Centre Street is a major road in

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Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

, and defines the east and west halves of the city for the purposes of street addresses (i.e. NW, SW, NE, SE).

Route description

The main segment of Centre Street is an

arterial road An arterial road or arterial thoroughfare is a high-capacity urban road that sits below freeways/motorways on the road hierarchy in terms of traffic flow and speed. The primary function of an arterial road is to deliver traffic from collector ro ...

that extends from 9 Avenue S, at the base of the

Calgary Tower The Calgary Tower is a free standing observation tower in the downtown core of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Originally called the Husky Tower, it was conceived as a joint venture between Marathon Realty Company Limited and Husky Oil as part of an ...

Downtown Calgary Downtown Calgary is a dense urban district in central Calgary, Alberta. It contains the second largest concentration of head offices in Canada, despite only being the country's fourth largest city in terms of population. The downtown is divided i ...

. The roadway passes through

Chinatown A Chinatown () is an ethnic enclave of Chinese people located outside Greater China, most often in an urban setting. Areas known as "Chinatown" exist throughout the world, including Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa and Austra ...

, crosses the

Bow River The Bow River is a river in Alberta, Canada. It begins within the Canadian Rocky Mountains and winds through the Alberta foothills onto the prairies, where it meets the Oldman River, the two then forming the South Saskatchewan River. These w ...

, to the Beddington Boulevard, after which it becomes a residential street and becomes unavailable to private vehicular traffic north of Bergen Crescent (the road continues, but it is only accessible to

Calgary Transit Calgary Transit is the public transit agency which is owned and operated by the city of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. In 2019, an estimated 106.5 million passengers boarded approximately 1,155 Calgary Transit vehicles. It operates light metro (LRT), u ...

and emergency vehicles). The road resumes immediately north of the "bus trap" at

Beddington Trail Beddington is a suburban settlement in the London Borough of Sutton on the boundary with the London Borough of Croydon. Beddington is formed from a village of the same name which until early the 20th century still included land which became t ...

, where it continues as Harvest Hills Boulevard. When the roadway crosses

Stoney Trail Alberta Provincial Highway No. 201, officially named Stoney Trail and Tsuut'ina Trail, is an approximately freeway in Calgary, Alberta. It forms part of the CANAMEX Corridor which connects Calgary to Edmonton and Interstate 15 in ...

, the name reverts to Centre Street N and the road continues north and exits the city limits at Highway 566. In the downtown section, Centre Street is lined by some of Calgary's landmark buildings, such as the Encana Bow building,

Suncor Energy Centre The Suncor Energy Centre, formerly the Petro-Canada Centre, is a project composed of two granite and reflective glass-clad office towers of 32 floors and 52 floors, situated in the office core of downtown Calgary, Alberta. The Council on Tall B ...

(formerly Petro-Canada Centre), the Dragon City Mall, Telus building, Hyatt Regncy hotel and Calgary Tower. Several non-contiguous sections of Centre Street appear sporadically south of the Calgary Tower, including a segment between 10 Avenue S and 18 Avenue S, also known as ''Volunteer Way''; and a

collector road A collector road or distributor road is a low-to-moderate-capacity road which serves to move traffic from local streets to arterial roads. Unlike arterials, collector roads are designed to provide access to residential properties. Rarely, juris ...

running from 58 Avenue S to

Glenmore Trail Glenmore Trail is a expressway in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, named after the reservoir which it crosses. It is a freeway between Sarcee Trail in southwest Calgary to Ogden Road in the southeast, carrying nearly 160,000 vehicles per weekday at ...

, where it continues to the south as Fairmount Drive.

Macleod Trail Macleod Trail is a major road in Calgary, Alberta. It is a six- to eight-lane principal arterial road extending from downtown Calgary to the south of the city, where it merges into Highway 2. South of Anderson Road, Macleod Trail is an express ...

forms the division between southwest and southeast quadrants between Glenmore Trail and Highway 22X, while further south the quadrant boundaries are defined by Sheriff King Street.

