Calgary Public Transit II

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by sim

Add to that congestion of effected intersections, train delays etc, on normal running days due to the at grade alignment and I'm sure that decision all those years ago probably looks pretty silly [not putting it underground initially.]

Putting it underground initially (due to massively increased cost) would have saddled us with Edmonton's LRT system - one line with a quarter as many stations, that only now is turning into a real transit option. This has been discussed to death here already.

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by MichaelS

The problem is all those "benefits" don't really come back to the city in any sort of way.

The problem is that there are people working at city hall who think this way.

Those "benefits" come back to the PEOPLE OF CALGARY. Who, by definition, the city is supposed to be working for.

It's sad how many have lost sight of this.

[MalcolmTucker]

Someone has to pay for it at the end of the day.

[fusili]

Originally Posted by TETT2

I havent read up super far yet... BUT, it's hard to reserve this for a station entrance when the Council APPROVED alignment runs up Nose Creek. Council needs approve a new alignment so that lots like this can be saved or protected for entrances.

Amen. Amen. Amen. Hallelujah!

[srperrycgy]

Calgary Herald February 1, 2011

Extending free LRT to the Stampede grounds in hopes of attracting major events is a non-starter. Council should dismiss the motion and move on, as quickly as possible.

Aldermen Andre Chabot, Diane Colley-Urquhart and Ray Jones are expected to bring forward the proposal Monday, arguing that Calgary Transit should extend the free-fare zone and absorb the hefty shortfall, between $1.5 million and $2 million. They argue it will pay off in economic benefits from an increase in the ability to attract international mega events.

Sorry, but a $2.75 ticket is hardly a deal breaker in the high-level competition among cities to host international conventions and major events.

Asking taxpayers to subsidize the ride from downtown to the Victoria-Park Stampede station will penalize loyal transit users, as it will surely lead to higher ticket prices and monthly passes.

Calgary's official convention centre is already situated in the free-fare zone. The Calgary Telus Convention Centre is an urban treasure, with some 122,000 square feet of convention space, more than 47,000 square feet of exhibit space and a number of other meeting rooms and gathering areas.

What council can do is encourage a collaborative and proactive relationship between Calgary Transit and tourism and convention promoters. Many incentives can be offered, including the sale of bulk transit tickets at subsidized rates, which can be recovered through convention fees and passed on in the promotional packages given to attendees.

Allowing the free zone to be a free-for-all creates too many unintended consequences, and moves Calgary Transit in the wrong direction.

© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald

http://www.calgaryherald.com/free+rides+Stampede/4200637/story.html

[MichaelS]

Originally Posted by freeweed

The problem is that there are people working at city hall who think this way.

Those "benefits" come back to the PEOPLE OF CALGARY. Who, by definition, the city is supposed to be working for.

It's sad how many have lost sight of this.

So defecit spending is your solution then? Who cares if the government goes broke, as long as I am less inconvencienced? I would expect that anybody that "works for me" would be doing their best not to lose my money on projects that will never see a return on investment.

I suggest you read this blog:
http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2010/11/3/costs-and-benefits-part-1.html

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by MichaelS

So defecit spending is your solution then? Who cares if the government goes broke, as long as I am less inconvencienced? I would expect that anybody that "works for me" would be doing their best not to lose my money on projects that will never see a return on investment.

I suggest you read this blog:
http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2010/11/3/costs-and-benefits-part-1.html

Um, what? Where on earth did I ever say we should run deficits? Did I just run into the twilight zone or something?

The point is that government decisions should be made to the maximal benefit of the people they represent. If that means adjusting funding to facilitate that benefit while still maintaining a balanced budget, so be it - but you don't simply make a stupid decision because "it has no immediate benefit to the city's coffers".

We wouldn't have parks or public art or heritage buildings or a thousand other things if people always thought that way. Parks sure as heck don't bring tax revenue directly into city hall but it'd be pretty stupid to argue against them on that basis.

