than pedestrians. It forces pedestrians to walk farther and minimizes the number of intersections that cars have to slow down for.
You’ll notice that pretty much every neighbourhood built before automobiles became ubiquitous were in a grid pattern with smaller lot sizes. It’s because it’s easier to get from any to point a to point b by foot and allowed for there to be adequate population density for streetcars to be successful.
> In terms of road geometry, *drivers will choose lower speeds on roads that* have rough surfaces, are narrow, *winding*, or hilly, and where the direction of the road and the boundaries of the lanes are not well delineated.
> https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/216727/Road-design-factors-and-their-interactions-with-speed-and-speed-limits.pdf#:~:text=In%20terms%20of%20road%20geometry%2C%20drivers%20will%20choose,boundaries%20of%20the%20lanes%20are%20not%20well%20delineated.
The reason they are adopted into suburban areas is because they slow drivers down which makes the streets safer. It’s something that’s been well known in city design for decades. It’s why a winding road *when paired with proper walking paths* tends to be safest for pedestrians.
Things are/were grid-like because a grid is more efficient and gives you more bang for your buck land and infrastructure wise. It’s been quite common across pretty much all of human history for those developing places/things to put efficiency(and therefor profits) above QOL.
Grid neighborhoods usually offer a higher quality of life than the windy road curvilinear neighborhoods. These curvy suburbs were built for car dependence, quality of life not so much.
Also a grid design is often safer for pedestrians than a windy curvilinear road network. Because those windy roads are usually wide and have no trees on the sides obstructing views due to the front garage lanes that go hand in hand with windy curvilinear suburbs. The grids have narrower roads and have lots of visual obstructions on the sides like trees, etc which slows drivers down. Also more intersections means you have to go slower.
The curvilinear patterns usually have a couple curvy main arteries in the suburb. Drivers go very fast on these by design so cars don’t have to stop at intersections very often like the grids. I live in a 2000s curvilinear suburb and cars go flying down these main arteries which are curvy and windy.
The adoption of curvilinear street patterns over older grid style street patterns happened for many reasons but I don’t think pedestrian safety was high on the list. Making the roads a little windy here and there was more of a band aide to a problem car-suburbia introduced. The neighborhoods were designed for cars to get home fast, whoops to fast, throw some twists and turns in there.
"Curvilinear" street patterns are prevalent all over the world, including countries where car dependence is much lower than North America.
You seem to be mixing up housing style with road layout. The correlation between front garages and curves vs small homes and grids is a function of design and planning at different points in history. I.e. there's no reason you can't have a grid pattern with no trees and front garage houses, or smaller lots on curved streets with lots of trees and street furniture. It's rare because during the time period grids were in style smaller homes with no garages were common, while today grids aren't popular, but people want larger front garage homes.
One of the other reasons newer suburban neighbourhoods have the curved road network is to reduce through traffic. Something very prevalent in the grid pattern. They're specifically designed to reduce through traffic and force everyone to take a limited number of larger roads (or stroads), reducing potential for accidents on residential streets.
I'm not a fan of the modern suburb with curved roads and dead ends, they can be a pain to navigate, however they are objectively safer and generally create quieter roads for residents.
Meh. It's private developers who come up with the master plans. The city only mandates that they contain a certain percentage of space set aside for whatever. How they're laid out is mostly up to the developers.
Garden style planning is meant not to cut speeds necessarily but to funnel traffic and isolate homes. Like, that's the point. Keeps them quiet and peaceful. The good news is that contemporary planners are bringing back straight street layouts although they're short and the planning is very compartmentalized.
There was a blog about this from a few years back [Grid vs Curvilinear Streets Which One Is Better? — Everyday Tourist](https://everydaytourist.ca/street-views/grid-vs-curvilinear-streets-which-one-is-betternbsp)
That design reduces intersections and amount of road so it’s strictly to be cost effective. It’s designed for cars and single family housing which is incredibly poor for city design in all aspects
Had a friend that was a civil engineer. Cult de sacs allow them to cram more houses on the same amount of land because they're selling triwngles, not rectangles
17 hour city more like. I tried taking my 70 year old aunt grocery shopping with transit once. Took 4 hours to get to the grocery store. Which was a 4 minute drive away.
I like to point out it was a 15-20 minute drive for me to get to beddington when I was around dalhousie/hamptons... but it would take 1hr30m to take transit and I would have to transfer twice--once at a bus loop. All of that dependent on if drivers would show up on time... and anyone who takes transit in this city regularly will tell you is a major gamble. Even the big routes downtown last summer were routinely like a half hour late on the regular which was 10 minutes longer than it took me to just walk home
Plus our transit doesnt even cover the whole city and doesn't go past bar hours which, before uber, used to guarantee any late night holiday was an absolute fuck show with finding a cab
This city is *thoroughly* car brained. How does an area like hillhurst have only like one grocery store, guaranteeing if you're in west hillhurst that you HAVE to drive if you don't want to walk a half hour or longer to the closest grocery store? The bike lanes downtown only sometimes have lights and barriers?! It's fucked. I'm positive at this point it's by design and that's why we pay out the ass for transit that does bare minimum and doesn't even run its own app, and that's why so many dealerships have their fingers in municipal politics. I can't see any other excuse for why we refuse to do urban planning for pedestrians. It's like we are allergic to being walkable.
