Calgary Public Transit II

[Policy Wonk]

I'm not keen on the route one bit, airport to downtown via Deerfoot to Memorial takes barely twenty minutes. Why Centre Street? Did they pull these off the 301?

[Bassic Lab]

Originally Posted by DizzyEdge

also, enjoy:

Kevin Libin: The high cost of Calgary’s low-cost transit

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011...-high-cost-of-calgarys-low-cost-transit/

Lafleur's report keeps showing up in the oddest places. The opposition to the Waterloo LRT cites it as well. Worse it is taken at face value. The man flat out lied to drive up the cost of the C-Train. He then put no work whatsoever into figuring out the costs of a comparable BRT system. Somehow this was used to justify his conclusion that we should have built a BRT system.

Lafleur actually valued every Park and Ride space as a subsidy equal to the value of a downtown space. This accounted for something like more than $0.50 of the $2.88 that he claims an LRT ride costs. The report was simply dishonest. Did none of the people who keep citing it bother to read the thing. If they had, they would see that it is a pathetic mixture of guesswork and exaggeration on the LRT side with nothing but wishful thinking and numbers pulled out of Lafleur's 🞵🞵🞵 on the BRT side. Seriously, $0.89 per rider for BRT capital and operation expenses?

[MalcolmTucker]

And no accounting for P&R spots that other systems have, namely Ottawa's. If Calgary had BRT on a similar layout we would most certainly still have P&R. There is no way a system with at least 6 times as many drivers, soon to be 8 times, eventually 10 times, could be cheaper.

Now, if there are advances enough in autonomous vehicles by the end of the decade the numbers might be turned on their head, but they aren't here now. Plus, in any event they would just make the LRT more efficient, allowing smaller more frequent feeder services.

I have an informed feeling that the advances will come which which will change urban transport forever, allowing PRT like services to be delivered on roads, reducing the cost of taxi services by an order of magnitude (the major cost would be congestion). But we don't have to worry about that today.

[DizzyEdge]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

And no accounting for P&R spots that other systems have, namely Ottawa's. If Calgary had BRT on a similar layout we would most certainly still have P&R. There is no way a system with at least 6 times as many drivers, soon to be 8 times, eventually 10 times, could be cheaper.

Well of course not, since right in the article he equates BRT with regular express routes, and says (paraphrasing) that with BRT you wouldn't need 'stations' and you could run it to any communities you want with ease.

So basically he combines both the advantages of express buses on shared roadways, with the advantages of BRTs on dedicated roadways, with none of the negs of each.

[mersar]

Originally Posted by Policy Wonk

I'm not keen on the route one bit, airport to downtown via Deerfoot to Memorial takes barely twenty minutes. Why Centre Street? Did they pull these off the 301?

Centre street offers more detour possibilities and was decided to be more reliable. All buses on the 300 are being ran by spare board operators and introducing it didn't cut into frequency for any other routes for now it's just 40 foot buses, which there'd are a good spare capacity of currently. If the pilot passes then it will be an assigned route for probaly December signup and eventually might gain dedicated buses equipped explicitly for the route (luggage racks are one thing a few people have commented would be nice I've heard)

[suburb]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

And no accounting for P&R spots that other systems have, namely Ottawa's. If Calgary had BRT on a similar layout we would most certainly still have P&R.

The Park & Ride at North Pointe, which is the Northern terminus for the 301, is very large with ~1,000 spots - and the whole thing gets used by folks using the BRT.

[Radley77]

Was chatting with City of Calgary regarding bikes and they had mentioned that a big priority is the bike facilities along the West LRT. I was curious what peoples thoughts are on integrating bike facilities with the LRT system.

As of July 1st, 2011, Calgary Transit will be allowing folding bikes (20" or smaller wheels) on all of their buses and trains at all hours of the day and night (provided they're in a bag).

http://midtoad.posterous.com/folding-bikes-on-calgary-transit-buses

What kinds of things might allow for more people bike and ride transit to work instead of park and ride? Especially thinking about some of the park'n'ride stations on the northwest line that are full...

[suburb]

Originally Posted by Radley77

What kinds of things might allow for more people bike and ride transit to work instead of park and ride? Especially thinking about some of the park'n'ride stations on the northwest line that are full...

I think the concept of bikes instead of park and ride can only work to a degree. Many people have the types of jobs that can't really have them riding a bike. Additionally, the people who use park and ride want to save the extra few minutes that the feeder bus will cost them, so using a bike (while it might be a wash in term of actual time) will still be a hard sell for the masses. That being said, it doesn't hurt to have facilities - and certainly having appropriate places to leave your bike is also a necessity.

