Calgary Public Transit II

[J-D]

http://calgary.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/C...n_crash_110912/20110912/?hub=CalgaryHome

Uhm... Surely this is a typo?

According to Calgary Transit, there have been 58 fatalities along the CTrain lines since August 2010.

[freeweed]

I suppose it depends on what they mean by "along". No way 58 people have been actually hit by the trains in a year. I bet it's closer to 10.

[srperrycgy]

Originally Posted by J-D

http://calgary.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/C...n_crash_110912/20110912/?hub=CalgaryHome

Uhm... Surely this is a typo?

Yes it is. That would be the number since the network opened in May 1981. Still, it's way too high.

[The Fisher Account]

Just about all of the most recent fatalities have been suicides.

[lineman]

Originally Posted by mersar

Looks like tonight's commute will be fun. There was a pretty bad incident in the NE this morning that damaged /tore down reportedly a few hundred meters of caternary around Barlow/Max Bell, and CT is saying that it might be fixed by 4pm.

The carbon strip on a panotgraph came off, tearing down the contact wire. 5 spans were affected. There was quite a bit of damage. There's no way it would be fixed by 4pm.

I was sent home at 11am for rest to relieve the day crew at 7pm. We were off the tracks by 2am. Switched the power and had the test train roll by (the nerve-racking part). Got home at 3:45.

I got today off though!

[5seconds]

Originally Posted by srperrycgy

Yes it is. That would be the number since the network opened in May 1981. Still, it's way too high.

Not saying that many deaths is a good thing (I'm totally not!) but 58 deaths in 30 years averages less than 2 deaths per year. Take out the number of intentional deaths, and that figure drops even lower.

Compared to road accidents, that's not a terrible figure by any means.

[fusili]

Originally Posted by 5seconds

Not saying that many deaths is a good thing (I'm totally not!) but 58 deaths in 30 years averages less than 2 deaths per year. Take out the number of intentional deaths, and that figure drops even lower.

Compared to road accidents, that's not a terrible figure by any means.

Great point. I remember a stat from somewhere that said taking public transit is something like 20 times safer than driving (or riding as a passenger) in a car.

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by fusili

Great point. I remember a stat from somewhere that said taking public transit is something like 20 times safer than driving (or riding as a passenger) in a car.

So is flying, but that doesn't stop people from overreacting when people die from it.

I'd like to see the actual stat of what I consider legitimate, unavoidable deaths from the LRT. No suicides, no being thrown into the train due to a drug deal gone wrong, no horsing around with your drunken buddies at 1am, no stumbling across with your iPod so loud you can't even hear it. I mean honest-to-goodness "it could happen to me" deaths.

I bet the number is in the single digits. Over 30 years.

[Cage]

This morning Calgary Transit facilities staff were removing the PnR Park Plus machines from Crowfoot station. Guess we will not be seeing a daily reserved parking rate any time soon.

[Cage]

Originally Posted by floobie

According to the Herald, reserved parking spots aren't too popular:

http://www.calgaryherald.com/Reserved+parking+lots+proving+unpopular/5386152/story.html

As usual, the comments section for the article is full of face-palm material. But, I get the impression that some additional tweaking of this idea is necessary. Though, I'd think demand should increase as the weather turns to shit.

As for the deaths... sheesh. Some of these must be suicides. Makes me not want to ride the train for a while. I don't really feel like witnessing something like this.

Demand is increasing for the month of September, at least on the Northwest line.

Crowfoot has lowest number of remaing reserved spots that I have ever seen. Only 155 spots are remaining on the reserved list. Average during the summer was about 300 units. Additionally there is still 10 days to go before the reserved parking is complete. The city is average about 1-20 spots per day at Crowfoot, so expect less than 100 units for October.

Unit take up has also picked up at Dalhousie, although by only about additional 50 spots so far.

Brentwood appears to be about flat in terms of unit take up. However as Crowfoot starts to reach 100% reserved capacity some people will look to Dalhousie and Brentwood as alternatives.

I still think that by November 1 Crowfoot will be at 100% reserved capcacity (650 units), Dalhousie will be at 80% plus capacity and Brentwood will be above 50% capacity.

The 16% of capacity figure has also as little miss leading. Over the summer CT has been adding potential capacity on the southline with very little incentive for take up. However as the inclement weather approaches, these newer stations will see an increase in reserved stalls. Overall reserved spot should be well over 65% by November 1.

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by Cage

This morning Calgary Transit facilities staff were removing the PnR Park Plus machines from Crowfoot station. Guess we will not be seeing a daily reserved parking rate any time soon.

That's more than a little bit of a contradiction. How would you "reserve" a spot that you've already parked in?

[Cage]

Originally Posted by freeweed

That's more than a little bit of a contradiction. How would you "reserve" a spot that you've already parked in?

The concept would be to soak up some of the excess capacity generated by reserved parkers not utilizing their spaces 100% of the time. There appears to be an excess of 30-50 spots each day that go unutilized and this could be an extra source of revenue for Calgary Transit.

