Calgary Public Transit II

[Cage]

Originally Posted by floobie

Time to update my opinion. Not a fan of the reservations at all. I've tried to get a spot at Dalhousie station a few times now, each time progressively earlier. I've yet to be able to get a spot. So, basically unless I can get to the lot before 7:30 or so (I'm assuming, having never actually succeeded yet), I'm out of luck... meanwhile the vast majority of the reserved spots are empty, at that point. I'd honestly rather just pay the three bucks. Sure, I could triple my commute time and take a bus to the station... or I could just hop in my car and get to the university way faster. The situation is still salvageable, though, I think. I'm hoping they'll make running adjustments to the size of the reserved sections in these lots.

Calgary Transit will be making adjustments to the size of Reserved parking area, however not ti your liking.

For May 2011:
- Crowfoot reserved parking has over 130 additional parkers signed up. They will likely be openning up another parking lot to reserved parking for May 1.
- Dalhousie parking has increased by over 40 spots. Look for another row of parking to go into reserved parking status.
- I have no information on the other PnR lots.

PnR is not really designed for the occaisional transit user such as yourself. It is really intended for the 4-5 days per week parker that also has a Monthly transit pass. In order to be able to provide PnR to the occaisional user, it would require significant under utilized parking space. Lots would be required to excced the demand of the regular PnR users by about 120% to 150% to handle the additional traffic from occaisional use.

Additionally, the itinerant parker should pay a hefty premium to cover the over build-out of the PnR lots. This methodology is most apparent in the airfare pricing models used by major airlines. If you are a frequent user, there is a ticket pack available. Infrequent, last minute flyers pay a signficant premium to have the service on demand.

[Koolfire]

Originally Posted by frinkprof

Left out of assumptions are the possibility of SE and North Central lines, although it does assume extensions to Silverado and 212th Avenue in the south by 2021, and Stoney Trail in the NE by 2019, with the obvious extra LRVs needed to serve those extensions

This seems a little ambitious projection. It's possible that the entire area (NE) fills up in the next 8 years but it's large area. 2025 seems more realistic.

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by Cage

Calgary Transit will be making adjustments to the size of Reserved parking area, however not ti your liking.

For May 2011:
- Crowfoot reserved parking has over 130 additional parkers signed up. They will likely be openning up another parking lot to reserved parking for May 1.
- Dalhousie parking has increased by over 40 spots. Look for another row of parking to go into reserved parking status.
- I have no information on the other PnR lots.

PnR is not really designed for the occaisional transit user such as yourself. It is really intended for the 4-5 days per week parker that also has a Monthly transit pass. In order to be able to provide PnR to the occaisional user, it would require significant under utilized parking space. Lots would be required to excced the demand of the regular PnR users by about 120% to 150% to handle the additional traffic from occaisional use.

Wow, I'm a bit shocked. I continue to drive to the PnR lot mostly out of morbid curiosity and I've noticed a few things:

1. There are still spots at Crowfoot in the "free" areas shortly after 7. It gets pretty much full by 7:30 though. On days like Thursday (before a long weekend) it has plenty of spots well after 7:30.

2. The reserved area has never ever come even remotely close to full. When I go home at the end of the day it's always a quarter empty if not half. The fact that it's free after 10am seems to matter very little, because who the hell even uses these spots that late (I personally have, but it's a very small number of people).

3. The reserved parking system, while great for the bottom line, is leading to a massive under-utilization of parking at Crowfoot.

4. Based on actual usage, and my desire to full utilize all of this empty asphalt, they should take a serious look at making the reserved area "free" after 9am. I'd even go so far as to say 8am on a lot of days. By and large anyone who is regularly commuting (and hence, reserving a spot) is almost certainly parking before then. Not a lot of downtown workers can come to work after 9.

I dunno, overall things are better now but the entire system still screams "cash grab" to me. A LOT of people must be paying for reserved spots that they're using very infrequently. In a city with generous vacation packages and flex time, there aren't many downtown commuters who work 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year. So inevitably we'll end up with a lot of unused space each and every single day. Add in the long weekends, spring breaks, summer days off, etc and I have a hard time imagining any day where the reserved areas fill up. Unfortunately, CT has to guarantee as many spots as people pay for, so we'll ALWAYS have this waste of space.

There's some irony in your mention of lots needing to be 120-150% bigger to deal with occasional use. Because that's exactly what's happening with the supposed regular use in the reserved spots. Just seems so pointless to build all this surface lot area and not have it used. But hey, it helps fill the treasury and that's what matters, right?

(OT: I JUST noticed that you can resize the SSP comment input box. Shows how much attention I pay here)

[floobie]

Originally Posted by freeweed

Wow, I'm a bit shocked. I continue to drive to the PnR lot mostly out of morbid curiosity and I've noticed a few things:

1. There are still spots at Crowfoot in the "free" areas shortly after 7. It gets pretty much full by 7:30 though. On days like Thursday (before a long weekend) it has plenty of spots well after 7:30.