I can't seriously believe I'm having to defend well-run public transit as being important to the well-being of a city on this of all forums.

Maybe I'm mis-reading something and we're actually arguing towards the same thing. I'm certainly not trying to advocate burying the LRT downtown on a cost-recovery basis, if that's how you interpreted my comment.

[Dado]

Originally Posted by Sir.Humphrey.Appleby

Holding for an excessive amount of investigation doesn't make the victim any less dead. That being said, I would bet there are federal regulations that require a certain amount of investigation of any rail incident.

Why would it be under federal jurisdiction? It doesn't cross a provincial or national boundary, and I don't think it interacts with a federally-regulated railway either. There are, to my knowledge, only three transit systems in the country that operate under federal jurisdiction: Ottawa and Gatineau (because each sends buses across to the other), and Windsor (which has a route into Detroit). Ottawa's O-Train operates under federal railway jurisdiction because (1) OC Transpo already operates under federal jurisdiction; (2) extension north into Gatineau was envisaged; (3) it was initially operating on track leased from CPR; and (4) it crosses two other federally-regulated railways at grade where interlocks are in place rather than some other form of crossing protection (the interlocks work on both lines at both crossings, so the signalling system works on first-come-first-serve rather than prioritizing one over the other; had the O-Train operated under provincial jurisdiction it would be subordinate to the other lines just as roads are). Since none of this applies to the C-Train, I can't see any particular reason it should operate under federal jurisdiction*.

*As an aside, in some ways it's too bad that the C-Train wasn't regulated as a federal railway (e.g. call it the "Calgary Municipal Railway", or CMR). Federally-regulated railways can call upon the federal Crown's expropriation powers, so back when the University of Calgary blocked the planned line through the campus my hypothetical CMR could have expropriated its way through... hence the term "railroaded"

Originally Posted by sim

I'm curious if there has ever been a study done or research on how much these accidents downtown or for that matter at any at grade crossing have truely cost.

I wonder if taking into account lost time, injury/death, damage etc, would approach the costs of what it would have cost to put it underground initially?

I'm going to play the role of the dismal scientist (i.e. economist).

Unless 7th Avenue was going to be a pedestrian mall had the C-Train not run there, we can say with absolute certainty that there would have been far more car accidents along 7th Ave had it remained in use as a regular street than have occurred along it as a transit mall.

Injuries from all the car accidents would likely be higher than C-Train-related injuries, but there may have been fewer deaths since most car accidents in downtown areas are low-speed enough that injuries rather than deaths are the usual result.

Add to that congestion of effected intersections, train delays etc, on normal running days due to the at grade alignment and I'm sure that decision all those years ago probably looks pretty silly [not putting it underground initially.]

It would be interesting to see it in numbers, but it might be pretty tricky as it's rather difficult to determine how much (or if any) benefit putting it at grade then instigated. Ah transportation planning.

It's extremely doubtful that an underground alignment would have been more economical even with all these considerations accounted for.

An underground alignment would have cost more to build. That would have had to be "paid" for by building a shorter system, like Edmonton did. Even if the money for a tunnel had suddenly appeared, building a tunnel would still have to be "bought" at the cost of not building more lines elsewhere. That's basic opportunity cost. Anyway, from Edmonton we know that would have meant lower ridership for years and years. Edmonton has foregone, what, hundreds of millions of trips now? Since most of these extra trips Calgarians took by C-Train (extra compared to what would have been with a shorter system) would likely have occurred anyway but by other means, we then have to figure out how many people would have got into car accidents and been injured or died, along with all the delays from both generalized congestion and from all those extra accidents.

Put simply, when the whole is considered and not just the downtown, the C-Train has likely saved many more lives and injuries than it has cost.

[MichaelS]

Originally Posted by freeweed

Um, what? Where on earth did I ever say we should run deficits? Did I just run into the twilight zone or something?

