Calgary Public Transit II

[Policy Wonk]

Originally Posted by Bassic Lab

We have read the city documents. Of course the city would maintain bus service south of Beddington if they built the Nose Creek alignment. They would have to. That has no bearing on what Calgary Transit would do if they built a Centre Street Subway instead.

Okay... so not only are going to find money for building this subway, they can also afford to build stations really, really close together?

Why didn't the Nose Creek LRT plan call for feeder buses running east and west to the Nose Creek stations rather than maintaining bus service on Centre Street? There will buses shadowing the LRT route and combined with those just enroute to the core via Centre Street and with significant frequency. Route 10 for instance mirrors a trip one can make entirely on the C-Train! Why does this seem unlikely to people?

We are all aware that Nose Creek was chosen with the intention of serving northern suburbs. This was not because it was necessarily the best option. It was predicated on two determinations. First, that a subway would be too expensive. Second, that ridership would be low enough on the NE LRT and the N LRT that interlining would not cause problems.

No, as originally conceived the North Central LRT would have run up Centre Street as far as 64th Ave before segueing to the Nose Creek ROW. Following the Nose Creek ROW from the start came only after the Centre Street alternative had been decisively rejected.

Since that decision was made things have changed. The city's financial situation has improved with the addition of gas tax money from the federal government and MSI funding from the province. Ridership has increased a great deal.

Again, this was last revisited in 2006. Nothing was deemed to have changed at that time - except costs further favoured Nose Creek than ever before.

The C-Train is much more successful than anyone thought it would be. It does not have the same kind of spare capacity that planners believed it would. Given those changes it is time we rethink the alignment of the North LRT.

None of that comes into the alignment of the North LRT. It is successful because of its utility in delivering suburban douchebags to their jobs downtown. Not by its virtue as an urban transit system.