>All of that dependent on if drivers would show up on time... and anyone who takes transit in this city regularly will tell you is a major gamble.
I think an important distinction here is it isn't entirely the driver or route to blame. Roadwork pops up every month and frequently runs a timeframe that is *beyond* reasonable. I'm not suggesting the transit system doesn't need work, *because oh boy, does it ever*, but...trying to walk along 6th Avenue in the Core is like playing hopscotch. I had to walk along to find a shuttle stop from a train disruption one night and literally had to cross the street every block due to the sidewalk being shut down for construction (road, building, the path itself), and, I mean...at least I got my steps in? 🤷♀️
This city is so unique in the sense that they opted to build out instead of up, and their planning has crippled whatever attempt could be made for any sort of reasonable transit or walkway system. Like others have posted, because it's so geared towards driving (and even that's spotty...why is Deerfoot the only logical thoroughfare through the whole city with proper connections!?), and the industry just leaned into it, hamstringing any potential discourse for better future planning.
I'd even go so far as to initially empathize with planners. They definitely got handed an insurmountable list of problems with accessibility in this city, but they certainly don't seem to be doing anything to counter it, either.
You're right, and I probably could have phrased it better. There's a lot of potential reasons the bus can be late and when it was that late that consistently it is usually safe to assume theres some kind of construction or something goin on bogging everything up. It's probably really frustrating for them too knowing they gotta deal with all the grumpy passengers when things get held up like that.
As for the planners I reckon it probably can be boiled down to the same thing that seems to always be the problem which is lack of money going to the right places. Nobody ever wants to fund the public works :')
Walk 1 hour to the bus stop (my aunt is slow). Spend an entire hour waiting for the bus to show up. Spend half an hour on the bus. Spend half an hour waiting for a transfer. Spend 15 minutes on the bus. Spend 7 minutes walking to the C train platform. Wait 15 minutes for the C train to show up. Take the Ctrain for half an hour the same direction we came (bus does not stop at nearest C train station). Walk to bus stop and wait half an hour for bus, wait 5 minutes for bus to depart. Take bus 5 minutes to grocery store. Walk 15 minutes to grocery store.
This sounds like you live in a brand new community that wouldn't have transit anywhere in any city. That's not a Calgary unique problem
What community is this cause I'm still calling bullshit
Edit* still thinking of this and how these timelines make absolutely zero sense.
It takes us 25 minutes to drive from north Central to south -central (Deerfoot) to visit my parents, but it takes TWO BUS TICKETS to get there. I could get from Munich to Innsbruck in the train in less time than it takes to get from Huntington to Douglasdale.
I had a health issue a few years back, which meant no driving. I'm not a slow walker but it still took an hour to get from tuscany to crowfoot. Royal oak walmart, same time. Bus wasn't much better. If health causes me to stop driving completely, I would probably sell my house and find a more accessible area.
I lived in Calgary as a kid, we lived over by heritage Mall when it was first being built. At that time it didn't seem to be a problem but I was just a kid. We walked to the corner store and we walked up to the mall when it opened. But I also haven't been in Calgary in over 30 years lol
Calgary sprawl is insane. There is a very high % of the population that literally cannot walk to any destination they want to go to in a remotely reasonable time.
Calgary has basically 2 settings: if you live and work on one of the C-train lines, it's one of the better cities in NA for walkability. If you don't, it's horrible.
I find directly on one train or one bus is usually ok. If I have to transfer from bus to bus or bus to train the timing just never works out. Even worse if there's two transfers involved. That'll take you hours.
We just needed two lines that met in a rough cross shape back when 90% of the suburbs was oil and gas guys who worked in downtown office buildings. For some reason that no longer cuts it. My guess is it was ruined by entitled millenials
This, I don't drive so I relied heavily on the C-train and bus, going to places away from them is time consuming. I'm in Vancouver now and I can walk everywhere, quite a stark difference.
I loved being able to stroll from kitslano to work downtown. And then when we moved down to Haro and Thurlow I loved being able to get all over the region via train or bline.
the c train is one of the most heavily used LRT systems of it's size in the world because there is just so much you can easily access; so much so the rest of the city is dead to me.
Oh go away. You're welcome to be scared of your own shadow, but you live in one of the safest countries in the world, if you're scared here then I'd recommend a cabin in the woods miles from any other humans.
I use to live in Royal Oak in my high-school years, all my friends lived in Hamptons area.
Imagine doing that walk 😒
And don't get me started taking transit from a bus down to Tuscany station, then to delhousie and take the 154 or 54 bus to get there.
It was just as long if not longer.
Big Reason I left calgary 4 years ago.
I don’t think Alberta has a walkable city.
I live in Edmonton and it’s awful to get around without a car. Downtown there are two grocery stores and a mall that plays host to the houseless community, so there are no shops in there. This means you have to leave to the next suburb to get a Walmart, discount grocery store or Home Depot.
We have a sweet river valley system, but as for paths in the city? It’s not great. We have a saying that “no matter where you are in Edmonton, you’re an hour away from where you’re going”. Transit is hardly faster than walking too.
This is probably one of my least favourite cities to get around. The layout is awful, the traffic is miserable, you can’t park anywhere, the transit is barely functional, and you can’t really walk anywhere.