The point is that government decisions should be made to the maximal benefit of the people they represent. If that means adjusting funding to facilitate that benefit while still maintaining a balanced budget, so be it - but you don't simply make a stupid decision because "it has no immediate benefit to the city's coffers".

We wouldn't have parks or public art or heritage buildings or a thousand other things if people always thought that way. Parks sure as heck don't bring tax revenue directly into city hall but it'd be pretty stupid to argue against them on that basis.

I can't seriously believe I'm having to defend well-run public transit as being important to the well-being of a city on this of all forums.

Maybe I'm mis-reading something and we're actually arguing towards the same thing. I'm certainly not trying to advocate burying the LRT downtown on a cost-recovery basis, if that's how you interpreted my comment.

The post of mine you quoted was stating that using arguments like "time saved" to justify a project is completely false. It might make for a social benefit to justify a project, but in no way would a downtown tunnel be justified to a municipal government on a purely economical basis as sim was suggesting in his post.

As for deficit spending, I didn't see you suggesting another way to pay for it, so assumed this is what you wanted. Maybe a little rash of me, but meh.

You claim government workers don't think with the benefit of Calgarians in mind, but I disagree. It was government workers that suggested property tax revenue needed to increase by 6.7% in order to provide services to make the City better for Calgarians, but it was Calgarians who voted in representatives who chose to scale that increase back. Therefore, in order to adjust funding to facilitiate some benefit, while maintaining a balanced budget, you have to point out the fact that projects that don't provide an economic benefit (from the point of view of the government) can't go ahead.

I agree that well run public transit is important to any city, but not if it causes that city to go broke.

[sim]

Originally Posted by MichaelS

The problem is all those "benefits" don't really come back to the city in any sort of way. If people saved time, and got to work quicker and became more productive, and the company made more money, the City would not see any extra tax revenue. Income tax and business taxes are not collected at the municipal level.

Some could be justified, like cost of repairs to train cars that have been hit. But unless the local government saw direct financial pay back for that greater expense, it would not be any more favourable to them.

Umm, by that rationale there shouldn't even be a C train to begin with. Nor would any assessment method ever look favourable for essentially anything public. The key word, of course, being public.

It's extremely doubtful that an underground alignment would have been more economical even with all these considerations accounted for.

I don't particularily think it is so doubtful. I do think it would be interesting to see it in numbers though, instead of conjectures. But for arguement's sake, let's take a high level estimation and pretend that the incident in question caused 100000 people to lose an hour of time, and using a value of time of $10/hr, then you just hit $1,000,000. If this happens 10 times a year, then 10 mil and after 10 years, $100 mil. Again, all very high level estimation.

Furthermore, that applies just to service disruptions, and not normal service hour delays attributed to at grade.

An underground alignment would have cost more to build. That would have had to be "paid" for by building a shorter system, like Edmonton did. Even if the money for a tunnel had suddenly appeared, building a tunnel would still have to be "bought" at the cost of not building more lines elsewhere. That's basic opportunity cost. Anyway, from Edmonton we know that would have meant lower ridership for years and years. Edmonton has foregone, what, hundreds of millions of trips now? Since most of these extra trips Calgarians took by C-Train (extra compared to what would have been with a shorter system) would likely have occurred anyway but by other means, we then have to figure out how many people would have got into car accidents and been injured or died, along with all the delays from both generalized congestion and from all those extra accidents.

We don't know that. That is speculation. Edmonton is not Calgary and Calgary is not Edmonton. Unfortunately, we can't peak into the alternate universe where it was indeed built that way. Calgary has different land use and definitely a different worker mobility pattern. Who knows how building an underground line through downtown would have then subsequently affected ridership and on a more long term basis, land use. If anything, the large/dense office market downtown should be "credited" for the C-train's "success/high ridership," and not neccessarily because it was built way out. (The above being in quotation marks, as I'd argue just to how successful it is and especially how this success is being measured.) Building it out, in fact, likely induced further surbuban sprawl - but let's not get into the econometrics of that again...

