Calgary Public Transit II

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by DizzyEdge

I agree with tmjr, whatever honeymoon/goodwill Nenshi has now will be used up and put into the red if he doesn't revoke that fee that was a big part of his campaigning, and could damage his credibility enough that he will be unable to use any popularity of his to sway council to vote for any other of his ideas. He'll end up weaker than Obama, but only a day or two into his mandate.

Replied to at the municipal politics thread. This issue likely won't be dealt with until the budget.

[You Need A Thneed]

I guess my reply went into the municipal politics thread.

[MalcolmTucker]

I know project budgets have ballooned a bit, but look at this:


West LRT is way above budget, considering the first $700 million dollar estimate included LRVs while today's $984 million dollar number does not. My word.

[Canadian74]

Originally Posted by mersar

About 25 of the 40 have arrived, 5 so far have been put into service (mostly on routes that run out of Crowfoot such as the 37/137,43/143,58/158 and routes 2 and 3 as well.

The order was 40 this year with the option for 40 next year if CT wanted to buy more (pretty high chance, though there have been some complaints from drivers about these buses being gutless from whats being said on cptdb)

Are they replacing anything or purely for expansion?
They look really nice and I had the chance to ride them a lot of times in Vancouver.

Hope CT gets more.

[mersar]

Originally Posted by Canadian74

Are they replacing anything or purely for expansion?
They look really nice and I had the chance to ride them a lot of times in Vancouver.

Hope CT gets more.

Some replacement of the GM fishbowls, some expansion. Its not really set as to what is for what, essentially the GM's are retired once they reach the point its not worth fixing them, and are usually stripped for parts to keep the rest of the fleet going when they are retired. So year-over-year its a net growth in terms of the numbers (they bought 40 buses this year, and have retired ~15)

[You Need A Thneed]

It looks like they are almost ready to lay pliths(?) and track for some of the LRT line through Martindale. The gravel is layed, and looks ready to go for track. It's hard to believe that it is nearly two years before the extension is scheduled to open. The ways things are going, they should easily be able to open it in 2011, if they wanted to.

Thinking how much work is left to do on the WLRT, vs. how much work is left to do for the NE extension, the 3 month difference in scheduled opening date seems laughable.

[reflexzero]

Originally Posted by You Need A Thneed

It looks like they are almost ready to lay pliths(?) and track for some of the LRT line through Martindale. The gravel is layed, and looks ready to go for track. It's hard to believe that it is nearly two years before the extension is scheduled to open. The ways things are going, they should easily be able to open it in 2011, if they wanted to.

Thinking how much work is left to do on the WLRT, vs. how much work is left to do for the NE extension, the 3 month difference in scheduled opening date seems laughable.

Well considering they left 64th and Metis in construction zone limbo for two years, I don't imagine there will be much progress over the winter months. I mean, I'll be happy to stand corrected, but I doubt the project is high on the priority list. Case in point, I'd sure like to be able to get onto Stoney Trail via Metis north of 80th Ave, or perhaps even get on via the non-existant 96th ave.. but instead I have to drive through 3 playground zones and up that goat trail to CHB.

Not that I'm complaining.

[CTrainDude]

Originally Posted by You Need A Thneed

It looks like they are almost ready to lay pliths(?) and track for some of the LRT line through Martindale. The gravel is layed, and looks ready to go for track. It's hard to believe that it is nearly two years before the extension is scheduled to open. The ways things are going, they should easily be able to open it in 2011, if they wanted to.

Thinking how much work is left to do on the WLRT, vs. how much work is left to do for the NE extension, the 3 month difference in scheduled opening date seems laughable.

On regular track, they lay ties. Plinths are the concrete blocks that the tracks attach to in areas of direct fixation (like tunnels and bridges).

[You Need A Thneed]

Originally Posted by reflexzero

Well considering they left 64th and Metis in construction zone limbo for two years, I don't imagine there will be much progress over the winter months. I mean, I'll be happy to stand corrected, but I doubt the project is high on the priority list. Case in point, I'd sure like to be able to get onto Stoney Trail via Metis north of 80th Ave, or perhaps even get on via the non-existant 96th ave.. but instead I have to drive through 3 playground zones and up that goat trail to CHB.

Not that I'm complaining.

Progress will certainly be slow as soon as it turns colder. There is work to be done that either is impossible to do with frozen ground/cold weather, or becomes significantly more costly. Anything that requires compacted soil is impossible to do with frozen ground. An extended warm spell in fall and an early spring could be what the project needs to get significnatly ahead of schedule.

Metis was tendered this summer, and the city was hoping to at least get something doen by the end of November (writing into the contract a bonus to the contractor if it was completed by then), but it think expropriation was an issue, as there were 4 properties required for the project that were given notices in the paper just last week or the week before.

The city also tendered a project that would have connected 60th Street to the unused 96th Ave interchange on Stoney, but I don't know what happened with that one either. I haven't seen any construction started on that one either. That one would have closed 68th Street for good.

I, for one, am looking forward to the day when 96th Ave (airport Trail) connects all the way from Harvest Hills Blvd to Stoney Trail on the east side. What a valuable piece of road that is going to be. You can draw a 13 km long line around the portion of the NE east of the airport and north of McKnight, that currently has only two cow paths that cross the line to get out to the North, East or West. It's time for that to change.

[You Need A Thneed]

Originally Posted by CTrainDude

On regular track, they lay ties. Plinths are the concrete blocks that the tracks attach to in areas of direct fixation (like tunnels and bridges).