Calgary has some of the worst urban sprawl in the world. I think the only city that is worse is Houston. It means that you need to have a car to live there, which is quite alienating after a while. You only see people at work, at home, or at outings. Downtown is one of the more vibrant areas and it can feel extremely dead outside of working hours.
I see you've never been to Miami.
That place was something else altogether... 50 blocks of houses, a commercial strip, a highway, a commericial strip then 50 more blocks of housing (all with stop sign intersections) endlessly in every direction except if you're on the ocean.
Just mind bogglingly bad.
After living in the lower mainland of B.C. I do t understand why transit in calgary or edmonton is set up so badly. Need bus loops at train stations that service the areas around the stations. Translink is definitely set up better than anything I've seen in alberta
Born and raised in Calgary, lived in both Calgary and Edmonton and never once thought Calgary (or Edmonton) was a walkable city, or even a transit friendly city. Def a spacious cities tho with wide roads, miss it.
Yes, I'm in a wheelchair and don't drive. It's a hellscape, especially during winter.
Not many things are as picturesque as going down Macleod Trail with the cacophony drowning out anything and everything while you're getting some fresh ai- exhaust fumes that constantly accost you. At least you have a great view of the sprawling, nearly endless shopping centers, repair shops and restaurants.
I didn't see it in the article, but I'm curious about a few things.
Was it city proper or CMA for each "city". I'd also like to know where cities like Edmonton, Winnipeg, Regina , and Saskatoon rank.
My theory is that the time at which many of these mid sized cities were really built up was the car era. So it makes sense that they'd be less walkable.
I'd also wonder about similarly aged cities across the country that would include suburbs of the larger centers.
I'm not saying the survey is false or misleading, nor am I saying walkability isn't something that needs to be addressed, but I'm curious about such things.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmonton_Radial_Railway
Or some of them they got rid of them. And at the same time, instituted the ideals of the time, which was suburbs. This is why alot of city proper is usually decently walkable and the surrounding area isn't (ignoring the large parking lots that usually from tearing down buildings).
And they're conspiracy theories are terrified of the idea of walkable cities because it wouldn't require you to own a car to get from one place to another.
It's like 50 km from top to bottom, and the neighborhoods are built like plantar's warts in little round circles around the Walmarts with neither buses nor sidewalks.
One of the least walkable places in Canada.
I love that i used to take one bus to my swimning pool in less than 20 minutes. The city changed routes around and now it a three bus fiasco and hours to get there ans back. I guees thats their idea of progress -_-
I dunno. I walked my dog for 35 minutes to her vet appointment today. Would I do that same walk to pick up dinner at any of the restaurants nearby? No.
I grew up in Edmonton in the '60s, and there were no such things as curved streets. We had crossing guards and "look both ways" before crossing lessons, to get to school. By the way, I attended King Edward Elementary and Junior High, anyone else here that went there around that era?
I guess it depends where you live. I don’t drive so do a lot of walking and have never really had issues. During Covid, I walked from Bowness to sunalta, hardly had to cross any roads as there are pathways all the way. Same with up to silver springs, crowfoot shopping. For many communities near the core, it’s also easy to walk into the downtown. Calgary has one of the most extensive pathway systems in North America.
Pretty much any city on the prairies in walkable. That's why the concept of 15-minute cities is so important, regardless of what the conspiracy theorists think.
I came to Calgary in 1982. I thought the streets were too straight! Of course in a hilly area like the Yorkshire Dales the roads are curved to get round the hills !
Street patterns often dictate house design. This is because of alleys or lack thereof. Grids you can do whatever because they usually have alleys. Curvy, tree like road layouts usually don’t have alleys because it doesn’t make sense with that design. Then typically if you have a front garage on a narrow lot there is no room left for something like a front porch. So again street layout dictates house design.
Also the curvilinear road layout is not objectively safer than grids. This a complex research area and you could likely find data to fit either argument. But here is an article referencing a study showing that grids have less fatal accidents because cars drive slower in them compared to curvilinear networks.
[Debunking the Cul-de-Sac](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-09-19/the-problem-with-cul-de-sac-design)
It’s all very interesting nonetheless. I just moved from a curvilinear neighborhood into a modern grid neighborhood but in a cul de sac. So I hope to get the best of both worlds, time will tell.
I don’t know of any walkable city in Canada. They almost all have walkable neighbourhoods. But the City? It’s a misnomer for cities over 100,000 people.
Vancouver is extremely walkable.
I've lived in Calgary, YVR, and Edmonton. Calgary was the absolute worst by far. Edmonton is actually quite decent even if I have to fight for my life not to be run over by a cyclist, lol.
I've lived all over Alberta. Having been to Vancouver and Toronto recently, the difference in ease of getting around without a car in YYZ/YVR compared to any Alberta city was eye-opening.
It's a huge difference. I went to Montreal for the first time in 2022 and was blown away at their transit system. I don't speak French, but I was able to get around with very few problems, and I also found the areas I frequented were walkable. Alberta is still in the dark ages by comparison with regards to transit.
