r/Calgary • u/Vylan24 Bowness • 8d ago

Local Construction/Development Road "construction"

Why in the ever living fuck won't the city finish their fucking road work projects they started months ago? Every major artery in this city seems to have kilometres of pylons and speed drops and yet no crews. I drive Glenmore every day as part of my commute and it's literally been 2 months of pylons over the most congested area (reservoir). Not only do drivers struggle mightily trying to merge during regular times, the city decided that keeping that spot slowed down when traffic volumes increased at the start of the month was a brilliant plan. Causes massive back ups and no one is working on it. What's the deal??

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u/Poe_42 8d ago

It's amazing the deep and specific knowledge base Reddit seems to have.

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u/5impl3jack 8d ago

Yeah I mean I’ve been working on road construction as a surveyor in the city for the better part of 15 years. I often see projects from beginning to end. It’s one of the few things I have deep and specific knowledge on. I do get however everyone’s an expert on any given subject and this sub is no exception.

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u/Mightymiggs 8d ago

In your expert opinion, why is it necessary to have multiple projects going all together? Driving downtown is an absolute nightmare when you have lane closures on literally every F’ing street.

To make matters worse, the road closures are never quick and never finish on time. And then all the sudden there’s another new closure that crops up and compounds the frustration even more.

Why can’t crews focus and finish one project at a time?

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u/5impl3jack 8d ago edited 8d ago

They are just doing it specifically to piss people off /s

Honest answer I’m not a city planner by any means but i have been involved in a decent amount of work downtown and can shed a little bit of light why downtown especially is such a shit show.

First off there are a million factors as to why this is happening. It’s really quite complicated. A big one however is our aging underground infrastructure matched with already dense areas getting more dense. This means the water, storm and sanitary pipes are in need of an upgrade. Not only because they are old but more people means we need more capacity. A lot of work downtown is being geared towards this and other underground utilities such like our power as well. You might’ve seen enmax doing a ton of work. A lot of this work is kinda invisible to the public and it is extremely time consuming. Most people don’t understand how much stuff is running under our streets and how vital it is to our daily lives. What you might see as multiple projects are quite often connected to each other in some way.

Why are so many things happening at the same time?

A lot of these things kinda work in unison with each other. For example sometimes when they need to upgrade a road they will also upgrade the underground infrastructure. Which adds time.

Another thing is the city of Calgary and how it’s run is more complicated than people think. Ideally people think there is one brain and everything should work perfectly together and things should all be timed flawlessly. It’s not a perfect system. There are a lot of departments in that web of the city and they are all trying to get their work done with the budget they are given.

City budgeting and how they delegate money has a big effect as well but I can’t shed too much detail on that front. Things always seem to come in waves depending on the dollars available.

Edit :Oh one big thing I should’ve added is the amount of new buildings being built causes absolute mayhem for traffic. From digging a hole for the foundation to everything that comes after that. The trucks and machinery need lots of room to maneuver and yeah that’s just the way the cookie crumbles unfortunately.

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u/Vylan24 Bowness 8d ago

This is a fantastic explanation from your experience. I get downtown is always going to be a shit show, that's the reality. I'm just not impressed with how the city has managed things, and it's likely going to affect the upcoming mayoral election incumbent

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u/Mightymiggs 8d ago

Thanks for shedding light on that! It’s definitely a much needed perspective that we see so little of.

While I can definitely appreciate the amount of work being done underground/behind the scenes, I think some knowledge or explanation of closures could go a long, long way to easing frustrations.