Calgary Public Transit II

[DizzyEdge]

Originally Posted by sim

Oh can't argue that.

A friend once put it pretty well in that "sometimes people have to be told what to do so they can get what they want." I believe we were chatting within the same context, but what I mean by this is that I think there are few whatever-anites (suburb, urban exurb) that don't somehow want to see a more walkable community. So to do, what I'm sure would amount to a majority, want to see better public transport; more frequent bus service, etc. Well....

Not to say what just I myself say should go, but transportation and urban planning is one of those things that everyone has an opinion about, and don't necessarily have any expertise on. Of course this site itself deviates from that.

I think if the city did a better job at communicating the end goals of policies there would probably be more buy in. I think it's improving with Nenshi, but it's improving from being pretty bad.

[Radley77]

I agree with sim's comments about Calgary being suitable for differentiation is due to covering a large geographic area. The other thing I think makes Calgary more suitable for differentiation is that in some ways our urban fabric is also highly differentiated. Calgary has huge peak modal users as well as huge geographic areas that lends itself well to time differentiation (peak mode) as well as distance differentiation (route length). Both issues have incremental costs associated with increasing capacity for peak mode, and increasing number of stations with route length.

My thoughts are that eventually Calgary will have more differentiation in the future because it is the method that will offer the maximal benefit and require the least subsidization rate in comparison to service quality.

Calgary already seems like it is trending this way with respect to the new development levies. Calgary isn't 100% of the way there yet, but it's the trend that matters IMO. To me, Calgary is already in the process of thinking more holistically about our city.

One of the things that I think is interesting about this process right now is it is Ward 10 or Andre Chabot that is "middle city" that is really asking these questions about differentiation. I think this is indicative that differentiation will result in a net benefit to the citizens of Calgary.

I agree with DizzyEdge also that the city needs to be good at explaining the end goal of it's policies.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by DizzyEdge

A thought about out-of-towners using transit.

In a scenario where the ctrain keep pace with city development, so that the last station is 'local' to the houses which are closer to it than the next station closer to downtown, why not make every parking spot like a $5 a day charge. The theory being that people who live in the same hood as the LRT station can just walk, bike, take the bus, but out of towners will have to drive to it.

I can see out of towners then trying to drive to the 2nd last station, still trying to determine how to manage that.

Originally Posted by Radley77

Portland has a population of about half a million, a zone based system, and one of the best public transit systems I have seen.

There is a lot of issues here that is more than just long distance users, but also that there is no incentive for people from Cochrane to say live near a TOD in Calgary, which I think is a much more holistic answer and wouldn't result in Calgary taxpayers subsidizing those in Cochrane.

I understand the motivation of getting people from outside the city off of Calgary subsidized transit. There are a couple problems with blaming out of towners:
1) They likely take the most profitable trips for the transit system, even more so when they had to pay for P&R. (I don't forsee many people driving and parking to take a cross town bus)
2) Given that the province is treating some capital programs on a regional basis (hello Greentrip!) can we say there is really much of a free riders problem going on here? Most capital comes from the collective resources of Albertans' anyways, so is Calgary's Capital much different than Cochrane's?
3) To destroy the cost advantage of non-contiguous suburbs, you are going to have to charge a whole lot along with making it very hard to cheat. With Calgary's large unicity population vs the region, I doubt both the direct costs and indirect costs would be worth it.

This entire talk reminds me of the transit fallacies from human transit:

• Disinterest in costs and efficiency.
  

• Implementing a system that imposes costs on all to make the system better for a very small portion of people, and very much worse for a select group. Likely a net welfare loss

  Fixation on transit technologies

  Now that we will have smart cards, we can use them to change behaviours and fix problems, even if the problems are small and easier to fix in other ways!

  Confusion about scale.

  It works in Hong Kong and Vancouver, why not here!

  Confusion about "flexibility,"

  This system will make it better for people taking short trips, ignoring the negative effects since of course an ignored group counts more than existing users (the blog also has more than a couple posts on the futility of providing good transit for short trips on any transit system)

  Ignorance about what's already working, leading to premature demolition fantasies.

  Building cost effective infrastructure has been Calgary's goal all along. Our urbanist movement evolved from saving money. Fortunately we get a lot of side benefits from this infrastructure beyond saving money. Ignoring the real benefits of the system (less congestion) to try to serve users that are the hardest to serve (short trips) doesn't seem wise.