Future

The Centre Street N / Harvest Hills Boulevard corridor is chosen alignment for the north leg of the proposed CTrain Green Line, running from downtown Calgary to the North Pointe transit terminal near Country Village Road. Harvest Hills Boulevard was constructed with a wide

right-of-way Right of way is the legal right, established by grant from a landowner or long usage (i.e. by prescription), to pass along a specific route through property belonging to another. A similar ''right of access'' also exists on land held by a gov ...

to accommodate future LRT construction; however, the section along Centre Street N would require either lane removal or property expropriation. The majority of the rail line would be surface-level, with tunnels at selected major intersections as well as major tunnel across the Bow River and through downtown Calgary. Funding has not been finalized for the project.

Centre Street Bridge

The Centre Street Bridge was built by the City of Calgary in 1916 over the

for $375,000 replacing a steel truss bridge built by a land developer called the Centre Street Bridge Company Limited.

Calgary Public Library The Calgary Public Library (CPL) is a distributed library system featuring 21 branch locations including the Central Library. It is the second most used system in Canada (after the Toronto Public Library) and the sixth most used library system in ...

Centre Street Bridge
It was designed by John F. Green, featured an upper and lower deck, and large cast concrete lions on four massive plinths, two at each end of the bridge. It went through extensive restoration in 2001, when the bridge was closed for one year. The opening scene of the 2001

Steven Seagal Steven Frederic Seagal (; born April 10, 1952) is an American actor, screenwriter and martial artist. A 7th-dan black belt in aikido, he began his adult life as a martial arts instructor in Japan and eventually ended up running his father-in-l ...

movie

Exit Wounds ''Exit Wounds'' is a 2001 American action film directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak, and starring Steven Seagal and DMX. The film is based on the book of the same name by John Westermann. The book takes place on Long Island, while the film is set in D ...

was filmed on the bridge during this closure.

Calgary Transit Bus Routes

The following

bus routes serves Centre Street (as of September 2021, communities served are in parentheses): *Route 2 Killarney/17th Ave./Mount Pleasant (Beddington Heights, Crescent Heights) *Route 3 Heritage Station/Sandstone (Crescent Heights, Tuxedo Park, Highland Park, Thorncliffe, Huntington Hills, Beddington Heights) *Route 4 Huntington (Huntington Hills) *Route 5 North Haven (Huntington Hills) *Route 17 Ramsay/Renfrew (Crescent Heights) *Route 20 Heritage/Northmount (Huntington Hills) *Route 32 Sunridge/Huntington (Huntington Hills, Beddington Heights) *Route 46 Beddington Heights (Beddington Heights, Huntington Hills) *Route 62 Hidden Valley Express (Crescent Heights, Tuxedo Park, Highland Park, Thorncliffe, Huntington Hills) *Route 64 MacEwan Express (Crescent Heights, Tuxedo Park, Highland Park, Thorncliffe, Huntington Hills) *Route 88 Harvest Hills (Beddington Heights, Huntington Hills) *Route 109 Harvest Hills Express (Crescent Heights, Tuxedo Park, Highland Park, Thorncliffe, Huntington Hills, Beddington Heights) *Route 114 Panorama Hills (Huntington Hills, Beddington Heights) *Route 116 Coventry Hills Express (Crescent Heights, Tuxedo Park, Highland Park, Thorncliffe, Huntington Hills, Beddington Heights) *Route 142 Panorama Hills Express (Crescent Heights, Tuxedo Park, Highland Park, Thorncliffe, Huntington Hills, Beddington Heights) *Route 300 BRT Airport/City Centre (Thorncliffe, Highland Park, Tuxedo Park, Crescent Heights) *Route 301 BRT North/City Centre (Crescent Heights, Tuxedo Park, Highland Park, Thorncliffe, Huntington Hills, Beddington Heights)

Major intersections

From south to north.

References