Calgary Public Transit II

[Wooster]

Some Calgary Transit news announced by Mayor Nenshi and the Director of Calgary Transit

Some new stuff from the Mayor and Calgary Transit:

http://blog.calgarymayor.ca/2011/09/new-steps-for-better-calgary-transit.html

• Calgary Transit and the Mayor have created the Calgary Transit Customer Advisory Group to give customers a greater collaborative voice in the future of Calgary Transit (particularly in the area of customer service). Calgary Transit senior management will also regularly engage directly with customers on transit routes to better understand customer service concerns.
• Calgary Transit is actively working to reduce (where possible) the number of service disruptions and their impact on customers.
• Calgary Transit is planning to release service and reliability measurements for greater accountability and to encourage continual improvement

I'd encourage some of you guys to apply for the Advisory Group.

[Calgarian]

How much of this advisory group and the upgrades to the ticket machines are the brainchild of Nenshi? or are at least influenced by him?

He seems to be doing a very good job so far, definitely glad I voted for him.

[Wooster]

Upgrades to ticket machines and a bevy of other improvements have been on the hopper for a while and are the result of the stimulus money from the Federal Government - but very much fit into the mayor's mandate to make Transit much more customer-friendly.

The Advisory Group is something that was an election promise and something I've been working on getting up and running for a couple of months. Keep an eye out next week for the opening of applications. There's a pretty wide array of people it will include:

• Mayor or designate (Ex-Officio member)
• 4 members representing transit users from each of the 4 quadrants of the city
• 1 member with a limited mobility or physical challenges such as visual impairment (not an Access Calgary customer)
• 1 senior member over the age of 65
• 1 youth or student member between the ages of 15-22
• 1 member with a low-income monthly pass
• 1 member from the business community with experience in customer service related activities
• 1 member from the academic community with knowledge related to customer service, technology and/or public transit
• 1 member with a professional background in design (e.g. graphic designer, interior designer, architect, urban designer, industrial designer)
• 1 member from a transit-focused association or group
• 1-2 members at large

The publishing of performance measure statistics (such as on time performance averages of bus and C-train) was also something the Mayor promised to bring forward during the election. GPS will bring a lot of new data that will be very useful on this front.

[srperrycgy]

I like the idea of the Advisory Group, especialy if the Mayor is involved. Like I tweeted to you Josh, I'm a bit cynical about it. This is why:

"It will not focus on issues related to scheduling, operations, service supply or route planning."

If you cannot supply the above, then Customer Service suffers anyway. I'd love to hear what the ATU 583 (Transit Union) thinks about all this. Would they be cooperative?

"Calgary Transit is planning to release service and reliability measurements for greater accountability and to encourage continual improvement."

I am very cynical regarding this. All data can be skewed or parts omitted to produce a positive result. CT is unbelievably bad when it comes to releasing data. I'm still waiting on station ridership data from 2008-10. Thinking about submitting a FOIP request.

[Calgarian]

Originally Posted by Wooster

Upgrades to ticket machines and a bevy of other improvements have been on the hopper for a while and are the result of the stimulus money from the Federal Government - but very much fit into the mayor's mandate to make Transit much more customer-friendly.

The Advisory Group is something that was an election promise and something I've been working on getting up and running for a couple of months. Keep an eye out next week for the opening of applications. There's a pretty wide array of people it will include:

• Mayor or designate (Ex-Officio member)
• 4 members representing transit users from each of the 4 quadrants of the city
• 1 member with a limited mobility or physical challenges such as visual impairment (not an Access Calgary customer)
• 1 senior member over the age of 65
• 1 youth or student member between the ages of 15-22
• 1 member with a low-income monthly pass
• 1 member from the business community with experience in customer service related activities
• 1 member from the academic community with knowledge related to customer service, technology and/or public transit
• 1 member with a professional background in design (e.g. graphic designer, interior designer, architect, urban designer, industrial designer)
• 1 member from a transit-focused association or group
• 1-2 members at large

The publishing of performance measure statistics (such as on time performance averages of bus and C-train) was also something the Mayor promised to bring forward during the election. GPS will bring a lot of new data that will be very useful on this front.

Glad to hear Nenshi was part of this, he is proving himself to be a very competent mayor, and a politician who actually tries to deliver on his campaign promises.

[suburb]

Originally Posted by 5seconds

I won't pretend I get it totally, but you get much more house for the money that far out, compared to the inner city, so I do understand why some would be tempted to go that route. Also, I think we don't place enough value on the intangible: An inner city house might cost hundreds of thousands of dollars more than in the suburbs, while our time in traffic is free, so the comparison can be very easy for some.

Remember that a vast majority of people don't work in DT. Only ~150,000 people work in DT. Some of the major employers outside of DT include:
- Schools
- Post secondary
- Healthcare industry including hospitals, clinics, diagnostics
- Industrial parks
- Airport
- Much of the service industry
- Much of the retail

So I think some of the assumptions made continue to be inaccurate when thinking through all these things (all in addition to more house for the money).