[DizzyEdge]

They should just have a standard senior's discount, like 30%, and then let people of all ages apply for low income passes as needed.

A 97% senior's discount is ridiculous.

I see in Toronto, seniors and students get 20% off.

[MalcolmTucker]

& Even with the discount it is still around the price of the Calgary adult pass no?

[DizzyEdge]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

& Even with the discount it is still around the price of the Calgary adult pass no?

In Toronto? yeah it's $111 or something, so 20% off is $89

[mersar]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

I understand the motivation of getting people from outside the city off of Calgary subsidized transit. There are a couple problems with blaming out of towners:

And IMO, the biggest problem is that people make it out to be far worse then it is. Not every person in the surrounding communities works downtown, and there are a huge number of them who work in areas with poor service by bus only (foothills industrial for instance). I believe theres only about 9000 people in Cochrane who work in Calgary, and while there is certainly some who take transit, it isn't a huge amount. Airdrie is a higher number, but also further from the CTrain so they'd be more likely to drive anyways. Even if it was 10,000 trips from out of towners, thats only around 2% of the ridership on the CTrain per day.

[mersar]

Another day, another delay. This time it wasn't CT's fault, a cyclist got hit just west of SAIT around 4:30. Took a while but shuttles finally got in place but it was a fun trip home.

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by mersar

And IMO, the biggest problem is that people make it out to be far worse then it is. Not every person in the surrounding communities works downtown, and there are a huge number of them who work in areas with poor service by bus only (foothills industrial for instance). I believe theres only about 9000 people in Cochrane who work in Calgary, and while there is certainly some who take transit, it isn't a huge amount. Airdrie is a higher number, but also further from the CTrain so they'd be more likely to drive anyways. Even if it was 10,000 trips from out of towners, thats only around 2% of the ridership on the CTrain per day.

Yeah, but like SOOOOO many other issues - when you know your idea isn't a good one, you can be sure to get it pushed through when you base it on fear of outsiders. Those damn immigrants errr I mean Cochranites, ripping us all off. They must be stopped, no matter the cost!

[Ferreth]

From the Calgary Herald

Transit passes may be based on sliding scale

"Calgary Transit officials are set to investigate a "sliding scale" low-income pass that could see some of the city's poorest pay less than the current low-income rate of $40 a month."
[...]
"Some on council are also balking at the prospect of raising the cost of the dramatically subsidized seniors pass. Currently, Calgary seniors, no matter their income, pay just $35 a year for a pass, a rate that hasn't changed since 1995."

I have no problem with poor people paying less for transit. Hell, I'd look at charging nothing as a means of helping them make ends meet, and hopefully getting ahead;, at $17K income (for a single), you certainly are not rolling in cash!

But the seniors $35/year thing. Give me a break. I really don't care to be subsiding those who can afford a pass, regardless of age. At least raise it to 1/2 the cost of a full pass, and have a low income level that would allow for a free pass.

Interesting discussion today, BTW. I'd much rather see a time-based fare increase rather than a zone based fare. We only have capacity issues at specific times. If such a move were to alleviate the crunch (debatable - how many people can pick their start time?) then you wouldn't give a rats ass about potential extra revenue - the real book balancer would be moving out the capital costs for service expansion.

[Bassic Lab]

Originally Posted by freeweed

When you're openly admitting that you have no problem discouraging transit use, you're right - we won't see eye to eye on very much.

Carrot vs stick. I prefer encouraging positive behaviours, instead of basically saying "fuck you, you're stuck in the suburbs, what are you gonna do, drive? I'll take away your parking spots then muahahaha!". Quite frankly, the "what other choice do you have?" could also apply to poorer inner city residents. Why don't we jack their rates, I bet transit use is pretty inelastic when you don't own a car!

Seriously, you guys need to take a step back and look at what you're saying, and how this looks to your average taxpayer. The people, remember, that are primarily funding our transit system. Like I said earlier, this seems a lot less about equitable fare distribution and a lot more like "screw the suburbs". And *I* am fairly familiar with how discussions go here and realize that it's a lot more nuanced than that. But how does this come across to the average person who doesn't follow the discussions on SSP?

I'm reminded of the PnR discussion with just about every post. One of the single most hated CT decisions in my time in Calgary. Except by a few people here who openly admitted they had no problem screwing the suburbanites.