Thanks! I wasn't sure if Plinths was the correct term, or whether ties was. A good portion of the ties are sitting in the Saddletowne P&R lot. I noticed a small pile of track when I drove by the East crossing of Martindale Blvd yesterday. With the extended warm weather, perhaps they might try to lay some track yet this fall.

[RicoLance21]

Originally Posted by Ferreth

Sir Humphrey,
Yes, it's expensive - but if we are getting close to full utilization, we can build a parkade in each LRT leg paid for in 13 years.

For the West lrt parkade & NW line using the following sources:
http://www.albertacanada.com/documents/SP_MajorAlbertaProjects.pdf (28 mil cost)
http://www.boma.ca/Newsletter/Current.pdf (750 stall)
http://members.shaw.ca/lrtincalgary/ (3900 stalls in the NW adding up the stations)

I'll calculate for the the NW as an example: 3900 stalls x $3 $ 90% utilization * 250 days = 2.6 mil/ year.

>>> pays out a $33 million parkade in 13 years. For comparison, the west lrt parkade is supposed to add 750 stalls at $28 million, so we should be able to add roughly 1200 stalls. 30% increase isn't that bad in my books. I'd consider building parkades closer in to replace the surface spots, TOD development sales of the land - use the money to build more parkades further out might allow parkades to be built even faster. My math and cited costs may be off; to feel to critque!

tmjr,
I think Nenshi has to take the "Ralph Klein" approach of admitting his mistakes, and in this case telling people when a promise made won't work out for good stated reasons, rather than the usual political BS. People might be more willing to pay $3 if they saw parkades being built.

Freeweed,
For myself, $3 isn't going to break the bank either. If it did, I'd take the bus to the train, which I think is what's happened to increase the feeder bus utilization. As far as the hassle goes, if I was still using LRT to go downtown everyday, I'd just want to buy a monthly PnR pass along with my transit pass and forget about it after I'd put it in the car. Come to think of it, just register my plate when I pay, then I don't even have to worry about putting something on the car.

In conclusion, if I was Nenshi, I'd like to see some ridership numbers and lot utilization numbers before & after the fees went in first before I made any decisions about the $3 PnR fee. I think we are only now to the point where fee has been in place long enough to look at the numbers and draw some conclusions.

But Nenshi also mention about adding more BRT routes, which means more park and ride lots. This should somewhat justify eliminating the $3 PnR fee. I am hoping the 14 Street SW BRT goes through; that would ease up some congestion on the C-Train South leg and the PnR lots--assuming that the 14 Street SW BRT would also have a few PnR lots.

[frinkprof]

I started up a transit discussion thread on Calgary Puck. The first post is basically the same as here, but thought some might be interested in checking out the discussion and ideas being tossed around over there.

http://forum.calgarypuck.com/showthread.php?t=96436

[You Need A Thneed]

There has been 4 of the New SD160s parked as one consist at OMBF quite often lately. If anyone wants to check them out. It would be hard to get a close up view of them though, they are right in the middle of the yard.

[shogged]

Originally Posted by frinkprof

I started up a transit discussion thread on Calgary Puck. The first post is basically the same as here, but thought some might be interested in checking out the discussion and ideas being tossed around over there.

http://forum.calgarypuck.com/showthread.php?t=96436

that was hard to read, some of the comments were so obviously wrong, my hands were trembling to keep from creating an account simply to respond...

so I came here instead! *breaths*

[DizzyEdge]

Can anyone point me to a source of the annual cost of Calgary Transit to the city after fares? And similarly the annual cost of Calgary Roads?

[mersar]

2009-2011 Operating budget can be found here

For Transit for 2010

Revenue: 154,063
Expenditures: 316,951
Recoveries: 8,121
Net: 154,768

For Roads:
Revenue: 13,568
Expenditures: 170,748
Recoveries: 34,776
Net: 122,404

So technically roads cost less in operating budget, though transit spent twice as much.

Capital budgets were 162,996 for Transit and 42,864 for Roads for 2010, and 473,709 for Transportation Infrastructure (which is where pretty much all the 'big' projects fall for both Roads and Transit)

[DizzyEdge]

^^ of course they're not independent systems, if less transit capacity was available more would likely need to be spent on roads.

[freeweed]

That blows me away to see transit spending ahead of roads, although I guess we're in a hyper-expansion phase right now. Operating budget for roads is what, cleaning etc?

[mersar]

Originally Posted by freeweed

That blows me away to see transit spending ahead of roads, although I guess we're in a hyper-expansion phase right now. Operating budget for roads is what, cleaning etc?

Street cleaning, snow removal, keeping the street lights on at night, pot hole repair, line painting, etc.

Note that those are also about a year out of date now, and there has been some shuffling of schedules. And of course just things not working as they hoped, in those documents they figured the Park n Ride's would bring in 8.925 million, and cost 2.925 million. I'd bet both figures are a lot closer to the smaller one now.

[MalcolmTucker]

Remember that roads doesn't include the operational costs for Deerfoot and Stoney.

From before Stoney was extended this was the projected savings from those moves:

The transfer of responsibility for maintenance and further upgrading of the Deerfoot and Stoney Trails to the province could save the city as much as $230 million over 10 years, he said. The province could end up paying the city to provide maintenance for the roads.

Source: Tax deal pumps cash into roads, Calgary Herald Wed Sep 8 1999 Page: A1 / FRONT

Which would work out to $23 million a year, an amount that has had to have escalated substantially by now, with major extensions on both roads. (discounting whatever capital expenditures the city was planning to make with the tiny amount of cash the city had to spend on infrastructure before the agreement that was part of this deal was made)