I think it’s a bit of a misnomer because it’s all about how you reach amenities. The big cities all have neighborhoods with walkable amenities of varying degrees. I live in one within Calgary. But which city has best transit to get to those neighborhoods varies. Calgary’s transit sucks. But do you really need to drive to get groceries or go swimming? Driving to the big box stores is a thing in most cities. But we do have a good little grocery store, drug store, post office, community halls and schools. Churches too. So, I would say no more than any other place. Any league sport means driving all over for games. Calgary does have a very good bicycle path system they almost failed us for. Edmonton’s LRT is better as its stations were all at grade—if not still—making it very accessible. Montreal’s transit was excellent to move from neighbourhood to neighbourhood when I was last there about 7-8 years ago.
It’s not unlike the new term 15 minute communities. We used to call them neighbourhoods.
Idk edmonton is hard for me to separate from calgary--both are basically like 3 streets of good(ish) city walkin and then otherwise industrial or suburbs, and the best of it is really bike/pedestrian paths in our nice natural areas like Edmonton's river valley or our bow river walkways. I guess Edmonton maybe has better nightlife? That's probably a big help.
I found Montreal very walkable, outside of the suburbs and stuff. It did feel like everything was "downtown" because it doesnt sprawl like we do so there's no clear "this is downtown" area imo but everything there felt only ever a walk away
Vancouver too, and toronto to a degree. The streets are a lot livelier.
That said, one thing in defense of calgary, as much as we lose character from renaming the streets the grid system we use downtown is absolutely aces for navigating (give or take the one-ways)
Victoria is very walkable -- the city proper extremely so, but also the core capital region in general due to relatively dense housing and the prevalence of neighbourhood high streets.
All 3 cities (Vancouver, Toronto & Victoria) I’ve lived in have been very walkable. Car was optional in all 3 (I was carfree for 7 years in Vancouver and now newly carfree in Victoria).
This realllly depends on neighborhood.
And where you need to walk to.
Are you going to walk from your 2010's suburb to downtown for work everyday? Probably not. But you could walk from your inner City residence to your downtown job.
Are you going to walk to the Costco? Probably not. But you could walk to your local grocer or corner store.
I don't know why the city and developers do it but I HATE those curved streets in suburbs. Take a straight-line walk of 1km to the local store then curve the road all over hell and make it 4 km walk.
Agreed. That's one of the things I prefer about Edmonton. It was a much bigger city in the mid 20th century when the circuitous roads to nowhere bullshit started, so a lot more of the city is a logical grid layout.
I think I know people who moved away from Mill Woods just for this reason.
Mill Woods has a robust path network though, so even though the streets curve, you can still cut through the most direct routes on foot/by bike/etc. Most of the neighbourhoods have schools, parks, convenience stores and other amenities within the neighbourhood (without having to cross a busy street). It’s very walkable in the scheme of late 20th century development.
Once you're outside the Henday, it's a suburban curved street nightmare that's just as bad as New Brighton for the most part
It certainly is. They even screwed up the major roads outside the Henday. 127 St on the north side used to go straight, now it randomly goes sideways at the Henday. On the south side, 99 St and 91 St meet each other. 91 St should have continued straight south, and 99 St should have followed the tracks then turned into 101 St.
South of 63rd Ave really. All grid north of there. Don't know where it turns onto squiggles on the north end
They even started doing this in my small town of 5000 people. Original town is all straight line roads. New areas are all curved roads and pie shaped lots.
> Take a straight-line walk of 1km to the local store then curve the road all over hell and make it 4 km walk. And have zero sidewalk shortcuts between houses to get around all that chicanerous nonsense. I grew up in suburbia and I'm sure glad I don't live in suburbia anymore.
The curved streets are actually better for pedestrians, as the purpose of their design is to make drivers be slower. *That being said* they are also supposed to be paired with walking paths separate to those streets that are designed to cut down on the total distance pedestrians are walking. That’s the part our city planners always seem to ‘forget’. 🫠
Forgetting isn't the issue. Remember, every walking path is lost profitability for the developer. 3 walking paths? That's a whole extra house they could put in!
That’s why I put it in quotation marks lol
>as the purpose of their design is to make drivers be slower. This is negated by how wide they are.
Nope, the wide design allows parking on both sides of the street. That helps slow traffic down. /s
It's incorrect, though. It allows for traffic funneling and greater aesthetic appeal. Well, not entirely incorrect but it turns out it's more of a secondary perk.
Greater aesthetic appeal and funnrling more traffic is safety for pedestrians?
I didn't say that. Not following you here.
Then explain yourself better
Huh? Are you on meth? It's all self-explanatory.
Curvy streets are actually better for cars than pedestrians. It forces pedestrians to walk farther and minimizes the number of intersections that cars have to slow down for. You’ll notice that pretty much every neighbourhood built before automobiles became ubiquitous were in a grid pattern with smaller lot sizes. It’s because it’s easier to get from any to point a to point b by foot and allowed for there to be adequate population density for streetcars to be successful.
> In terms of road geometry, *drivers will choose lower speeds on roads that* have rough surfaces, are narrow, *winding*, or hilly, and where the direction of the road and the boundaries of the lanes are not well delineated. > https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/216727/Road-design-factors-and-their-interactions-with-speed-and-speed-limits.pdf#:~:text=In%20terms%20of%20road%20geometry%2C%20drivers%20will%20choose,boundaries%20of%20the%20lanes%20are%20not%20well%20delineated. The reason they are adopted into suburban areas is because they slow drivers down which makes the streets safer. It’s something that’s been well known in city design for decades. It’s why a winding road *when paired with proper walking paths* tends to be safest for pedestrians. Things are/were grid-like because a grid is more efficient and gives you more bang for your buck land and infrastructure wise. It’s been quite common across pretty much all of human history for those developing places/things to put efficiency(and therefor profits) above QOL.