To further the example. Lets say that historical data determines that about 10% of the reserved parking stalls are under utilized M-Th and about 25% on F. There is an opportunity to resell these spots using the airline industry standards for oversell. In this scenario Calgary transit would install a LED sign that governs the number of daily paid parkers that could be accomodated in the reserved parking lot. The daily counter could start at 30 units for M-Th and have 70+ units for Friday. Daily rate payers would utilize the Park Plus machines to enter their payment and car details and the sign counter would use this information to count down the number of spots available for day use. Total cost of this initiative is the LED sign and some extra software.

This solution could also work to immediately bring each PNR lot to 50% reserved space capacity and then charge a day rate to make up the difference between monthly parkers and available spaces.

[suburb]

Will they need more than just what will be added with the station upgrades? What would it cost? Assuming West leg is being built with more crossover tracks in place?

http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/Tr...ime+caused+breakdowns/5411836/story.html

One of the fixes Wong's system is pursuing for the breakdown problems is to add more crossover tracks, so that one broken train or overhead wire doesn't cripple huge stretches of track.

"What it allows us to do is go around things a little bit faster," Wong said.

Such upgrades are coming in as stations expand with four-car platforms, but it will take another two years to be fully in place.

[MalcolmTucker]

Well, aren't some of the cross overs (most that aren't there for yard or earlier terminus operations) not powered anyways?

[DarkKeyo]

In theory, there should be a crossover in between each station. In practice, the NW line, last time I checked, is the only one that almost achieves this (with the only gap in between SAIT and Sunnyside, which was awkward when downtown closures like this weekend also included 8th.)

[frinkprof]

With the northeast LRT extension to Saddletown and Martindale in operation next year, there will be some information sessions regarding how the feeder bus routes will change.

Wednesday, 2011 September 21 5:00pm to 9:00pm
Taradale School
170 Taravista Drive NE

Tuesday, 2011 September 27 5:00pm to 9:00pm
Crossing Park School
500 Martindale Boulevard NE

Thursday, 2011 September 29 3:00pm to 7:00pm
McKnight – Westwinds Station
3910 54 Avenue NE

Friday, 2011 September 30 3:00pm to 7:00pm
McKnight – Westwinds Station
3910 54 Avenue NE

http://www.calgarytransit.com/html/ne_lrt_bus_info_2011.html

[Aegis]

Discussing transit with some coworkers during the week.

Several of them live in the Tuscany or Rocky Ridge area, but drive to the Park & Ride at McMahon. Basically bypassing the millions of dollars of transit investment in Crowchild corridor in the past 10 years.

The reason? Crowfoot LRT parking is full at an unreasonably early time, and the feeder bus route isn't convenient for them.

I've always wondered why CT doesn't make the feeder busses more frequent/convenient. Seems like there would be more efficient utilization if small problems like that could be solved.

[Cage]

Cross-overs only solve half the problem. The other required tool are places where broken trains can be shunted.

In the Northwest line, there are cross overs on all stations along Crowchild, but there is no cross over between downtown and University. The only siding area is between Brentwood and Dalhousie. Even then this siding was only made operational this summer. In a final kink to the Northwest line, there are no crossovers between Crowfoot and Dalhousie, a stretch of about 5km.

I don't travel the other lines on a daily basis, so its hard to compare with the other lines.

To improve LRT network reliability, the following needs to occur.
-cross over connections at each station with the exception of downtown.
- spur line shunts at each end of Downtown line.
- spur line shunts at least every 5 km along NW, NE, S line. The spur lines need to be able to handle 4 car trains.

[frinkprof]

Originally Posted by Aegis

I've always wondered why CT doesn't make the feeder busses more frequent/convenient. Seems like there would be more efficient utilization if small problems like that could be solved.

Because they serve places like Tuscany and Rocky Ridge where they are relegated to long circuitous routes through spaghetti-pattern streets. Oh yeah, and they eat up limited budget transit service hours (an increase of which would need to occur to increase frequencies) at a cost.

The solution for your coworkers is to move somewhere that doesn't result in an inefficient utilization of their and everyone else's resources, or to learn to live with the long circuitous and infrequent routes that is inherent with their community of choice.

[Aegis]

Originally Posted by frinkprof

Because they serve places like Tuscany and Rocky Ridge where they are relegated to long circuitous routes through spaghetti-pattern streets. Oh yeah, and they eat up limited budget transit service hours (an increase of which would need to occur to increase frequencies) at a cost.

The solution for your coworkers is to move somewhere that doesn't result in an inefficient utilization of their and everyone else's resources, or to learn to live with the long circuitous and infrequent routes that is inherent with their community of choice.

I'm not sure if CT views it that way, but if so.. there's a major problem there. The community is already built, and people want convenience or else they won't use transit. So what do we do? Say "you are stupid for living there, go move somewhere else if you want to use public transit"? Not every family has the means to buy a $500k inner-city bungalow thats within a reasonable transit-commute distance of the downtown core. it appears that our governments invest millions of dollars putting the train to Crowfoot, but then skimp on the necessary and important details like making it convenient for people to use. CT should respond to what the customer wants/needs, not dictate to the customer what they need. If the purpose of feeder routes is to feed the train, then why are they viewed independently of the train?