[5seconds]

Originally Posted by suburb

Remember that a vast majority of people don't work in DT. Only ~150,000 people work in DT. Some of the major employers outside of DT include:
- Schools
- Post secondary
- Healthcare industry including hospitals, clinics, diagnostics
- Industrial parks
- Airport
- Much of the service industry
- Much of the retail

So I think some of the assumptions made continue to be inaccurate then thinking through all these things (all in addition to more house for the money).

Absolutely. I was referring specifically to a comment regarding spending 30 minutes getting out of downtown, so my comments were more about downtown workers living in the far reaches of the city (with limited transit), not the (much more sensible, IMO) suburban workers that work in suburban settings.

This was the comment:

Originally Posted by Calgarian

I don't understand how or why people are willing to sit in traffic for 30 minutes to just get out of downtown on a daily basis. Is having a house in the suburbs really worth that? I mean for the time and money people spend commuting, they could buy a house in the inner city instead of Cranston or Tuscany.

[jeffwhit]

Originally Posted by Wooster

Upgrades to ticket machines and a bevy of other improvements have been on the hopper for a while and are the result of the stimulus money from the Federal Government - but very much fit into the mayor's mandate to make Transit much more customer-friendly.

The Advisory Group is something that was an election promise and something I've been working on getting up and running for a couple of months. Keep an eye out next week for the opening of applications. There's a pretty wide array of people it will include:

• Mayor or designate (Ex-Officio member)
• 4 members representing transit users from each of the 4 quadrants of the city
• 1 member with a limited mobility or physical challenges such as visual impairment (not an Access Calgary customer)
• 1 senior member over the age of 65
• 1 youth or student member between the ages of 15-22
  

...

I kind of wish Vascilli didn't go to school elsewhere, he's the only teenager on the entire internet that doesn't seem retarded. He'd be good.

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by Calgarian

I was saying it might be worth the extra money to live inner city, not necessarily in a condo downtown. A house in Marda Loop would be better than driving to Tuscany or Cranston, that's what I was getting at.

You'd still have a relatively long commute. Once you're out of the downtown core, say Marda Loop distance, the drive to Tuscany is only a few minutes on a freeway. So I'm not sure how that changes anything. The biggest part of the downtown driving suckage is getting out of the core and immediate surroundings, but once you're past that it's generally not that bad.

Unless you'd seriously walk home to M.L., which would take more time than driving to Tuscany.

Anyway, it's not like a house in Tuscany is all that much more of a commute than M.L. Most of Calgary is a 30-40 minute ish commute unless you're right downtown.

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by kw5150

Dont forget that by driving, you are using non-renewable resources and polluting. Our kids also need clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. A friend of mind recently commented on how clean the air was in Calgary; I hope we can keep it that way.

Don't forget that we were specifically talking about commute times, and how time is irreplaceable and should factor heavily in decisions one makes.

[Cage]

Originally Posted by freeweed

What they're talking about, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, is 16% of the POTENTIAL reserved spaces. Dalhousie is still mostly un-reserved, but if demand warranted they could go to a full 50% reserved. They only open up new reserved sections as more people sign up, so right now I can well imagine that most of it is un-reserved. If this makes sense.

The 16% figure is an overall figure of total reserved spaces / total potential spaces. However the deviation for each station from the mean of 16% is very wide.

Quite a few stations on the south line were added to the reserve lot pool in June (Anderson, Chinook, 39th Avenue, Heritage, and Southland). Being the low season summer, these stations have reserved rates in the single digits. With September traffic increase, there are a few more people taking spots.

On the Northeast line, Westwinds has never been full location, consequently there is only about 5% of reserved spots are utilized (25 spots in total).
On the other end of the reserved spot utilization spectrum is Crowfoot, Sommerset. Each station will have an 80% or better utilization rate.

For Dalhousie currently 165 reserved spots have been taken for October 1, this represents an overall utilization of 45%. Traditionally Dalhousie has been at 30% utilization and Crowfoot was at about 50%.

The big question is what will happen on the Northwest line in October and November. supply/demand curves are going to get out of wack as there will be more demand than available supply of both reserved locations and free locations. Come October 1, Crowfoots three closest parking lots will be all reserved parking, how many current free parkers get displaced by reserved parking remains to be seen. But with Dalhousie and Brentwood filled by 8:30am, there is a good chance that a lot of free parkers will be unable to find a spot anywhere on the Northwest line. The only other time this happened was during the firsty week of reserved parking at the Crowfoot station. I predict Calgary parking authority will be handing out a lot of tickets in the first weeks of October.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by freeweed

You'd still have a relatively long commute. Once you're out of the downtown core, say Marda Loop distance, the drive to Tuscany is only a few minutes on a freeway. So I'm not sure how that changes anything. The biggest part of the downtown driving suckage is getting out of the core and immediate surroundings, but once you're past that it's generally not that bad.

Unless you'd seriously walk home to M.L., which would take more time than driving to Tuscany.

