Calgary Public Transit II

[Radley77]

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[Radley77]

Originally Posted by DarkKeyo

Really? I currently use that station every week. And I don't even live in the many condos in the high density area west of it, or in Mission. And there is TOD planned just west of it on Macleod Trail. And I don't get what you mean by eliminating a crossing at 25 ave.

Most of our lesser-used stations are that way because they are in inconvenient locations (eg. 39th ave, future Martindale, Barlow). We don't necessarily need LESS stations, because we aren't running only an express-type service for far-flung suburbanites. Much of our offpeak ridership is people like me using the train just to get around the city.

(Insert rant here about the rather bad design of most of the south line with far apart/far removed stations, and the gaps between Brentwood Dalhousie and Crowfoot)

I am curious what your thoughts are of divesting the land at Erlton and putting that money towards a Mission tram system instead? My thoughts are that in general, inner city could use more circulators instead of long distance express transit service with large distances between stops.

[Vascilli]

Well, 4th Street opens on the 21st, according to an email from CT.

[SubwayRev]

Originally Posted by DarkKeyo

Really? I currently use that station every week. And I don't even live in the many condos in the high density area west of it, or in Mission. And there is TOD planned just west of it on Macleod Trail. And I don't get what you mean by eliminating a crossing at 25 ave...

Of course it does get used, but not very much, (apprently you and 1,299 others) and I don't see a lot of TOD potential, being surrounded by Stampede park and a cemetary. Plus, it's only about 500m from Stampede Park. Hardly enough space to warrant two stations with under 5,000 total riders. Perhaps an improved station right at the corner of 17th and MacLeod to service both areas would work, in conjunction with a 17th ave entrance into Stampede Park.

By eliminating the street crossing at 25th, we would eliminate a big chunk of the traffic cluster 🞵🞵🞵🞵 that happends with every single event at Stampede park. Plus it just seems funny that the tunnel ends just in time to cross a street. Why wasn't that tunnel extended an additional 100m? (I realize it was to save money, but it just seems silly.)

Of course I realize none of that will ever happen, but as I said, if I had my druthers...

[UofC.engineer]

Good to see "Plan It Calgary" really shaping up

Here are some pics of an excellent construction project beside Canyon Meadows Stations

It's great to see another auto-dealership in the area, the Ford dealership north of the station just wasn't enough, so I guess that's why South Gate Chevrolet needs to be built.

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/46710160
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/46710133
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/46710117
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/46710093



Oh yea, and this is sarcasm Aegis...just in case you didn't pick up on it.

[UofC.engineer]

So this is what we got on the east side of Canyon Meadows Station from south to north:

1. Canyon Meadows theatre (Supermarket in the early-mid 90's)
2. Agrium(three stories)
3. South Gate Chevrolet
4. Canyon Meadows Station
5. Ford Dealership
6. Crematorium
7. Avenida Mall

[J-D]

Originally Posted by UofC.engineer

So this is what we got on the east side of Canyon Meadows Station from south to north:

1. Canyon Meadows theatre (Supermarket in the early-mid 90's)
2. Agrium(three stories)
3. South Gate Chevrolet
4. Canyon Meadows Station
5. Ford Dealership
6. Crematorium
7. Avenida Mall

I was hoping it was going to be another parkade

[fusili]

You can blame the City for that one. They are the ones that turned down the land use application for residential towers on that site.

[jeffwhit]

So the CT is planning on running NCLRT up Nose Creek, but running an express bus to the airport up Centre Street? Good 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵 grief.

[MalcolmTucker]

^ They can't put the NCLRT anywhere else until council tells them to.

[DarkKeyo]

Originally Posted by SubwayRev

Of course it does get used, but not very much, (apprently you and 1,299 others) and I don't see a lot of TOD potential, being surrounded by Stampede park and a cemetary. Plus, it's only about 500m from Stampede Park. Hardly enough space to warrant two stations with under 5,000 total riders. Perhaps an improved station right at the corner of 17th and MacLeod to service both areas would work, in conjunction with a 17th ave entrance into Stampede Park.

By eliminating the street crossing at 25th, we would eliminate a big chunk of the traffic cluster 🞵🞵🞵🞵 that happends with every single event at Stampede park. Plus it just seems funny that the tunnel ends just in time to cross a street. Why wasn't that tunnel extended an additional 100m? (I realize it was to save money, but it just seems silly.)