Incidentally, and this may be more due to my own ignorance than anything, every zone-based system I've seen has been in much larger cities where transit eventually becomes efficient an self-sustaining. But not because of the zones. It's because the cities are freaking huge and there really aren't many other viable options. Calgary is nowhere close to that yet, unless you're seriously proposing banning cars. Honest question - how many cities of a million people are zone-based?

My support for the PnR fee had nothing to do with screwing suburbanites. It had to do with not screwing people who start work later. Handing out a scarce resource based on the principle of first come first serve does nothing to help the poor and only promotes inefficiency in the system. It really isn't redistributive in anyway because there is no way to limit the subsidy to those who might need the help. Whether we ration the parking stalls by allowing first come first serve or by charging a nominal fee, we are still rationing the resource. It would be impossible to design it to function like healthcare, where the resource is rationed by experts who can determine the patient's need for a service. We don't simply open up the use of MRIs to the first fifty people who bother to line up that day because we would end up wasting the resource on people with upset stomachs or some kind of strange curiosity about whether their kidneys are really shaped like beans. Also, adequate PnR spots for any possible need would probably not be desirable, unlike adequate bus service. Adequate bus service can make every neighbourhood suitable for those that, whether through age, disability, or poverty, cannot drive. Adequate PnR space could mean stations surrounded by huge parking lots forever when we really want them surrounded by TODs.

I do agree with keeping away from zone based fares. They seem overly complex and quite inefficient. With a zone based system we could have a trip from Heritage to Chinook, one stop, costing more than a trip from Chinook to the UofC simply because the boundary of zone 1 is Glenmore in the south and 32 Ave/Charleswood Drive in the NW. A distance based fare could solve that issue but it would still be complex. Also MalcolmTucker is right, there is really little difference in the operational cost of someone who takes a shuttle bus to Somerset-Bridlwood to get downtown and someone who takes a bus to 39 Ave station to get downtown. Now the capital cost of further expansions might make a difference but I simply can't see the additional zone cost being enough of an incentive on its own to reduce urban sprawl and constrain the need to expand the system. We are far more likely to constrain urban sprawl with land use planning, ensuring new suburbs are dense enough to be serviced without a massive subsidy, than with small additional transportation costs like road tolls or zone based transit fares.

[DizzyEdge]

Zone system makes more sense to me at some future time if and when LRT service goes all the way to Okotoks/Strathmore/Cochrane/Airdrie. I think that is sort of how it works in Vancouver.

[Bassic Lab]

Originally Posted by freeweed

Yeah, but like SOOOOO many other issues - when you know your idea isn't a good one, you can be sure to get it pushed through when you base it on fear of outsiders. Those damn immigrants errr I mean Cochranites, ripping us all off. They must be stopped, no matter the cost!

I think the best way to account for out of town users is to allow the city to manage in-Calgary vehicle registration. The city could charge an extra cost and in return the province sends a plate with a C in front of the other numbers, like C-GRT-645. Then it would be easy to charge a differential rate for all kinds of things depending on where the vehicle is registered. It could include park and ride costs, on street parking, certain road tolls, and parking at municipal facilities like leisure centres.

[Cage]

Originally Posted by DizzyEdge

Zone system makes more sense to me at some future time if and when LRT service goes all the way to Okotoks/Strathmore/Cochrane/Airdrie. I think that is sort of how it works in Vancouver.

Your point is partially correct.

The big difference between Calgary and Vancouver is the location of Downtown. In Calgary its at the center of the city. In Vancouver its in the far West North West corner.

Vancouver's three lines consume 68km of track vs Calgary's 48km. However Vancouver zone based system has been around since the inception of the Skytrain when the Expo line opened in 1986 with 20km of track.

By using total track size arguement, Calgary should have a zone based system.

A fare zone based system in Vancouver works because the majority of traffic is unidirectional. West in the morning and East in the afternoon. Calgary's traffic pattern is omni-directional and not condusive to zone based system.

The zone based fare proponents on this forum have yet to propose the zone boundries. So as a put up or shut up challenge, please state your prefered zones.

Although I hate the zone based system, I will propose the zones as justification for why I hate the practice.