Grid neighborhoods usually offer a higher quality of life than the windy road curvilinear neighborhoods. These curvy suburbs were built for car dependence, quality of life not so much. Also a grid design is often safer for pedestrians than a windy curvilinear road network. Because those windy roads are usually wide and have no trees on the sides obstructing views due to the front garage lanes that go hand in hand with windy curvilinear suburbs. The grids have narrower roads and have lots of visual obstructions on the sides like trees, etc which slows drivers down. Also more intersections means you have to go slower. The curvilinear patterns usually have a couple curvy main arteries in the suburb. Drivers go very fast on these by design so cars don’t have to stop at intersections very often like the grids. I live in a 2000s curvilinear suburb and cars go flying down these main arteries which are curvy and windy. The adoption of curvilinear street patterns over older grid style street patterns happened for many reasons but I don’t think pedestrian safety was high on the list. Making the roads a little windy here and there was more of a band aide to a problem car-suburbia introduced. The neighborhoods were designed for cars to get home fast, whoops to fast, throw some twists and turns in there.
"Curvilinear" street patterns are prevalent all over the world, including countries where car dependence is much lower than North America. You seem to be mixing up housing style with road layout. The correlation between front garages and curves vs small homes and grids is a function of design and planning at different points in history. I.e. there's no reason you can't have a grid pattern with no trees and front garage houses, or smaller lots on curved streets with lots of trees and street furniture. It's rare because during the time period grids were in style smaller homes with no garages were common, while today grids aren't popular, but people want larger front garage homes. One of the other reasons newer suburban neighbourhoods have the curved road network is to reduce through traffic. Something very prevalent in the grid pattern. They're specifically designed to reduce through traffic and force everyone to take a limited number of larger roads (or stroads), reducing potential for accidents on residential streets. I'm not a fan of the modern suburb with curved roads and dead ends, they can be a pain to navigate, however they are objectively safer and generally create quieter roads for residents.
These are designed by the developers. Sure they are stupidly approved by the city, but the at the heart of these crap designs is the developer.
Meh. It's private developers who come up with the master plans. The city only mandates that they contain a certain percentage of space set aside for whatever. How they're laid out is mostly up to the developers. Garden style planning is meant not to cut speeds necessarily but to funnel traffic and isolate homes. Like, that's the point. Keeps them quiet and peaceful. The good news is that contemporary planners are bringing back straight street layouts although they're short and the planning is very compartmentalized.
And then you wonder why we have so many mental health problems here.
There was a blog about this from a few years back [Grid vs Curvilinear Streets Which One Is Better? — Everyday Tourist](https://everydaytourist.ca/street-views/grid-vs-curvilinear-streets-which-one-is-betternbsp)
Winding roads are intended to make suburbs more car dependent.
Grid layout with alleys is peak urban design and you’ll never convince me otherwise.
That design reduces intersections and amount of road so it’s strictly to be cost effective. It’s designed for cars and single family housing which is incredibly poor for city design in all aspects
Had a friend that was a civil engineer. Cult de sacs allow them to cram more houses on the same amount of land because they're selling triwngles, not rectangles
Did you ever check out the city’s pathway map? I’ll bet there was a walk path that made that 1km trip only 500m by foot.
150minute city!
17 hour city more like. I tried taking my 70 year old aunt grocery shopping with transit once. Took 4 hours to get to the grocery store. Which was a 4 minute drive away.
I got you beat there . Tried taking my 113 year old uncle to the store across the street last year. We are still on route
I like to point out it was a 15-20 minute drive for me to get to beddington when I was around dalhousie/hamptons... but it would take 1hr30m to take transit and I would have to transfer twice--once at a bus loop. All of that dependent on if drivers would show up on time... and anyone who takes transit in this city regularly will tell you is a major gamble. Even the big routes downtown last summer were routinely like a half hour late on the regular which was 10 minutes longer than it took me to just walk home Plus our transit doesnt even cover the whole city and doesn't go past bar hours which, before uber, used to guarantee any late night holiday was an absolute fuck show with finding a cab This city is *thoroughly* car brained. How does an area like hillhurst have only like one grocery store, guaranteeing if you're in west hillhurst that you HAVE to drive if you don't want to walk a half hour or longer to the closest grocery store? The bike lanes downtown only sometimes have lights and barriers?! It's fucked. I'm positive at this point it's by design and that's why we pay out the ass for transit that does bare minimum and doesn't even run its own app, and that's why so many dealerships have their fingers in municipal politics. I can't see any other excuse for why we refuse to do urban planning for pedestrians. It's like we are allergic to being walkable.
