West LRT | 7 Stations | 8.0 KM | In Service

[Riise]

Originally Posted by Mike Wilhelm

A "stick it to the man" attitude - characteristic of some less enlightened political and administrative elements at city hall.

Or a tool used by politicians when unreasonable parties refuse to buy into plans that have no additional wiggle room.

[Doug]

Originally Posted by Mike Wilhelm

Nothing you say here indicates why extending a 10-12 block tunnel four blocks by way of a trench is a bad idea. Numerous streets under the tunnel are not busy. It should have been in the original plan, and is one of many elements that got missed due to the rushed November 2007 alignment approval process. "NIMBYs" might have nothing to do with it. I'm thinking that if it was proposed by city adminstration first, you'd be all over it.

As I said, 45th is not busy and never will be. Use the money for grade separation in places where the combined ROW is a problem: ex. 7th Ave, 36th Street by Marlborough Mall, 25th Ave, or put in towards the SE line.

[Doug]

Originally Posted by Sir.Humphrey.Appleby

^ The original revised plan, before it went to council the first time didn't have any tunnels. The Westgate mall section was to be elevated. But that is why we have politicians, to make these decisions when they see what the 'cheapest' option is, and all the negative impacts of that decision. (The original plan was to be ultra cheap since it was developed before MSI funding was there to help)

The decision to go underground at Westbrook also seems silly. Sure a short tunnel is needed under Bow Trail, but with the school being demolished and Westbrook Mall likely to be redeveloped, the tunnel and underground station are a waste of money.

[Doug]

Originally Posted by SubwayRev

I think the difference is that in the late 70's, when the LRT was first being built, Calgary was a small city of 400,000 with 0 train trips. Now, Calgary is a city of 1,100,000 and nearly 300,000 train trips per day. We can no longer plan and build our train system like that of a small town. That "cheaper" system was good for the initial construction of the LRT and the establishment of a ridership, but now that we've reached that point and the city is nearing a critical mass of people, we need to plan and build the train properly the first time, so that in 20 or 30 years we will not have more projects like the 8th Ave subway be necessary.
.

45th Street is no busier with Calgary at 1.1M than it was with Calgary at 400K.

[mersar]

Originally Posted by Doug

45th Street is no busier with Calgary at 1.1M than it was with Calgary at 400K.

And its far busier then 25th Ave S and yet we almost all agree we need an interchange there too. Its not so much the traffic on 45th (or 25th ave either) thats the issue, its the implications on the cross road. And 17th is a hell of a lot busier now then it was 20 years ago, and will continue to get busier as more development happens west. And 45th does carry a decent traffic load, I heard reference the other day to the volume being comparable to Southland Drive

As for going underground at Westbrook, the reason for that is more financial then technical. If they didn't, you'd end up with essentially a wall blocking all future development on that parcel on 2 sides, future development which is being used as an incentive to the winning consortium to keep the overall costs for the project low. Very similar effect to what happened around Banff Trail with how the CTrain goes through there compared to before

[AirGuitarChampion]

Originally Posted by mersar

And its far busier then 25th Ave S and yet we almost all agree we need an interchange there too. Its not so much the traffic on 45th (or 25th ave either) thats the issue, its the implications on the cross road. And 17th is a hell of a lot busier now then it was 20 years ago, and will continue to get busier as more development happens west. And 45th does carry a decent traffic load, I heard reference the other day to the volume being comparable to Southland Drive

As for going underground at Westbrook, the reason for that is more financial then technical. If they didn't, you'd end up with essentially a wall blocking all future development on that parcel on 2 sides, future development which is being used as an incentive to the winning consortium to keep the overall costs for the project low. Very similar effect to what happened around Banff Trail with how the CTrain goes through there compared to before

I would think also that if you're tunnelling under 17th/37th intersection AND Bow Tr / 33rd, perhaps there isn't enough room to make the up/down grades at either end of 4-5 car long station. I could be wrong.

I'm happy about the trenching. It's not that 45th carries the traffic (and apparently it does??), it's that 17th will get backed up to one lane each way when the cars wanting to turn north cant when they miss a light opportunity due to LRT crossing.

[Mike Wilhelm]

Originally Posted by Doug

As I said, 45th is not busy and never will be. Use the money for grade separation in places where the combined ROW is a problem: ex. 7th Ave, 36th Street by Marlborough Mall, 25th Ave, or put in towards the SE line.

Originally Posted by Doug

The decision to go underground at Westbrook also seems silly. Sure a short tunnel is needed under Bow Trail, but with the school being demolished and Westbrook Mall likely to be redeveloped, the tunnel and underground station are a waste of money.

