[2wheeler]

Since construction of the ring road access to the pastoral cycling roads of Foothills County by bicycle has become more difficult. There used to be multiple places to cross Stoney Trail (formerly 22X) at 37th and 24th St. These have been removed leaving James Mckevitt/Spruce Meadows as the westerly most place to cross the multilane highway. This amounts to nearly a 10 km detour to cross 22X.

As part of the Ring Road project Multi use pathways were installed at the western end of Fish Creek Blvd/146 Ave. These pathways connect Fish Creek Park with the Fish Creek BV overpass over the Ring Road. Unfortunately, south of the Ring road these pathways don’t connect to a crossing of Stoney Trail. The City could easily install a bike lane on 37th St and 146 Ave westbound to 53rd. These roads are currently gravel and in terrible shape. When the City paves these roads it would make sense to have some simple cycling infrastructure to connect to Spruce Meadows Gr SW (the connector road on the South side of the Stoney Trail).

What’s the best way to bring this to the attention of the City? 311? Does Bike Calgary maintain a list of missing infrastructure? Local City Councillor?

[sclim]

A particularly grating omission, ok, glaring omission (so as not to be misinterpreted on a bike forum) is the absence of a usable bike connection between the junction of 96 St with Spruce Meadows Green SW on to Spruce Meadows Trail, which used to be Highway 22x, and directly joined to 96 St.

It used to be you could bike up from Woodbine, up 37 St (hair-raising narrow road) to Highway 22x, bike west to the junction with Highway 22, then bike south to Millarville, Turner Valley, whatever; then on the way back turn east on 274 Ave for a variant return and come out on 96 St onto Highway 22x; and merely crossing the twinned Highway 22x (there was a good, safe, well-signed cross-road there) would get you back to 37 St and a direct route back home.

But now, you would come out of 96 St, and you are stuck going a huge detour east, as 2wheeler has stated, to Spruce Meadows/James Mckevitt Trail. A tantalizing point shortly after leaving 96 st eastward on Spruce Meadows Green is where Spruce Meadows Green passes within a few feet of the ramp loop from Spruce Meadows Trail to Northbound Stoney Trail. I have been tempted to do the Cross Country/Gravel Bike option across the grass to make the leap, but it is only a dry weather option and might actually be more hazardous than it looks.

[Author]

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