Point being, that such a decision should indeed take into account the city as a whole as a system, not just the C-train in itself. Whether that was done back then - well I have my doubts.

Anyway, we did indeed have this discussion a few weeks ago when the articles about the C-train's success were published. I guess that would make this topic then like all the others.

Put simply, when the whole is considered and not just the downtown, the C-Train has likely saved many more lives and injuries than it has cost.

When the whole is considered, then the train would still have been there but just underground downtown. So that is basically nullified. What would be different, or very likely so, is the number of pedestrians that have been taken out so far by the train on 7th ave. So yes, as a whole a Ctrain vs no Ctrain very likely has, but a Ctrain as is vs a Ctrain underground downtown likely hasn't.

[MichaelS]

Originally Posted by sim

Umm, by that rationale there shouldn't even be a C train to begin with. Nor would any assessment method ever look favourable for essentially anything public. The key word, of course, being public.

If all of your decisions are based purely on economics, then no, the C-Train should not have been built (or else built, with substantially higher fares).

You saving time on your commute to work is a social benefit. You claimed that putting the c-train underground might be justified in an economic sense. How does the local government (the ones who paid for the c-train) gain from you having less disruptions on your commute? Or less car accidents downtown?

There is nothing wrong with justifying projects for their social and environmental benefits. But don't start claiming/obscuring those benefits as economic benefits. Unless the person who pays for the system sees a direct financial return for their investment, it is not an economic benefit.

[Innersoul1]

The Telus Convention Centre is an Urban Treasure?

[sim]

Originally Posted by MichaelS

If all of your decisions are based purely on economics, then no, the C-Train should not have been built (or else built, with substantially higher fares).

You saving time on your commute to work is a social benefit. You claimed that putting the c-train underground might be justified in an economic sense. How does the local government (the ones who paid for the c-train) gain from you having less disruptions on your commute? Or less car accidents downtown?

There is nothing wrong with justifying projects for their social and environmental benefits. But don't start claiming/obscuring those benefits as economic benefits. Unless the person who pays for the system sees a direct financial return for their investment, it is not an economic benefit.

No, not directly. However, with this line of thinking Cost - Benefit analysis would look awfully skewed:

Cost = a lot
Benefit = nothing?

What do you think goes into that second category? It would make project evaluation a bit easier though. No benefits, so base it only on cost. No Ctrain, but a 9 lane Bow trail, massive downtown parking lots and a crap load of congestion... Hey, it cost less.

The taxpayer pays for a public project no? Since they are public, the people/society are to benefit. The local government isn't suppose to gain, the people it acts in favour of are. So wherein is the fallacy? Social, environmental and other indicators are converted, as best as possible to a dollar value, not to mention the value of time.

The same goes for other assessment methods, whether converted to dollar value or not, they are still converted to some means so that they can be aggregated.

If you have a better idea for showing the overall benefits of a project, while directly economical or not, by all means. I for one put worth into social and environmental benefits, however subjective they may be. There is indeed economical value to having a clean, well structured, accessible, amenity-rich city that takes minimal time to get around. It just isn't in pure and tangible dollars and cents.

[You Need A Thneed]

Southland station construction begins tomorrow, according to the CT website. Ground level pedestrian crossing is closing tomorrow.

[fusili]

Originally Posted by MichaelS

If all of your decisions are based purely on economics, then no, the C-Train should not have been built (or else built, with substantially higher fares).You saving time on your commute to work is a social benefit. You claimed that putting the c-train underground might be justified in an economic sense. How does the local government (the ones who paid for the c-train) gain from you having less disruptions on your commute? Or less car accidents downtown?

There is nothing wrong with justifying projects for their social and environmental benefits. But don't start claiming/obscuring those benefits as economic benefits. Unless the person who pays for the system sees a direct financial return for their investment, it is not an economic benefit.