This bureaucratic "problem/solution" approach is what got us the Marborough mess in the first place.

Calgary has made LRT mistakes elsewhere. As a city of 1.1 million with an established LRT system, citizens are keenly aware of prior decisions to cut corners. They are now deeply mistrustful of this line of thinking.

Communities want vision, and can see the city's "problem/solution" and "stick it to the man" approaches have panned out before.

So then - how does a "budget" plan support the larger objective of encouraging density with an attractive LRT transit subsidy on the west side?

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by mersar

And its far busier then 25th Ave S and yet we almost all agree we need an interchange there too. Its not so much the traffic on 45th (or 25th ave either) thats the issue, its the implications on the cross road. And 17th is a hell of a lot busier now then it was 20 years ago, and will continue to get busier as more development happens west. And 45th does carry a decent traffic load, I heard reference the other day to the volume being comparable to Southland Drive

As for going underground at Westbrook, the reason for that is more financial then technical. If they didn't, you'd end up with essentially a wall blocking all future development on that parcel on 2 sides, future development which is being used as an incentive to the winning consortium to keep the overall costs for the project low. Very similar effect to what happened around Banff Trail with how the CTrain goes through there compared to before

I find the Southland 45 comparison thing hard to believe. I think the statistics cited are likely about total intersection movements at 17th/45th crossed compared to southland interesections, not solely 45th crossings.

[SubwayRev]

Originally Posted by Sir.Humphrey.Appleby

I find the Southland 45 comparison thing hard to believe. I think the statistics cited are likely about total intersection movements at 17th/45th crossed compared to southland interesections, not solely 45th crossings.

I was thinking that too...but even then, I'm not sure if 17th/45th can be as busy as Southland/14th.

The other thing I thought it might be was in terms of capacity...if 17th/45th is at say...150%, while Southland/14th is at 105%...or something like that.

[ByeByeBaby]

Originally Posted by mersar

And its far busier then 25th Ave S and yet we almost all agree we need an interchange there too. Its not so much the traffic on 45th (or 25th ave either) thats the issue, its the implications on the cross road. And 17th is a hell of a lot busier now then it was 20 years ago, and will continue to get busier as more development happens west. And 45th does carry a decent traffic load, I heard reference the other day to the volume being comparable to Southland Drive

45th St is half as busy as 25th Ave SE at Macleod (and, similarly, 17th Ave is half as busy as Macleod). It's 1/3 the volume of Southland at Macleod or 14th St.

The Southland based comparison that makes the most sense is Southland at Fairmount Dr SE, with 45th St taking the role of Fairmount.

17th Avenue at 45th St is as busy (30K vehicles per day) as Southland at Macleod, but that's a pretty ridiculous comparison to make, since the train wouldn't be crossing 17th at grade, trench or no. 36th St NE is in the same range as 17th Avenue, but the shopping probably creates much higher turn volumes than a residential community will; unless the residents in the area are keen on very high-density skyscraper development there, in which case it makes sense to reconsider.

Certainly traffic will increase to some degree on 17th Avenue with future development. But if steps are taken, such as, for instance, building a high-speed, high-capacity rail system parallel to it, that will do an awful lot to mitigate the traffic growth.

Traffic flow data from the most recent City flow map; note that roads with less than 10000 vehicles per day, including 45th St, are not shown.

[Mike Wilhelm]

See my prior post - I would argue that the Heritage and Southland level crossings might have been the result of corners cut in the past. ... as was no underground line downtown.

However, both are inset substantially from MacLeod Trail, which creates a "buffer" for left turn traffic that 17th and 36th St NE don't have.

[mersar]

Hmm, here's an interesting update to the 45th Street station from councils decision. They've shifted the platform west of 45th now so its beside the AMA building, so the west end will be almost at grade (maybe 1m below I'd guess), and the east end will be down in the trench. See the new renders here and here. So it won't be fully in a trench, but the platform will be on an incline. Theres also going to be a bridge at 42nd street as well as at 45th street over the tracks

[frinkprof]

Nevermind.

[frinkprof]

Nevermind.

[SubwayRev]

Originally Posted by frinkprof

To be fair, I think the "no underground line downtown," back in the late 70s was not a corner that was cut so much as it was a complete deal breaker. No above-ground option, no LRT in 1981.

All I have to go on is reasearch as I wasn't around at the time quite yet, so please feel free to correct.

I think it was more like Doug mentioned earlier; if we had built a tunnel, we'd have a bare bones system like Edmonton. Instead of spending all that money on burying the dowtown portion, we spent the money on building three lines in 6 years.