Of course I realize none of that will ever happen, but as I said, if I had my druthers...

There isn't really money to do anything about the inefficiencies of that at-grade stretch of LRT, despite all our wishful thinking. Or for the planned interchange at 25th, despite them tearing down all the buildings that were on that block. Unless the developers who are building what is technically TOD are planning on building anytime soon, the demolitions must be for road work...

Ideally, we'd have the mission tram, the 25th Av interchange, the development with the bridge from Erlton station over Macleod, and bury the Victoria Park stretch of route and station under where the Big Four building is/beside the Roundup Centre. Of course ideally we'd also have not built that awful curve at Lion's Park either

[freeweed]

A few comments:

1. At least the City is continuing to allow (and expand) car dealerships near obvious transit sites. Crowfoot is still the worst example of this in my book, but I always get chuckle out of the folks who think a station at Northland is a good idea. Yeah, because we need yet more car dealerships to be LRT-accessible.

2. I've been taking the train home at weird times lately, much later into the evening than I'm used to. I started going to work pretty early several years ago so that I could leave early enough to avoid the crush. Well, I've been hopping on the train around what used to be the peak (5ish) and to be honest - it's not bad at all right now. Either the increased service has made a huge difference, or people have balanced out their commute times (or both). It's a major improvement regardless.

3. When I brought up the silliness and rarity of LRT to the airport, I wasn't meaning only-LRT-to-the-exclusion-of-all-other-rail. That's a pretty narrow way to look at things. My point was that most cities with fixed transit systems do not have trains running to their airports, and those that do are very very recent. You'd think Toronto or Montreal of all cities would benefit most from airport rail. Does NYC even have it? As for transfers to LRT stations - Calgary has had a bus route between YYC and Whitehorn for as long as I can remember. And it's hardly utilized, at least when I've used it.

[YYCguys]

Originally Posted by freeweed

...Calgary has had a bus route between YYC and Whitehorn for as long as I can remember. And it's hardly utilized, at least when I've used it.

Well it's no wonder! It's such a god awful inconvenient route, winding its way through an industrial park first! When I first started doing the flight attendant thing and was living downtown I tried the train/bus thing only a few times and found that it was horribly painful (and more often than not, I ended up having to get a lift from the airport to the station from a coworker because the bus was inconsistent or nonexistent!). That's when I bought a car!

[DarkKeyo]

Originally Posted by freeweed

1. At least the City is continuing to allow (and expand) car dealerships near obvious transit sites. Crowfoot is still the worst example of this in my book, but I always get chuckle out of the folks who think a station at Northland is a good idea. Yeah, because we need yet more car dealerships to be LRT-accessible.

1. There is a lot more near Northland than car dealerships, and car dealerships can be replaced with TOD. We have too many car dealerships as it is, it's a waste having them near LRT stations taking up valuable land.

and 2. Try getting around, using any mode of transportation but a car, the area between Dalhousie and Brentwood stations. It's a pain in the rear. And there are lots of schools, and lots of places that rent to university students, lots of rental in the area to begin with, and by extension lots of people who depend on transit. And two major malls.

I challenge you to understand the problem before you laugh at it.

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by DarkKeyo

1. There is a lot more near Northland than car dealerships, and car dealerships can be replaced with TOD. We have too many car dealerships as it is, it's a waste having them near LRT stations taking up valuable land.

Can. CAN. We have plenty of evidence that this does not happen in this city. If anything, it gets worse. I'd like to see at least ONE of these dealerships move (preferably the majority near any station) before we construct yet more stations surrounded by dealerships.

and 2. Try getting around, using any mode of transportation but a car, the area between Dalhousie and Brentwood stations. It's a pain in the rear. And there are lots of schools, and lots of places that rent to university students, lots of rental in the area to begin with, and by extension lots of people who depend on transit. And two major malls.

I challenge you to understand the problem before you laugh at it.

I have. I lived carless for quite a while in Silver Springs and the 37/43/137/143 combination serves the whole area rather nicely. Now that it goes into Crowfoot it's arguably one of the better serviced areas in the NW if not the entire city. It hits 3 LRT stations, goes very close to 5 major retail areas (Northland, Market Mall, Brentwood, Crowfoot and Dalhousie, and covers off a huge swath of those neighbourhoods.