[mersar]

Kind of off topic, but in the end Calgary won't be the first Alberta city to have a smart card for fare payment. Lethbridge announced earlier this week that they will be launching their smart card system in December of this year. Doing it a similar way to Calgary to find a name by holding a contest that they'll be announcing the winner of by September.

[Radley77]

Originally Posted by suburb

I think the concept of bikes instead of park and ride can only work to a degree. Many people have the types of jobs that can't really have them riding a bike. Additionally, the people who use park and ride want to save the extra few minutes that the feeder bus will cost them, so using a bike (while it might be a wash in term of actual time) will still be a hard sell for the masses. That being said, it doesn't hurt to have facilities - and certainly having appropriate places to leave your bike is also a necessity.

I don't think it's a fit for everyone. I would think a 15 minute ride or 5 km distance from LRT is the point where you'd see a huge dropoff in bike usage. There's a lot of Calgarians that value physical activity and reducing energy consumption. It's pretty compelling to use bikes if you plan on doing 30 minutes of exercise a day.

I think my biggest concern with riding a bike to the station was always bike security... I didn't know how to obtain bike parking and didn't know where could park it securely.

[Bassic Lab]

Originally Posted by DizzyEdge

Well of course not, since right in the article he equates BRT with regular express routes, and says (paraphrasing) that with BRT you wouldn't need 'stations' and you could run it to any communities you want with ease.

So basically he combines both the advantages of express buses on shared roadways, with the advantages of BRTs on dedicated roadways, with none of the negs of each.

Pretty much. I have no idea what Lafleur's conception of BRT looks like but it seems to be much cheaper than LRT because it runs on existing streets, which are apparently free, and at least as fast as LRT because it runs on a dedicated busway. It also seems to have more stops than LRT to allow closer pick up and drop off while having fewer stops to ensure that speed remains comparable...

[freeweed]

Ah, logic. Wherefore art thou, dear logic?

In a city with the highest concentration of downtown workers in the country (in part, a result of the city’s transit planning strategy itself), Calgary’s municipal council has aggressively discouraged downtown parking, for instance, resulting in the lowest number of spots per worker by far than in any other Canadian city (one-fourth of Vancouver’s)

...

Furthermore, despite the dreams of transit planners, the system hasn’t actually gotten people to give up their cars: more people still drive downtown in Calgary than in any other Canadian city.

Wait.. so we have very few parking spots downtown, yet everyone still drives downtown. Do their cars turn into pixie dust upon arrival?

Classic case of cherry-picking statistics to prove a point. Too bad he misses the obvious implication of his sentences here.

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by suburb

I think the concept of bikes instead of park and ride can only work to a degree. Many people have the types of jobs that can't really have them riding a bike. Additionally, the people who use park and ride want to save the extra few minutes that the feeder bus will cost them, so using a bike (while it might be a wash in term of actual time) will still be a hard sell for the masses. That being said, it doesn't hurt to have facilities - and certainly having appropriate places to leave your bike is also a necessity.

I also see a lot fewer people on bikes in January than June. It's great to build up facilities for cyclists but they're virtually abandoned for 3-4 months every year. It certainly won't do squat for freeing up Park & Ride spaces - summer is traditionally slower on transit anyway, so the PnR lots are typically less full.

[Ramsayfarian]

Originally Posted by freeweed

Ah, logic. Wherefore art thou, dear logic?



Wait.. so we have very few parking spots downtown, yet everyone still drives downtown. Do their cars turn into pixie dust upon arrival?

Classic case of cherry-picking statistics to prove a point. Too bad he misses the obvious implication of his sentences here.

According to what you quoted, it says that Calgary has fewer spots per worker, not fewer spots. So Vancouver could have .5 spots for every worker and Calgary has .25.

So if Vancouver has 5000 people working downtown and Calgary has 20,000. Calgary would have more stalls than Vancouver. I have no idea how many people work in each downtown and would be surprise if Calgary had more, but I don't see anything wrong logically with what you quoted.

[UofC.engineer]

Originally Posted by Radley77

Was chatting with City of Calgary regarding bikes and they had mentioned that a big priority is the bike facilities along the West LRT. I was curious what peoples thoughts are on integrating bike facilities with the LRT system.

As of July 1st, 2011, Calgary Transit will be allowing folding bikes (20" or smaller wheels) on all of their buses and trains at all hours of the day and night (provided they're in a bag).

http://midtoad.posterous.com/folding-bikes-on-calgary-transit-buses

What kinds of things might allow for more people bike and ride transit to work instead of park and ride? Especially thinking about some of the park'n'ride stations on the northwest line that are full...

I live about 3kms from Canyon Meadows Station. When the weather is nice I ride my bike. During the summer months the bike rack is packed with bikes. This is a great sign!