2. The reserved area has never ever come even remotely close to full. When I go home at the end of the day it's always a quarter empty if not half. The fact that it's free after 10am seems to matter very little, because who the hell even uses these spots that late (I personally have, but it's a very small number of people).

3. The reserved parking system, while great for the bottom line, is leading to a massive under-utilization of parking at Crowfoot.

4. Based on actual usage, and my desire to full utilize all of this empty asphalt, they should take a serious look at making the reserved area "free" after 9am. I'd even go so far as to say 8am on a lot of days. By and large anyone who is regularly commuting (and hence, reserving a spot) is almost certainly parking before then. Not a lot of downtown workers can come to work after 9.

I dunno, overall things are better now but the entire system still screams "cash grab" to me. A LOT of people must be paying for reserved spots that they're using very infrequently. In a city with generous vacation packages and flex time, there aren't many downtown commuters who work 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year. So inevitably we'll end up with a lot of unused space each and every single day. Add in the long weekends, spring breaks, summer days off, etc and I have a hard time imagining any day where the reserved areas fill up. Unfortunately, CT has to guarantee as many spots as people pay for, so we'll ALWAYS have this waste of space.

There's some irony in your mention of lots needing to be 120-150% bigger to deal with occasional use. Because that's exactly what's happening with the supposed regular use in the reserved spots. Just seems so pointless to build all this surface lot area and not have it used. But hey, it helps fill the treasury and that's what matters, right?

(OT: I JUST noticed that you can resize the SSP comment input box. Shows how much attention I pay here)

I'm not sure what the best solution is here... before the reserved spots, with the 3 dollar fee across the board, the lot was definitely better utilized. The lot at Dalhousie station would always fill up to capacity within the morning. Now that never happens, because so many of the reserved spots go unused. It would be nice if the reserved spots became "up for grabs" after a given time in the morning... though they'd have to significantly cut the price of those spots for people to go along with it.

As Cage said, though, it really depends on who is being targeted. For the daily downtown commuter, this system is definitely better, I think. It will encourage transit usage, because being able to reserve a spot completely removes any uncertainty from one's daily commute. Knowing your car will have a spot makes commuting by transit a lot more reliable. For people like me, though, it really does suck. So, I guess it comes down to which group contributes more to overall transit utilization (which is probably quite separate from parking utilization). It is probably the daily commute crowd... which is unfortunate for me.

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by floobie

It would be nice if the reserved spots became "up for grabs" after a given time in the morning...

They already do, at 10am. Which is far too late to serve much purpose, based on usage that I've seen so far.

[Ferreth]

Originally Posted by freeweed

They already do, at 10am. Which is far too late to serve much purpose, based on usage that I've seen so far.

So why are the spots being unused? People catching the bus perhaps?

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by Ferreth

So why are the spots being unused? People catching the bus perhaps?

Usually in reserved lots with unreserved spots after figuring out the utilization rate in the first year or so you start selling more spots than you have bring the utilization rate up while still almost guaranteeing pay parkers a spot.

Just by nature a certain percentage of people will be sick, on business trips, on vacation, going to an offsite meeting. I am sure some people that bought the reserved spot were tire kickers who might realize they don't need it after a couple of months.

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by Ferreth

So why are the spots being unused? People catching the bus perhaps?

Already covered that in my rant above:

In a city with generous vacation packages and flex time, there aren't many downtown commuters who work 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year. So inevitably we'll end up with a lot of unused space each and every single day. Add in the long weekends, spring breaks, summer days off, etc

Honestly, even if people only got 3 weeks off on average (which is pretty damned scanty for downtown office workers), that's a 6% vacancy rate in the PnR lot just from that alone. With flex time still fairly common it's closer to double that. Add in sick days and all the other reasons people don't go to work every day and I wouldn't be surprised if the average worker in downtown Calgary misses 15-20% of the so-called "work week". Which translates into massive vacancy at the PnR lots.

Here's hoping CT does this smart, and reserves spots based on actual usage, not just how many people paid. Leave a small buffer, sure - but nothing like what I've been seeing. It's just a waste of space (and for surface parking, that's saying something).

[TransitSupporter]

I have a bit of a rant about the HOV lane on Centre St. In particular I notice it in the evening rush hour, and it pisses me off how many single occupant vehicles are just zipping happily and blissfully along the HOV lane past their SOV colleages who are in the proper lanes next to them. Admittedly I don't think the abusers are doing it necessarily intentionally, but the signage kinda sucks and I've never seen anyone policing it. I tried calling 311 (pathetic response) and I wrote to Druh Farrell (never got a response).