It may not drop you off at your door but it serves far more "stuff" than most transit routes in this city (at least in the suburbs). I was pretty happy at the time to have what is basically an LRT feeder route that also serviced a ton of other stuff. Most bus routes in the 'burbs are just plain feeders - they go from one neighbourhood to one station, that's it.

Plus from what I recall there are a bunch of other bus routes that service the area, although I'm not sure just how useful each is for local trips. I do remember the 10 seeming pretty popular and it fills a similar role.

I'm not exactly sure what an LRT station at Northland is supposed to accomplish, when you have at least 3 bus routes that go almost directly from the nearest station right to the street facing the mall. It might save 5 minutes travel time. I don't know the headways on those buses anymore either, although there seems to always be one or two at Crowfoot, so they appear to run every few minutes between each other during the day. If anything, an LRT station at Northland seems LESS convenient to me, because at least the existing buses go somewhere that's not dead centre in the middle of Crowchild Trail.

[mersar]

Originally Posted by freeweed

I don't know the headways on those buses anymore either, although there seems to always be one or two at Crowfoot, so they appear to run every few minutes between each other during the day. If anything, an LRT station at Northland seems LESS convenient to me, because at least the existing buses go somewhere that's not dead centre in the middle of Crowchild Trail.

They aren't that great, but could be worse. My fiance lives right on the 43/143 in Ranchlands so I've used it a lot recently, its about 15 minutes during peak, 30 minutes mid day, 45 minutes late night and I believe 30 minutes on Sat/Sunday. Of course it does help to have the opposing directions running, often time if you miss one you can jump across the street and catch it going the other direction and not take almost any more time (Going from the university via the 201 to Crowfoot and 43 to her house is less then 5 minutes less then doing the 20 to Brentwood, and the 143 from Brentwood to her house)

[DarkKeyo]

Originally Posted by freeweed

I have. I lived carless for quite a while in Silver Springs and the 37/43/137/143 combination serves the whole area rather nicely. Now that it goes into Crowfoot it's arguably one of the better serviced areas in the NW if not the entire city. It hits 3 LRT stations, goes very close to 5 major retail areas (Northland, Market Mall, Brentwood, Crowfoot and Dalhousie, and covers off a huge swath of those neighbourhoods.

It may not drop you off at your door but it serves far more "stuff" than most transit routes in this city (at least in the suburbs). I was pretty happy at the time to have what is basically an LRT feeder route that also serviced a ton of other stuff. Most bus routes in the 'burbs are just plain feeders - they go from one neighbourhood to one station, that's it.

Plus from what I recall there are a bunch of other bus routes that service the area, although I'm not sure just how useful each is for local trips. I do remember the 10 seeming pretty popular and it fills a similar role.

I'm not exactly sure what an LRT station at Northland is supposed to accomplish, when you have at least 3 bus routes that go almost directly from the nearest station right to the street facing the mall. It might save 5 minutes travel time. I don't know the headways on those buses anymore either, although there seems to always be one or two at Crowfoot, so they appear to run every few minutes between each other during the day. If anything, an LRT station at Northland seems LESS convenient to me, because at least the existing buses go somewhere that's not dead centre in the middle of Crowchild Trail.

The frequency is horrible, and THAT is the problem. The 43/143 manage half an hour most of the time, and every 15 during rush hour; despite this, I always end up waiting at least 15 min whenever I can't arrive when the buses are scheduled to leave, somehow. The 37/137 schedule says it is the same, but this has to be a recent change because it used to run closer to every 45 min offpeak and 20 peak. And they aren't coordinated with eachother, so they leave at about the same time instead of staggered evenly.

The 22 and 122 are worse, and the 10 is every half an hour and the most reliable of the lot. Basically, it's usually faster to walk, and that takes 15, 30, even 45 minutes depending on where you're going. And that doesn't work in this weather, and is generally interfered with by Crowchild and Shaganappi having limited crossings.

Each of those other suburban feeders you refer to tend to run about as frequently as all of the NW routes put together. And that ignores the schools, which cause daily traffic jams. And, I've looked for other places in the area to rent and they are usually closer to where Northland station would be than to the feeder routes. So I remain living quite close to the Dalhousie bus loop.

That kind of turned into more of a rant than I thought, and they may have fixed some of the scheduling last year, but I would use Northland station very, very often if it existed, and that area seems like such a waste of space, up until you compare it to Crowfoot.