>All of that dependent on if drivers would show up on time... and anyone who takes transit in this city regularly will tell you is a major gamble. I think an important distinction here is it isn't entirely the driver or route to blame. Roadwork pops up every month and frequently runs a timeframe that is *beyond* reasonable. I'm not suggesting the transit system doesn't need work, *because oh boy, does it ever*, but...trying to walk along 6th Avenue in the Core is like playing hopscotch. I had to walk along to find a shuttle stop from a train disruption one night and literally had to cross the street every block due to the sidewalk being shut down for construction (road, building, the path itself), and, I mean...at least I got my steps in? 🤷♀️ This city is so unique in the sense that they opted to build out instead of up, and their planning has crippled whatever attempt could be made for any sort of reasonable transit or walkway system. Like others have posted, because it's so geared towards driving (and even that's spotty...why is Deerfoot the only logical thoroughfare through the whole city with proper connections!?), and the industry just leaned into it, hamstringing any potential discourse for better future planning. I'd even go so far as to initially empathize with planners. They definitely got handed an insurmountable list of problems with accessibility in this city, but they certainly don't seem to be doing anything to counter it, either.
You're right, and I probably could have phrased it better. There's a lot of potential reasons the bus can be late and when it was that late that consistently it is usually safe to assume theres some kind of construction or something goin on bogging everything up. It's probably really frustrating for them too knowing they gotta deal with all the grumpy passengers when things get held up like that. As for the planners I reckon it probably can be boiled down to the same thing that seems to always be the problem which is lack of money going to the right places. Nobody ever wants to fund the public works :')
I'm calling this one a bit into question and also gonna say if it was that close why not just walk.
I think the 70-year-old aunt was likely the reason.
There's no way a transit route in Calgary is 4 hours compared to a 4 minute drive
Sure there is, just jump on the 72/73 going in the wrong direction.
Touché But your age and time since taking those buses is showing. The MAX lines replaced them.
Walk 1 hour to the bus stop (my aunt is slow). Spend an entire hour waiting for the bus to show up. Spend half an hour on the bus. Spend half an hour waiting for a transfer. Spend 15 minutes on the bus. Spend 7 minutes walking to the C train platform. Wait 15 minutes for the C train to show up. Take the Ctrain for half an hour the same direction we came (bus does not stop at nearest C train station). Walk to bus stop and wait half an hour for bus, wait 5 minutes for bus to depart. Take bus 5 minutes to grocery store. Walk 15 minutes to grocery store.
This sounds like you live in a brand new community that wouldn't have transit anywhere in any city. That's not a Calgary unique problem What community is this cause I'm still calling bullshit Edit* still thinking of this and how these timelines make absolutely zero sense.
Lies lol
It takes us 25 minutes to drive from north Central to south -central (Deerfoot) to visit my parents, but it takes TWO BUS TICKETS to get there. I could get from Munich to Innsbruck in the train in less time than it takes to get from Huntington to Douglasdale.
It can be shocking how much farther you need to walk to move between communities in Calgary, especially in the NW.
I had a health issue a few years back, which meant no driving. I'm not a slow walker but it still took an hour to get from tuscany to crowfoot. Royal oak walmart, same time. Bus wasn't much better. If health causes me to stop driving completely, I would probably sell my house and find a more accessible area.
Right? Tuscany to the edge of Silver Springs is a 50min walk by the most direct route. Urban sprawl is a bitch.
I lived in Calgary as a kid, we lived over by heritage Mall when it was first being built. At that time it didn't seem to be a problem but I was just a kid. We walked to the corner store and we walked up to the mall when it opened. But I also haven't been in Calgary in over 30 years lol
Calgary sprawl is insane. There is a very high % of the population that literally cannot walk to any destination they want to go to in a remotely reasonable time.
Calgary has basically 2 settings: if you live and work on one of the C-train lines, it's one of the better cities in NA for walkability. If you don't, it's horrible.
Only if you also only want to go to places on the same C-train line
Yep. You can organize your work and home to work with the C-train. Or you can actually go to your friend's houses once in awhile.
Agreed. But as soon as you have to factor in a transfer the travel time becomes untenable.
To your friends' house? Yes.
I find directly on one train or one bus is usually ok. If I have to transfer from bus to bus or bus to train the timing just never works out. Even worse if there's two transfers involved. That'll take you hours.
Yep. 80% of the city is terribly inconvenient to get to.
We just needed two lines that met in a rough cross shape back when 90% of the suburbs was oil and gas guys who worked in downtown office buildings. For some reason that no longer cuts it. My guess is it was ruined by entitled millenials
Can't drive in straight lines anymore, because of woke.
This, I don't drive so I relied heavily on the C-train and bus, going to places away from them is time consuming. I'm in Vancouver now and I can walk everywhere, quite a stark difference.
I loved being able to stroll from kitslano to work downtown. And then when we moved down to Haro and Thurlow I loved being able to get all over the region via train or bline.
the c train is one of the most heavily used LRT systems of it's size in the world because there is just so much you can easily access; so much so the rest of the city is dead to me.
Just make sure you can walk faster than knife weilding fentanyl zombies or it can get a lot less walkable real quick.
Oh go away. You're welcome to be scared of your own shadow, but you live in one of the safest countries in the world, if you're scared here then I'd recommend a cabin in the woods miles from any other humans.
Bears tho.
Better than men.
He wasn't talking about people.
Yes he was.
I use to live in Royal Oak in my high-school years, all my friends lived in Hamptons area. Imagine doing that walk 😒 And don't get me started taking transit from a bus down to Tuscany station, then to delhousie and take the 154 or 54 bus to get there. It was just as long if not longer. Big Reason I left calgary 4 years ago.