To encourage more bike trips to LRT stations I would recommend:

1. Build more bike lockers.

2. Give cyclists the choice of renting a locker for the day or renting lockers for six months at a time which is the current protocol.

3. Build more bike racks. (obvious)

4. Create easy access for bikes to get to the station and the platform. (Obvious)

I want to do more winter biking this year. Last year I packed it in during the first heavy snowfall.

[Radley77]

Originally Posted by UofC.engineer

I live about 3kms from Canyon Meadows Station. When the weather is nice I ride my bike. During the summer months the bike rack is packed with bikes. This is a great sign!

To encourage more bike trips to LRT stations I would recommend:

1. Build more bike lockers.

2. Give cyclists the choice of renting a locker for the day or renting lockers for six months at a time which is the current protocol.

3. Build more bike racks. (obvious)

4. Create easy access for bikes to get to the station and the platform. (Obvious)

I want to do more winter biking this year. Last year I packed it in during the first heavy snowfall.

I would say the biggest factor why people discontinue biking is snow and not cold weather. I guess I'm used to winter sports like hockey and skiing so the temperature isn't the biggest factor and I still want to be physically active in the winter.

The proposed cycling route snow removal is proposed to go from 157 km to 300 km.

The current list of pathway routes that are plowed are here with priority 1's scheduled for clearing within 24 hours and priority 2's for clearing within 72 hours:
http://www.calgary.ca/portal/server.pt/g...ys/Calgary+pathway+snow+clearing.htm#bow

I am looking at doing my first year of winter biking this year...

I like the idea of a day rental bike locker because when I started biking it was only once a week, and then I kept on finding new reasons to use it. As I became more comfortable with riding routinely, I went from using a free bike parking space which was crowded to paying for a better one. I think the same is true for bike parking, people would try it out, and then once getting used to it would be willing to lockin for a longer term. I know I had looked at this before, and I thought that six months was too long a period to commit to for just testing something out. The other thing was the location and hours of service to get a bike locker from Calgary Transit were inconvenient.

WHat is Canyon Meadows station like for bike parking (location, availability and security) and accessibility?

Also, found this video from CT on allowing folding bikes on buses and LRT:

• Video Link

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by Ramsayfarian

According to what you quoted, it says that Calgary has fewer spots per worker, not fewer spots. So Vancouver could have .5 spots for every worker and Calgary has .25.

So if Vancouver has 5000 people working downtown and Calgary has 20,000. Calgary would have more stalls than Vancouver. I have no idea how many people work in each downtown and would be surprise if Calgary had more, but I don't see anything wrong logically with what you quoted.

You either have a large chunk of the working population driving downtown or you don't. If the former, clearly we have a lot of available parking. If the latter, clearly the LRT has gotten people out of their cars.

Obviously the raw numbers can work out whichever way we choose, hence my comment about cherry-picking statistics. The point is you can't have it both ways - you can't claim hardly any parking per worker, and yet claim that everyone still drives to work. His numbers may be accurate but his conclusions are anything but.

[polishavenger]

Originally Posted by freeweed

You either have a large chunk of the working population driving downtown or you don't. If the former, clearly we have a lot of available parking. If the latter, clearly the LRT has gotten people out of their cars.

Obviously the raw numbers can work out whichever way we choose, hence my comment about cherry-picking statistics. The point is you can't have it both ways - you can't claim hardly any parking per worker, and yet claim that everyone still drives to work. His numbers may be accurate but his conclusions are anything but.

Vancouver is notorious for its traffic, so I can only imagine the cluster FCUk we would have in calgary if we had the equivalent number of parking stalls per person as Van on our existing roadways.

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by polishavenger

Vancouver is notorious for its traffic, so I can only imagine the cluster FCUk we would have in calgary if we had the equivalent number of parking stalls per person as Van on our existing roadways.

Absolutely. Hence, I'm grateful that the LRT has taken tens of thousands of cars off our downtown roads. There's the famous City-provided statistic of 19 lanes of bridges we've saved - I don't know how the hell our CBD grid would handle that much extra traffic.

Too bad that article misses the obvious implication. Just because *some* people still drive to work doesn't mean people haven't given up their cars. I don't think anyone ever seriously claimed that the LRT would result in *zero* cars entering the downtown core.

[fusili]

Originally Posted by DizzyEdge

also, enjoy:

Kevin Libin: The high cost of Calgary’s low-cost transit

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011...-high-cost-of-calgarys-low-cost-transit/

This article angers me to no end. It is a classic example of the phrase "there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics". Libin throws around operating costs and capital costs per kilometre without any reference and without any back up. I have no idea how he thinks operating costs per passenger on BRTs are somehow lower than on LRTs. Facepalm.