The Plus 15 is how downtown Calgarians, and visitors to the downtown, get around. Especially in winter.
We are excited to reveal McElhanney has been awarded the 2020 Stan Teply Outstanding Technical Project Award. Along with subconsultants Level Playing Field, Dialog, and Entro, McElhanney developed a long-term network plan for the City of Calgary’s Plus 15 – a 16km-long network of climate-controlled, above ground pedestrian corridors and bridges in downtown Calgary, named after its height in feet above the ground.
In a “normal” year, the award would have been presented at the annual Canadian Institute of Transportation Engineers (CITE) conference. Instead, check out the announcement in the latest issue of Transportation Talk here.
The Plus 15 began in the 1970s, and is heavily used during winter, when cold temperatures and snowy, slippery sidewalks pose mobility challenges for pedestrians. The network provides an attractive means of travel, and is popular, with some links serving up to 32,000 pedestrians per day.
This unique transportation planning assignment, which involved significant collaboration with stakeholders and the public, identified ways to improve linkages, accessibility, wayfinding, placemaking, and hours of operation. The final report addressed how the network is used and accessed, its infrastructure, and an implementation strategy that included short, medium, and long-term improvements.
The Canadian Institute of Engineers (CITE) award the Stan Teply Outstanding Technical Project Award to projects demonstrating excellence in technical achievement in transportation planning and / or engineering. Submissions are assessed for technical content and transferability of principles, complexity and innovation, meeting project expectations, and overall presentation.
The award’s namesake, Dr. Stan Teply, is an icon in the Canadian transportation industry, having developed the Canadian Capacity Guide throughout the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s.
Congratulations to the McElhanney team on this win! You can learn more about the project here.
McElhanney’s study identified existing challenges and improvements that could be made to the system.
