page_title: Transportation in Calgary
section_title: Organization
hierarchical_section_title: Transportation in Calgary / Roads and streets / Organization
caption_attribution_description: English: Calgary skyline view from west
context_page_description: The city of Calgary, Alberta, has a large transportation network that encompasses a variety of road, rail, air, public transit, and pedestrian infrastructure. Calgary is also a major Canadian transportation centre and a central cargo hub for freight in and out of north-western North America. The city sits at the junction between the "Canamex" highway system and the Trans-Canada Highway.
  As a prairie city, Calgary has never had any major impediments to growth. As such, it has developed into a city with an area of about 745 km² and a metropolitan area of nearly 5,100 km². This outward growth has encouraged the development of an extensive personal vehicle-oriented road network complete with a freeway system.
  Since 1981, when the city officially opened the first leg of its CTrain rapid transit system, emphasis on public transportation as an alternative to cars has become important. The CTrain has the second-highest light rail system ridership of any North American city, only slightly behind Guadalajara, Mexico. Cycling is also seen as a major alternative to driving in Calgary.
context_section_description: Traditionally Calgary's roads were built on a grid system.  Originally, the streets and avenues were named, but after 1904, they were numbered.   Today, numbered Avenues (running east–west) and Streets (running north–south) dominate the city, although names appear to be making a comeback.  The city is divided into four quadrants: Northeast, Northwest, Southeast and Southwest, and all street names and addresses end with suffixes corresponding to the quadrant of the city in which they lie (NW, NE, SE or SW). The central point of the quadrant system is the Centre Street Bridge, with Centre Street and Centre Avenue forming the boundaries (although the points vary; most of the south end has Macleod Trail as a boundary, except near Chinook Centre where Macleod Trail bends westward; in the west end, the Bow River forms the boundary for the most part). Roads in predominantly suburban residential areas as well as freeways and expressways do not generally conform to the grid and are usually not numbered as a result (although some suburban streets are indeed numbered if they fall in place on the grid).
  The main lines on the grid are fairly evenly distributed at intervals of about 1 mile (1.6 km) where an arterial road (or expressway) is usually situated (on former Township and Range Roads). They are at roughly the following Streets and Avenues (although not always named as such):
  Avenues north of downtown: 16th, 32nd, 48th, 64th, 80th, 96th, 112th, 128th, 144th
  Avenues south of downtown: 17th, 34th, 50th, 66th, 82nd, 90th, 114th, 130th, 146th, 162nd, 178th, 194th
  Streets east of downtown: 6th, 15th, 24th, 36th, 52nd, 68th, 84th
  Streets west of downtown: 14th, 24th, 37th, 53rd, 69th, 85th, 101st, 117th
  A quirk of the numbering is that it was intended for addresses on numbered streets to begin at 100 (not 0) at Centre Street and Centre Avenue and move out accordingly. For example, 545 16th Avenue NW lies between 4th and 5th Streets NW. There are many violations of such, however, especially in suburban areas. The highest address numbers are found on north–south streets in the southernmost suburbs, where they approach 20000.
caption: Bow Trail heading east into downtown
exif: {}