However, the flip side, is now we need to go back and fix that, while Edmonton does not.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by Mike Wilhelm

See my prior post - I would argue that the Heritage and Southland level crossings might have been the result of corners cut in the past. ... as was no underground line downtown.

However, both are inset substantially from MacLeod Trail, which creates a "buffer" for left turn traffic that 17th and 36th St NE don't have.

Well, I know Southland is likely much out of your regular commute route, but it is grade separated, as Heritage will be once that interchange is built.

In no place but at Heritage is there a level crossing of a big arterial (well, 162nd and Saddletown Circle but they were designed from the start for this)

[Dado]

Originally Posted by Mike Wilhelm

See my prior post - I would argue that the Heritage and Southland level crossings might have been the result of corners cut in the past. ... as was no underground line downtown.

Of Canada's three second-tier cities (Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa), each picked a different option/philosophy for its rapid transit development. All three started in the mid 1970s without any rapid transit to speak of. And all three were about to spend approximately the same amount of money.

Calgary opted for surface LRT downtown, and expansion as far as was possible, keeping grade separation to a minimum everywhere.

Edmonton opted for LRT as well, but installed it in a tunnel downtown. Geography helped make that an easier option, but whatever the reason, that's what they did. The price they paid was a shorter system.

Ottawa took a much different approach. We did "outside-in" and built expensive metro-like grade-separated transitways for buses outside the downtown core to rush buses to the core, which we left as onstreet BRT. The idea was that we would either build a tunnel for the buses or convert to LRT when the onstreet BRT failed. We ended up with a pretty far reaching system but with a critical weakness at the centre.


Of the three, Calgary had the most impressive ridership gains, Edmonton had some and Ottawa's actually declined. On a transit trips per capita basis, we're worse off now than when we started.

Now look at where we all are. Calgary's ridership continues to grow at a decent clip, it's expanding its downtown stations for more capacity, building new lines and starting to study tunnels for the future. There is generalized support for CTrain extensions in Calgary - my take was that people were at least as inclined to complain about them not being extended sooner as they were to complain about them being built at all. Edmonton is slowly expanding but it seems they have their work cut out for them to get support.

And then there's Ottawa. The proposed tunnel in the late 1980s - or rather tunnels, since there had to be a pair of 2-lane tunnels - proved too expensive, especially with annual patronage dropping, while an entrenched (nice pun) BRT lobby had developed for whom LRT was anathema. So we had stagnating ridership throughout the 1990s and no extensions with only a few new distant disjointed stations and paved shoulders built. Once annual patronage finally reached back to the levels it had had in the early 1980s, we got bus jams downtown and spiralling operating costs. The bus tunnels are still too expensive and LRT is now finally on the table but there's now an institutional unwillingness to consider surface LRT given that the rest of the system is grade-separated. That's just to improve what we have - not to actually expand it.

It's easy to say that Calgary "cut corners" by not building a subway but people in Edmonton and Ottawa would likely say the same; in Edmonton that it wasn't expanded more and in Ottawa that tunnels weren't drilled. Yet when you look at all three and consider that they all spent about the same, it's pretty clear which city's "corner cutting" was the best.

[Mike Wilhelm]

Originally Posted by Sir.Humphrey.Appleby

Well, I know Southland is likely much out of your regular commute route, but it is grade separated, as Heritage will be once that interchange is built.

As much as it pains me to say this - you are correct - I meant Heritage.

I allegedly grew up in South Calgary, went to Henry Wise Wood up the street and was a fully formed adult when the South line opened.

My memory is now failing.

[fusili]

Dado:

Great points. I would add that some of the additional success of Calgary's LRT is the distribution and concentration of jobs in Calgary in the DT, but that would not explain all the success. I believe that every type of transit system has a different function and a different context in which it works best. I think in the case of Calgary, LRT is far preferable to BRT. BRT should be mostly a precursor to LRT in order to build ridership and to change travel behavior in advance of an LRT system, which is what we are doing. Of course, I don't really think it is a BRT because there is no ROW separation.

[brentwood]

Although grade separation for 45th Street can only be a positive IMO, I do not get why there is the focus on minor improvements further out along the line and yet the 11th Street at grade crossing received virtually no discussion. The city seems to have blown it off as unacheivable due to space limitations but it also received little public input likely due to no community groups feeling they have a stake in the design at this intersection. IMO all this fluff further out on the line is great but why oh why could we not properly address the line's entrance into downtown. This is the third poorly executed line coming into downtown (if you are counting). To fix the problem in the future will be a headache.