[ByeByeBaby]

Originally Posted by freeweed

3. When I brought up the silliness and rarity of LRT to the airport, I wasn't meaning only-LRT-to-the-exclusion-of-all-other-rail. That's a pretty narrow way to look at things. My point was that most cities with fixed transit systems do not have trains running to their airports, and those that do are very very recent. You'd think Toronto or Montreal of all cities would benefit most from airport rail. Does NYC even have it? As for transfers to LRT stations - Calgary has had a bus route between YYC and Whitehorn for as long as I can remember. And it's hardly utilized, at least when I've used it.

I used LRT because I was trying to look at the most comparable cities. All of the US cities with major heavy rail systems have an airport connection; both ORD and MDW in Chicago, SFO in the Bay, Philly, DCA in DC and Atlanta have in-airport stations; JFK and EWR in NYC have people movers; LAX, Oakland and Boston (as well as BWI in the DC area) use short-distance free shuttle buses to rail; Boston also has a real BRT (including dedicated undersea tunnel) in the terminal, and Oakland has a people mover under construction. The only remaining unconnected airports in major heavy rail cities will be Dulles in DC (Phase 1 of the Metro line there is under construction; Phase 2 still needs funding), LaGuardia in NYC, and the suburban airports in LA (BUR, ONT, SNA, LGB). These connections are mostly well-established; JFK, DCA and BOS pre-1980, BWI, ORD, PHL and ATL in the 80s, LAX in '95, EWR in 2000 and, surprisingly, SFO not 'til 2003.

Toronto and Montreal happen to be outliers in this regard, not the norm. And the link to Pearson (people mover to GO train) is scheduled to open in 2015.

The 57 to Whitehorn is a terrible bus; it takes a glacial 22 minutes to the terminal, the stop is hard to find and buried in the parking garage, and has half hour headways so you need to leave lots of time to make sure you don't miss your flight. It's unfair to run a lousy service, find out it's lightly utilized, and then use that as a justification to run a lousy service.

[sim]

1. I really hope that no interchange ever gets built at 25th and Macleod. That is not where an interchange belongs. Also, Erlton, and the subsequent crosswalk serve Mission, and I don't think it's a good idea to change a key component as to how it is and will further be developed.

2. I agree with thoughts on an airport stub-line. I think it's necessary to plan for something eventually heading up that way, but it does not have to be implemented today or tomorrow or in 10 years, but perhaps somewhere thereafter. Definitely SE and 8th ave subway should take priority.

3. About the subway, I've said it before and I'll say it again. I think that thing should be bored and just at a lower depth - perhaps 25 m so that we are in bedrock, and interlined. No settlement problems, no water problems, but much larger capital costs. I maintain that headways will never need to be so close that interlining isn't possible. If cities can do it with 6 - 7 different lines, with heavier and longer trains, then I gaurantee it could be done with 2. Design it for 5 cars, and continuous signalization.... etc. The future NC, and SE will pick up other current riders that currently drive to the existing lines. Or if fully need be, new lines that have yet to be imagined could be implemented - with the help of the then already obtained TBM!

4. I also feel that no fixed transit connection is, or at the very least, will soon be the exception and not the norm for any economically thriving city and one that is looking to stay that way. Again, not yet needed in Calgary's case. Some of the lengths (investment/expenditure) some cities have gone to do as such is pretty mind-blowing (HK for one,) so there is justification for it, especially when regarding the economic viability of it macroscopically (from the whole city's point of view, as was elluded to) versus just that system itself.

5. Car dealerships, crappy bus service etc. We really need to stop designing a mass transit system around a personal transit system. That would entail increased, everyone's favourite word, density!

[The Chemist]

^Interlining is a BAD idea and should be avoided at all costs. Here in Shanghai, for example, two lines (3 and 4) share a 10km section of elevated rail, which is now becoming a bottleneck - extra capacity can't be added, because trains are already running at minimum headways on the section (about 2 minutes between trains), resulting in double the headway (~4-5 minutes between trains) for each of the two lines that are sharing the line. Fixing this bottleneck is becoming important because of overcrowding on both Lines 3 and 4 (especially 4, which has daily ridership of over 800 000) at rush hour, but it's going to be very difficult and very expensive to fix the problem.

Running several lines through one bored tunnel will result in the same kind of problems, which only get magnified the more lines you try to stuff into it. A shallow tunnel for one line (NW-S) along 8th avenue and continuing to use 7th avenue for the other line (NE to W) makes a lot more sense, and will be much cheaper.