An Accident A Day - May 1st 2007

FIX THE DEERFOOT

Every day it seems there’s another accident on Deerfoot Trail. Typically, after each incident, there are calls to lower the speed limit on the road (from the current 100km/h) but is speed really the problem? Perhaps there are other significant factors that should be addressed.

Deerfoot Trail is Calgary’s main north-south highway. It’s the only road in any direction that allows a driver to traverse Calgary without stopping at lights or stop signs. Consequently, it is by far the quickest north-south route and thus is always busy.

The state of repair of the road is poor to say the least.  There are many bumps and undulations caused by heavy use and subsidence. In places, the road has worn so badly that there are tire tracks along each lane making changing lanes a bumpy experience. Almost all the paint delineating the lanes has worn away, making it very difficult to see where you should be driving. All these factors contribute to the difficulty of driving the Deerfoot and make it inevitable that accidents will happen. Major work is required to fix these problems, including digging down and replacing the foundations that are simply not robust enough for the amount and weight of traffic.

The design of Deerfoot makes it inevitable that frequent and significant lane changes are necessary in order to drive along it. Lanes appear seemingly from nowhere and disappear again with alarming regularity. On the bridge over Glenmore Trail, it is only two lanes wide in each direction. At the junction with Bow Bottom Trail/Anderson Road heading south, half the lanes split off. Anyone unfamiliar with the road has to change lanes frequently in order to make progress and changing lanes is always dangerous. Combine that with the regular drivers who are changing lanes to make the best progress they can at the highest speed they can (without necessarily exceeding the limit) and it is all an accident waiting to happen. A much better design would be to have a constant three lanes of Deerfoot in each direction with four lanes between junctions. Then, the inside of the four lanes is always an exit only lane and there is always an option to turn off from the adjacent lane into a two lane slip road. For traffic entering Deerfoot, the on ramp becomes the fourth lane again leaving plenty of time for drivers to merge over before the next exit.

The Calf Robe bridge over the Bow River is another area where accidents happen with depressing regularity. The approach to the bridge curves at both ends in order to make the crossing. This make it impossible to see what is happening up ahead. Combine that with the ice that forms first on the bridge when the weather is cold then any slowing of the traffic ahead causes skidding and accidents. Realigning the road is not really a viable option so why not provide better warnings and enforce variable speed limits over the bridge when conditions dictate? Overhead gantrys can be used for this purpose that can also accommodate automatic speed cameras over each lane to ensure the limits are enforced.

The expense of fixing the road properly and the inevitable disruption whilst it happens makes it unlikely that the necessary action will be taken by our elected officials. They can’t even get their act together to provide us with a proper ring road or a decent east-west highway.