IMHO it would take 6 zones to make the strategy work. This is because trips downtown would require 2 zone pass while trips within each zone would be restricted within their respective quadrant. The five zones would be as follows:
1 - NW from Deerfoot in the east to city boundary in the west. City boundry in the North to down town cut out in the south
2 - NE from Deerfoot to city boundrary and from 17th ave SE to city boundary
3. SE from 17th Ave SE to south city boundry and deerfoot as the center boundary.
4. Southwest from deerfooot, south city boundry, glemore resivour and elbow river.
5. West. Bow river to glemore to elbow river to downtown boundary
6. Downtown. 33rd avenue in the south, Deerfoot in the East, to 16th Avenue in the North, to Crowchild trail in the West.

Result is a very complicated 6 zone system with probably about 80% of the users requiring at least a 2 zone fare with probably 20-30% requiring a three zone ticket or more.

Then there is the complication of U-Pass product. U-Pass would require at least a 2 zone base ticket but what about students living in the South and elsewhere that would require a three zone product.

[DizzyEdge]

Originally Posted by Cage

Result is a very complicated 6 zone system with probably about 80% of the users requiring at least a 2 zone fare with probably 20-30% requiring a three zone ticket or more.

In this case I would just make 1 or 2 zones the same price, with 3 zones a premium, to cut down on complexity.

But really being a unicity, I'm not stoked on the ideas of zones within the city limits.

[freeweed]

I know I'll be met with "pfft, it's not a big deal" which is how most people who don't take transit often seem to respond to my concerns about the sheer inconvenience we're introducing (followed by paragraph-long explanations about how "simple" it is ) , but... I'm curious how spot-checking of fares would be handled under either a zone or distance-based system. Near as I can tell, the only real way to check would be a reader of some sort that you "tap" against.

Coming home yesterday, at the very top of the escalators/stairs was a CPS officer (I think, usually it's CT folks) checking for fares. As people walked past. Through a chokepoint. Quick visual inspection and off you go. Didn't really slow down the herd too much, although it was noticeable. With a reader than has to calculate distance etc, and actively be "tapped" by the officer - holy christ. I would have been standing in the station for 5 minutes while he checked the 150+ people who got off the train.

Again, I know those who take transit infrequently love to dismiss these concerns as a non-issue, but wow. People will HATE taking the LRT once they start regularly missing their bus transfers due to a complex system like this. Unless we're going to either lighten up on the fare enforcement, or hire a ton more officers to speed the crowds along. Either of which could well eat into whatever extra fares people think this may generate.

That being said, I've never encountered fare enforcement outside of Calgary so maybe ever other city has this magically worked out and it's never an issue. It just strikes me as a possible logistical nightmare unless CT puts some serious effort into it.

[Radley77]

What about instead of a fare zone system that the following different monthly passes were provided on the Connect card:

Full Pass (full access to any component of the PT network)
Bus Pass (travel on basic bus)
BRT Pass (anywhere on BRT system, anytime)
LRT Pass (anywhere on LRT system, anytime)
Shorthaul Pass (less than 5 LRT stops from where they tapped in)
Offpeak Pass (allowed on system on contraflow routes, or defined intrapeak times)

Basically a transition to allowing for a smorgasbord of options for the user instead of having only one choice of a pass. Something like this would help to reflect costs, and encourage more sustainable choices (lower operational costs).

[freeweed]

Worth thinking about. I like the idea of an offpeak fare a lot, because it's really the only thing that addresses the actual issue. Everything else is basically a blatant cash grab (not that I have any issue paying more).

Not keen on the idea of having to "tap in" with a pass though. Kinda defeats half the purpose of the pass (convenience). Even in months where using tickets might save me a few bucks (vacation), I always buy a pass anyway. I've missed too many trains in the past trying to stamp a ticket before the doors close.

[Cage]

Originally Posted by freeweed

Not keen on the idea of having to "tap in" with a pass though. Kinda defeats half the purpose of the pass (convenience). Even in months where using tickets might save me a few bucks (vacation), I always buy a pass anyway. I've missed too many trains in the past trying to stamp a ticket before the doors close.

Tapping will be a thing of the future if all products move onto the Smart Card.

One possibility (borrowed from Melbourne Au) would be to put tap in machines onto the trains as well as the buses. This would remove the issue of missing a train because the doors closed before tap at station can be completed.

[CTrainDude]

Just a link any of you Transit users may find useful:
http://www.calgarytransit.com/html/lrt_mtce_2011.html