Calgary Transit: Ridership growth

[srperrycgy]

Originally Posted by WIGS

So since the 1Q2013 numbers are out, I decided to re-do comparison using all 1Q numbers

Nice work on this. There are no numbers for March 2001 because there was no transit that month due to a strike.

[Wigs]

^Thanks.
And Thanks for the info about the transit strike.
I just thought it was a reporting issue
(always good to hear from long time Calgarians with greater knowledge of this city)

[kw5150]

Wow, one year growth is equal to the growth (in numbers) from 2006 to 2011.

Very nice Calgary.

Originally Posted by WIGS

So since the 1Q2013 numbers are out, I decided to re-do comparison using all 1Q numbers

[Full Mountain]

Originally Posted by WIGS

So since the 1Q2013 numbers are out, I decided to re-do comparison using all 1Q numbers

Interesting that we are approaching 50% mode share (rail vs. bus)

[MasterG]

Originally Posted by Full Mountain

Interesting that we are approaching 50% mode share (rail vs. bus)

Yes its been quite the growth story.

I am getting the feeling that focusing on some Bus infrastructure might be the lowest hanging fruit now with the West LRT finished.

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by WIGS

(always good to hear from long time Calgarians with greater knowledge of this city)

Anyone who's on a first name basis with Transit Teddy is bound to know his shit.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by freeweed

Anyone who's on a first name basis with Transit Teddy is bound to know his shit.

Quote of the day

[Chadillaccc]

According to the Q3 2013 report, our Ctrain ridership is down by almost 25 000? Yet it shows a YTD growth of over 7% and a quarterly change of almost 4.3%


http://www.apta.com/resources/statis...rship-APTA.pdf

[Northski]

2013Q3 is up over 2012Q3 but down compared to 2013Q2. Q3 includes the summer so it is usually lower than Q2 for the same year.

[Chadillaccc]

The summer is lower? Ohhh right because of the lack of students. Hmmm, but it even says that there was a quarterly growth though, but yet the Q2 report put LRT ridership at 290 000, didn't it?

Edit: Nope that was Q1.

Looking forward to our Q4 2013 and Q1 2014 reports! Should be well-over 300 000 now that the West Line will be included in the winter number, plus just the explosive growth of ridership in general.

[Full Mountain]

Originally Posted by Chadillaccc

The summer is lower? Ohhh right because of the lack of students. Hmmm, but it even says that there was a quarterly growth though, but yet the Q2 report put LRT ridership at 290 000, didn't it?

Edit: Nope that was Q1.

Looking forward to our Q4 2013 and Q1 2014 reports! Should be well-over 300 000 now that the West Line will be included in the winter number, plus just the explosive growth of ridership in general.

And people taking vacation

[suburbia]

Was really sad for all the people who work in downtown this morning, as well as for all of the businesses that have consolidated to a single location downtown. Issues with transit this morning brought everything to a halt. All the more reason for more than one major commercial centre.

[youngregina]

Or all the more reason to have the green line built to create a small redundancy in the system. SW line goes down, people can move to the green line to get downtown. Shuttles are better capable of handling small amounts of people from one station or two, then to have to take over the entire capacity of 2 lines. Albeit, this just happened for a few hours.

[Trans Canada]

Originally Posted by youngregina

Or all the more reason to have the green line built to create a small redundancy in the system. SW line goes down, people can move to the green line to get downtown. Shuttles are better capable of handling small amounts of people from one station or two, then to have to take over the entire capacity of 2 lines. Albeit, this just happened for a few hours.

Please ignore the troll "suburbia", don't waste your time...

[RicoLance21]

I am not going to argue anymore beyond this. Our downtown is one of the healthiest in North America. Also, we are fortunate that Calgary is largely a unicity--with Airdrie being the only significant bedroom city in the metro area. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a unidowntown too. It promotes consolidation of offices and densification by having one humongous core. Downtown is where the heart is!

[fusili]

Originally Posted by RicoLance21

I am not going to argue anymore beyond this. Our downtown is one of the healthiest in North America. Also, we are fortunate that Calgary is largely a unicity--with Airdrie being the only significant bedroom city in the metro area. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a unidowntown too. It promotes consolidation of offices and densification by having one humongous core. Downtown is where the heart is!

We have the second highest commercial office concentration in north America (next to NYC) with 61% of all office space in the CBD. We have the 5th highest transit ridership in the US and Canada (after NYC, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver). It's not a coincidence that the highest transit ridership is highly correlated to a concentrated downtown. Despite the rhetoric arguing the opposite, concentrating office employment into a single centre (or two in the case of New York) is the best thing for mobility in a city, not to mention a vibrant urban culture.