Anyone have any other suggestions who could help get these SOVs out of the HOV lane so that CT can get through as intended? It gets especially annoying at 16th Ave, where SOVs sit behind the bus stopped there and actually prevent another bus from coming through the intersection. GRRRRR!

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by TransitSupporter

Anyone have any other suggestions who could help get these SOVs out of the HOV lane so that CT can get through as intended?

A $500 fine would be a good start. But CPS is too busy radaring our freeways and making sure you don't drive 35 km/h through a playground zone that no kids are in.

[J-D]

Originally Posted by freeweed

A $500 fine would be a good start. But CPS is too busy radaring our freeways and making sure you don't drive 35 km/h through a playground zone that no kids are in.

I honestly don't understand why there are so many playground/school zones in the city and how long they are... Most of them have 4-6 foot fences anyways! I pay far more attention to my speedometer as opposed to scanning the environment.

[lubicon]

Question about the reserved spots at the Park and Ride lots. When you sign up, do you get a specific spot or just a spot in the reserved lot?

Freeweed got me thinking about all the unused spots that have been paid for but are not necessarily used on any given day. Maybe the City could overbook, much like airlines do, knowing that a certain percentage of users will likely not use their spot on any given day. Oversell by say 5% (eg sell 105 reserved spots for every 100 actual spots). They would just need to figure out how to handle things on the occasional day that everyone who paid actually shows up looking for parking.

[lubicon]

Originally Posted by freeweed

A $500 fine would be a good start. But CPS is too busy radaring our freeways and making sure you don't drive 35 km/h through a playground zone that no kids are in.

Or nailing people for speeding in the lst 50 feet of a 2km long construction zone, or nailing people driving 60 in a 50 zone on a four lane divided road, downhill, where there are no pedestrians or housing units anywhere close. Both of which they were doing this weekend.

[fusili]

Originally Posted by TransitSupporter

I have a bit of a rant about the HOV lane on Centre St. In particular I notice it in the evening rush hour, and it pisses me off how many single occupant vehicles are just zipping happily and blissfully along the HOV lane past their SOV colleages who are in the proper lanes next to them. Admittedly I don't think the abusers are doing it necessarily intentionally, but the signage kinda sucks and I've never seen anyone policing it. I tried calling 311 (pathetic response) and I wrote to Druh Farrell (never got a response).

Anyone have any other suggestions who could help get these SOVs out of the HOV lane so that CT can get through as intended? It gets especially annoying at 16th Ave, where SOVs sit behind the bus stopped there and actually prevent another bus from coming through the intersection. GRRRRR!

Easy solution- make it a transit only lane. Calgary Transit wants this and Roads knows the HOV lane doesn't work properly. Put a camera up and ticket every single vehicle using the lane. Easy.

[UofC.engineer]

Originally Posted by fusili

Easy solution- make it a transit only lane. Calgary Transit wants this and Roads knows the HOV lane doesn't work properly. Put a camera up and ticket every single vehicle using the lane. Easy.

In California people put dummies in the passenger seats and drive in the HOV lanes. When the camera snaps a photo it looks like two people...people and be very crafty when it comes to dodging the law.

[artvandelay]

Originally Posted by TransitSupporter

I have a bit of a rant about the HOV lane on centre street.

There's an HOV lane on centre? I had no idea and I just drove it the other day. Where/which direction is it?

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by lubicon

Question about the reserved spots at the Park and Ride lots. When you sign up, do you get a specific spot or just a spot in the reserved lot?

Pretty sure (although not 100% positive) that it's a generic spot in the reserved area.

[fusili]

Originally Posted by UofC.engineer

In California people put dummies in the passenger seats and drive in the HOV lanes. When the camera snaps a photo it looks like two people...people and be very crafty when it comes to dodging the law.

You can't dodge this one. If your car is in the lane, you get a fine. It wouldn't be a HOV, it would be a transit only lane (plus emergency vehicles).

[Koolfire]

Originally Posted by fusili

Easy solution- make it a transit only lane. Calgary Transit wants this and Roads knows the HOV lane doesn't work properly. Put a camera up and ticket every single vehicle using the lane. Easy.

I'm not 100% certain if the turning rules change with Transit only lanes. HOV lanes a SOV may enter the HOV to make an immediate turn or turn into the HOV lane and a first safe opportunity get over to a SOV lane.

Something tells me that it would be quite dangerous to try and turn from the second lane into a side street with bus actively traveling in the first lane. So I'm not quite sure.

Now a series of cameras where a person that gets picked up 3 times on different blocks that may work. But a single picture not sure if that would hold up.

[Koolfire]

Originally Posted by artvandelay

There's an HOV lane on centre? I had no idea and I just drove it the other day. Where/which direction is it?

It's only active during rushhour with lane reversal. Between 20th ave and 6th ave(? not sure were it ends downtown)