I don’t think Alberta has a walkable city. I live in Edmonton and it’s awful to get around without a car. Downtown there are two grocery stores and a mall that plays host to the houseless community, so there are no shops in there. This means you have to leave to the next suburb to get a Walmart, discount grocery store or Home Depot. We have a sweet river valley system, but as for paths in the city? It’s not great. We have a saying that “no matter where you are in Edmonton, you’re an hour away from where you’re going”. Transit is hardly faster than walking too.
This is probably one of my least favourite cities to get around. The layout is awful, the traffic is miserable, you can’t park anywhere, the transit is barely functional, and you can’t really walk anywhere.
I say this as one of the ambling fools who have walked from Kensington to Fish Creek Station: **DON'T.**
Calgary has some of the worst urban sprawl in the world. I think the only city that is worse is Houston. It means that you need to have a car to live there, which is quite alienating after a while. You only see people at work, at home, or at outings. Downtown is one of the more vibrant areas and it can feel extremely dead outside of working hours.
I see you've never been to Miami. That place was something else altogether... 50 blocks of houses, a commercial strip, a highway, a commericial strip then 50 more blocks of housing (all with stop sign intersections) endlessly in every direction except if you're on the ocean. Just mind bogglingly bad.
I heard transit is absolutely miserable down there too--super sweaty and neglected so that you feel safer and more effective to just drive
Phoenix is pretty bad.
I can see walkability being less of a concern in Phoenix and Miami - I cannot imagine walking in the heat in either location.
They say the same thing about our winters.
So true. It is, in theory, possible to dress for our winters. One must have the financial means and the willingness to do so.
Huh. I wonder what they might have in common…..
Stroads are the problem https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM
After living in the lower mainland of B.C. I do t understand why transit in calgary or edmonton is set up so badly. Need bus loops at train stations that service the areas around the stations. Translink is definitely set up better than anything I've seen in alberta
Born and raised in Calgary, lived in both Calgary and Edmonton and never once thought Calgary (or Edmonton) was a walkable city, or even a transit friendly city. Def a spacious cities tho with wide roads, miss it.
I think the transit is marginally less agonizing in Calgary
It's a nightmare. Anywhere you are at feels like it's surrounded by freeways preventing escape on foot
3 busses and 2 lrt rides to get to my work, or a 20 min drive. You can also walk it in 4.5 hours
That's nuts!
Not only is it unwalkable, it also has some of the worst drivers in the country
Yes, I'm in a wheelchair and don't drive. It's a hellscape, especially during winter. Not many things are as picturesque as going down Macleod Trail with the cacophony drowning out anything and everything while you're getting some fresh ai- exhaust fumes that constantly accost you. At least you have a great view of the sprawling, nearly endless shopping centers, repair shops and restaurants.
I didn't see it in the article, but I'm curious about a few things. Was it city proper or CMA for each "city". I'd also like to know where cities like Edmonton, Winnipeg, Regina , and Saskatoon rank. My theory is that the time at which many of these mid sized cities were really built up was the car era. So it makes sense that they'd be less walkable. I'd also wonder about similarly aged cities across the country that would include suburbs of the larger centers. I'm not saying the survey is false or misleading, nor am I saying walkability isn't something that needs to be addressed, but I'm curious about such things.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmonton_Radial_Railway Or some of them they got rid of them. And at the same time, instituted the ideals of the time, which was suburbs. This is why alot of city proper is usually decently walkable and the surrounding area isn't (ignoring the large parking lots that usually from tearing down buildings).
Totally. Still work to be done for sure, but I find the "How did we get here?" side of things really interesting.
And they're conspiracy theories are terrified of the idea of walkable cities because it wouldn't require you to own a car to get from one place to another.
This is no surprise
It's like 50 km from top to bottom, and the neighborhoods are built like plantar's warts in little round circles around the Walmarts with neither buses nor sidewalks. One of the least walkable places in Canada.
There are times when my car doesn't move for 2 weeks at a time...
Did you just move here?
I lived in Calgary back in '82. I have not set foot in Calgary since '92.
A lot has changed in 32 years. But really it's just the same sprawl.
Yet you decided to make this post.
Calgary is similar to the 1991 Steve Martin movie LA story where he gets in his car to drive 20 feet to his neighbors house 🤣
The sprawl is enormous. Your ring road is over 100km long.
I love that i used to take one bus to my swimning pool in less than 20 minutes. The city changed routes around and now it a three bus fiasco and hours to get there ans back. I guees thats their idea of progress -_-
I dunno. I walked my dog for 35 minutes to her vet appointment today. Would I do that same walk to pick up dinner at any of the restaurants nearby? No.
I grew up in Edmonton in the '60s, and there were no such things as curved streets. We had crossing guards and "look both ways" before crossing lessons, to get to school. By the way, I attended King Edward Elementary and Junior High, anyone else here that went there around that era?
Albertans want the detached house man.. so sprawl it is. Coworkers are happy driving 2 hours plus a day for some reason 🤷♂️
Calgary is a prime example of urban sprawl
Even on the sidewalks we do have, walking beside 5 lanes of cars zooming past you and trying not to die in the 30 degree sun fucking sucks.