[MasterG]

I was bored. Therefore, I created this map from the 2014 community tables and looked at aggregating some data. I know the City of Calgary publishes fancy, colour-coded ones but I can't seem to find them easily for the most recent data. I used the community tables to cross-reference various data elements.

I am particularly interested in Calgary's NW post-secondary institutions because it seems as if they are often ignored from a city planning perspective (at least compared to the mighty downtown). They also are enormously important for attracting youth, another area that Calgary's family-centric planning tends to fall down more often than not. Notable for Calgary, the area is substantially more robust that many transitional neighbourhoods due to a constant demand for young people attending U of C, SAIT and ACAD. These institutions continue to grow and are finally starting to pull their own demand in land-use changes, infills and other developments.

This map shows is percentages by community reporting active (walking + bicycle) and transit usage as their primary commuting modes of transportation. For example, Banff Trail = 47%, meaning that 47% use transit, walking or bicycles. Note that car-pooling and work from home were also reported, so it does not necessarily mean that the other 53% were drivers.

My initial thoughts after plotting this:

• Despite high or majority of residents reporting non-car commuting and travel modes, pedestrian friendly land-uses effectively only exist in Sunnyside, Hillhurst and pockets on the campuses (while as a whole being far better than most neighbourhoods further out).
• The area (as expected) is substantially heavily weighted to the younger population. Nearly all neighbourhoods are far above the Calgary average for the 20-34 age group.
• Several neighbourhoods report nearly 50% aged 20-34. Calgary as a whole is 24%.
• Several neighbourhoods reporting lower percentages (Charleswood, Collinwood etc.) are also significantly older.
• Apart from Kensington, where are all the services for these young people? I would have expected more bars (of the calibre that university-aged people would want to attend) to try to take advantage in this area. Currently, Beltline captures pretty much all significant youth, late night pedestrian-focused traffic.
  [**]Perhaps this will be the next phase of redevelopment is another late-night bar / restaurant node forming around these institutions.

I will put together a few more now that I shaped the relational data properly for easy access. Enjoy. Also: if someone has access and knows what I am talking about, post the official City of Calgary colour-coded ones! They are far superior

[Full Mountain]

Originally Posted by MasterG

I was bored. Therefore, I created this map from the 2014 community tables and looked at aggregating some data. I know the City of Calgary publishes fancy, colour-coded ones but I can't seem to find them easily for the most recent data. I used the community tables to cross-reference various data elements.

I am particularly interested in Calgary's NW post-secondary institutions because it seems as if they are often ignored from a city planning perspective (at least compared to the mighty downtown). They also are enormously important for attracting youth, another area that Calgary's family-centric planning tends to fall down more often than not. Notable for Calgary, the area is substantially more robust that many transitional neighbourhoods due to a constant demand for young people attending U of C, SAIT and ACAD. These institutions continue to grow and are finally starting to pull their own demand in land-use changes, infills and other developments.

This map shows is percentages by community reporting active (walking + bicycle) and transit usage as their primary commuting modes of transportation. For example, Banff Trail = 47%, meaning that 47% use transit, walking or bicycles. Note that car-pooling and work from home were also reported, so it does not necessarily mean that the other 53% were drivers.

My initial thoughts after plotting this:

• Despite high or majority of residents reporting non-car commuting and travel modes, pedestrian friendly land-uses effectively only exist in Sunnyside, Hillhurst and pockets on the campuses (while as a whole being far better than most neighbourhoods further out).
• The area (as expected) is substantially heavily weighted to the younger population. Nearly all neighbourhoods are far above the Calgary average for the 20-34 age group.
• Several neighbourhoods report nearly 50% aged 20-34. Calgary as a whole is 24%.
• Several neighbourhoods reporting lower percentages (Charleswood, Collinwood etc.) are also significantly older.
• Apart from Kensington, where are all the services for these young people? I would have expected more bars (of the calibre that university-aged people would want to attend) to try to take advantage in this area. Currently, Beltline captures pretty much all significant youth, late night pedestrian-focused traffic.
  [**]Perhaps this will be the next phase of redevelopment is another late-night bar / restaurant node forming around these institutions.

I will put together a few more now that I shaped the relational data properly for easy access. Enjoy. Also: if someone has access and knows what I am talking about, post the official City of Calgary colour-coded ones! They are far superior

One thought, just because you are 20-34 doesn't make you a student, particularly as you get past 25 the % in full time school would drop dramatically. Also I know for myself, when I went back to school at 24-25 I was also working, so I had little time to go to bars or do much of anything really. The portion of the 20-34 age range that is in full time studies and has the spare time for bars is likely the 20-22 range after that you would either be a mature student or pursuing post grad work if your a student.