Huh? Building public transit doesn't make economic sense? Elaborate, because you are making claims that fly in the face of a lot of research.

Google Charles Komanoff and his incredibly detailed economic analysis of transportation in New York. In the case of NYC, when each individual driver that enters Manhattan each day costs the city ~$50 you will start to see the economic benefit of public transportation.

[polishavenger]

The revenue from fares is but a small part of the "income" generated by the C-Train. Count into fares generated all the money saved from having to build even more costly road infrastructure to handle all the additional car trips that are prevented by C-Train use, the savings in pollution, and the economic advantages to businesses of having a dense CBD.

[MalcolmTucker]

It is all well and good that all those things are reasons to do something, but still get back to the main point that they do not provide money to do it.

Just because a project will be positive doesn't make it the best use of money at the time. There is no reason to believe that saddled with additional debt from building a downtown subway that the city would or even could have built the NE LRT line at all. (the NW LRT line would likely have still gone forward due to the Olympics providing a reason to do it)

The city really scrimped and saved to build LRT in the 80s, they laid off police and firemen to free up cash, Klein even tried to cancel the two leisure centres to free up money. To think that we would be at a similar state today but with a tunnel is daft in my view.

[polishavenger]

I agree 100%. In addition, at the time there was no functional reason to build a tunnel. A city of 700k cant justify a subway component to its LRT. Even now, 25 years later, we are getting by with what we have, and are only reaching a point where the subway would be really nice/almost necessary to have. Not only that, but the concept of LRT in a suburan style North American city needed proving first before even greater investment was made.

Originally Posted by Sir.Humphrey.Appleby

It is all well and good that all those things are reasons to do something, but still get back to the main point that they do not provide money to do it.

Just because a project will be positive doesn't make it the best use of money at the time. There is no reason to believe that saddled with additional debt from building a downtown subway that the city would or even could have built the NE LRT line at all. (the NW LRT line would likely have still gone forward due to the Olympics providing a reason to do it)

The city really scrimped and saved to build LRT in the 80s, they laid off police and firemen to free up cash, Klein even tried to cancel the two leisure centres to free up money. To think that we would be at a similar state today but with a tunnel is daft in my view.

[MichaelS]

Maybe I am not being clear, so to read a better explanation of what I am talking about, please see this blog that I referenced in an earlier post:
http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2010/11/3/costs-and-benefits-part-1.html

I don't disagree that transit brings a great many benefits to society. Even to societies economy. But many of those benefits don't make a single difference to a City's bottom line.

Sim asked what the "benefit" side of the equation would be of a transit project. It would be projected fare revenue. And in some cases, adding transit can increase property value and density, which will allow the local government to collect more in property tax and probably more business license fees. Those are the "benefit" side of the cost benefit analysis.

Now, like I said, there is nothing wrong with approving projects that give great societal benefits. But don't say they are economical when none of those benefits help pay for the project.

[suburb]

Originally Posted by MichaelS

Maybe I am not being clear, so to read a better explanation of what I am talking about, please see this blog that I referenced in an earlier post:
http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2010/11/3/costs-and-benefits-part-1.html

I don't disagree that transit brings a great many benefits to society. Even to societies economy. But many of those benefits don't make a single difference to a City's bottom line.

Sim asked what the "benefit" side of the equation would be of a transit project. It would be projected fare revenue. And in some cases, adding transit can increase property value and density, which will allow the local government to collect more in property tax and probably more business license fees. Those are the "benefit" side of the cost benefit analysis.

Now, like I said, there is nothing wrong with approving projects that give great societal benefits. But don't say they are economical when none of those benefits help pay for the project.

You cannot further develop a city without creating means for people to get to where they need to be. The core of the city is as good an example as any. London, New York, Paris - none of these cities would be where they are without public transit - and where they are attracts businesses and revenue. What we do need for the city, however, is an income tax or sales tax revenue stream. That would make way more sense to the grand financial scheme, including the value of transit to Calgary.