Wait the oil and gas capital city of Canada is not public transit friendly 😱😱😱😱😱😱 shocker
I guess it depends where you live. I don’t drive so do a lot of walking and have never really had issues. During Covid, I walked from Bowness to sunalta, hardly had to cross any roads as there are pathways all the way. Same with up to silver springs, crowfoot shopping. For many communities near the core, it’s also easy to walk into the downtown. Calgary has one of the most extensive pathway systems in North America.
I lived in Calgary in the late 80's. It was unwalkable then. While certain things may have been straight line, they definitely weren't close.
It’s a Canadian city, tells you all you need to know lol. You ever seen how big of a place Calgary is geographically?
What do u expect it’s Alberta lol
Pretty much any city on the prairies in walkable. That's why the concept of 15-minute cities is so important, regardless of what the conspiracy theorists think.
Just wait until you try the public transit
It’s bikeable but not walkable
I came to Calgary in 1982. I thought the streets were too straight! Of course in a hilly area like the Yorkshire Dales the roads are curved to get round the hills !
Street patterns often dictate house design. This is because of alleys or lack thereof. Grids you can do whatever because they usually have alleys. Curvy, tree like road layouts usually don’t have alleys because it doesn’t make sense with that design. Then typically if you have a front garage on a narrow lot there is no room left for something like a front porch. So again street layout dictates house design. Also the curvilinear road layout is not objectively safer than grids. This a complex research area and you could likely find data to fit either argument. But here is an article referencing a study showing that grids have less fatal accidents because cars drive slower in them compared to curvilinear networks. [Debunking the Cul-de-Sac](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-09-19/the-problem-with-cul-de-sac-design) It’s all very interesting nonetheless. I just moved from a curvilinear neighborhood into a modern grid neighborhood but in a cul de sac. So I hope to get the best of both worlds, time will tell.
Calgary is absolutely not a walkable city what are you on about.
Reading comprehension go *brrrrrrr*.
It's all about where in the city you live. I just looked up my address and it is a 98 WalkScore.
DT, inner city surrounding: ok Longest pathway system in NA: nice for leisure, not necessarily for amenities Suburbs: lol
The longest pathway system in North America is probably what it takes just to go to visit the neighbours in that mess of urban sprawl!
I don’t know of any walkable city in Canada. They almost all have walkable neighbourhoods. But the City? It’s a misnomer for cities over 100,000 people.
Vancouver is extremely walkable. I've lived in Calgary, YVR, and Edmonton. Calgary was the absolute worst by far. Edmonton is actually quite decent even if I have to fight for my life not to be run over by a cyclist, lol.
I've lived all over Alberta. Having been to Vancouver and Toronto recently, the difference in ease of getting around without a car in YYZ/YVR compared to any Alberta city was eye-opening.
It's a huge difference. I went to Montreal for the first time in 2022 and was blown away at their transit system. I don't speak French, but I was able to get around with very few problems, and I also found the areas I frequented were walkable. Alberta is still in the dark ages by comparison with regards to transit.
I think it’s a bit of a misnomer because it’s all about how you reach amenities. The big cities all have neighborhoods with walkable amenities of varying degrees. I live in one within Calgary. But which city has best transit to get to those neighborhoods varies. Calgary’s transit sucks. But do you really need to drive to get groceries or go swimming? Driving to the big box stores is a thing in most cities. But we do have a good little grocery store, drug store, post office, community halls and schools. Churches too. So, I would say no more than any other place. Any league sport means driving all over for games. Calgary does have a very good bicycle path system they almost failed us for. Edmonton’s LRT is better as its stations were all at grade—if not still—making it very accessible. Montreal’s transit was excellent to move from neighbourhood to neighbourhood when I was last there about 7-8 years ago. It’s not unlike the new term 15 minute communities. We used to call them neighbourhoods.
Idk edmonton is hard for me to separate from calgary--both are basically like 3 streets of good(ish) city walkin and then otherwise industrial or suburbs, and the best of it is really bike/pedestrian paths in our nice natural areas like Edmonton's river valley or our bow river walkways. I guess Edmonton maybe has better nightlife? That's probably a big help.
I found Montreal very walkable, outside of the suburbs and stuff. It did feel like everything was "downtown" because it doesnt sprawl like we do so there's no clear "this is downtown" area imo but everything there felt only ever a walk away Vancouver too, and toronto to a degree. The streets are a lot livelier. That said, one thing in defense of calgary, as much as we lose character from renaming the streets the grid system we use downtown is absolutely aces for navigating (give or take the one-ways)
Victoria is very walkable -- the city proper extremely so, but also the core capital region in general due to relatively dense housing and the prevalence of neighbourhood high streets.
Ty. I have not been in years. Good to know :)
All 3 cities (Vancouver, Toronto & Victoria) I’ve lived in have been very walkable. Car was optional in all 3 (I was carfree for 7 years in Vancouver and now newly carfree in Victoria).
This realllly depends on neighborhood. And where you need to walk to. Are you going to walk from your 2010's suburb to downtown for work everyday? Probably not. But you could walk from your inner City residence to your downtown job. Are you going to walk to the Costco? Probably not. But you could walk to your local grocer or corner store.
You have to choose where to live if you want a walkable version of Calgary for sure
OP has never left the province obviously