Anyway, it's not like a house in Tuscany is all that much more of a commute than M.L. Most of Calgary is a 30-40 minute ish commute unless you're right downtown.

From Signal Hill I consistently did less than 20 minutes to Western for 5 years, and until the west LRT started construction my father did house to parking lot downtown in about the same. When my parents bought the house there we were only 2 blocks in from undeveloped land - the western half of the community east of the two lane (possibly still gravel) 69th St wasn't serviced yet the commute was much less than from many of the suburbs built even 10 or 15 years earlier.

When you could choose at that time between houses about the same age between Shawnessy and the west side if you worked downtown it was a no brainer.

That being said, it wasn't worth the extra 50k to my parents to get a smaller house in Elbow Park or Upper Mt. Royal to switch out driving for walking (and my dad likes to walk - did Union Station up to College St. , around 2 km each way) every day for close to a decade while living in Toronto.

So value propositions are a hard thing. I know first thing my parents did upon deciding to move was go buy public school district maps and found the achievement test rankings - I wonder how many people do that when buying? I know it is very common in the USA, where school boards and cities are very small, and living on different sides of a road can mean the difference between a palace school and a clap board hovel.

[Policy Wonk]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

Doors need to line up perfectly every time. Can you find an example of platform doors without ATO?

To see just how well this works take a look at the wheelchair ramps for the LRT in Sacramento which uses the same Siemens–Duewag U2 as the C-Train except with street level boarding. They miss the ramp probably north of 75% of the time.

[Policy Wonk]

Originally Posted by kap384

Are there a handful of U2's causing a disproportionate # of problems?

I spent some time with Calgary Transit in 1996 and they had a list of U2's ready to be scrapped even then.

[frinkprof]

Originally Posted by Policy Wonk

I spent some time with Calgary Transit in 1996 and they had a list of U2's ready to be scrapped even then.

This doesn't surprise me. There are several U2s that don't see much use beyond training runs. Also a lot of them (perhaps even a majority?) have seen very extensive work to keep them running - even complete overhauls to some of their systems. A lot of them have already been money pits as far as maintenance time and parts goes and will only continue to be until they get retired.

[outoftheice]

Originally Posted by fusili

I know I posted something similar before, but just some fun with numbers if people are interested. These are the catchments for each of the LRTs (and some select BRTs), including future growth as per city growth plans (unfortunately I used the 2010 census for this, so #s will be a bit off). Growth in existing communities is not included for simplicity sake:

NWLRT- 173K (current), 182K (future)
South LRT- 219K (current), 370K (future)
NE LRT- 148K (current), 200K (future)
West LRT- 116K (current), 116K (future- no regional policy plans for the area)
SE LRT- 87K (current), 272K (future)
NC LRT- 150K (current), 333K (future)

BRT 305 (east portion)- 42K (current), 108K (future)
BRT 305 (west protion)- 24K (current and future)
SW BRT- 39K (current and future, would be taken off South LRT catchment)

Thoughts?

This raises an interesting point that perhaps someone else can shed some light on. What plans are in place to provide rapid transit to the future residents of Calgary's north end??

One has to simply look at a map of Calgary's planned LRT network to see a huge gap in between the proposed NC LRT and the NW LRT. I seem to remember media reports that eventually 250 000 people will move in to this area... meaning it will have a larger catchment area than any of the current LRT lines has. There have been talks about rapid transit lines (dedicated BRT, street car or LRT) to service Calgary's east side and to service the area of the City SW of the reserve, so why does it seem like an area that is essentially the size of Red Deer has been ignored by City planners??? To me, it would make more sense for the NC LRT to curve left into the far North once it passes the ring road than the current plan which shows it continuing along Deerfoot towards Airdrie. Have I missed something or are these future communities just a disaster in the making when it comes to rapid transit and traffic congestion?

[MalcolmTucker]

I think it is a BRT to feed into the NCLRT. If I remember correctly, the plan is eventually to have a second BRT heading up Centre St and branching off to the NNW north of Beddington.

If the NCLRT south of the split is built to a high enough standard, maybe one day a spur could be done, but that isn't in any plans I have seen.

[Calgarian]

Originally Posted by freeweed

You'd still have a relatively long commute. Once you're out of the downtown core, say Marda Loop distance, the drive to Tuscany is only a few minutes on a freeway. So I'm not sure how that changes anything. The biggest part of the downtown driving suckage is getting out of the core and immediate surroundings, but once you're past that it's generally not that bad.

Unless you'd seriously walk home to M.L., which would take more time than driving to Tuscany.

Anyway, it's not like a house in Tuscany is all that much more of a commute than M.L. Most of Calgary is a 30-40 minute ish commute unless you're right downtown.

I've always found that the north - south routes move much better than the east - west ones, especially going south. Driving to Marda Loop at 5:30 has never taken me more than 15 minutes.

Commuting to Tuscany isn't actually that bad, once you are on Crowchild past the University Drive bottleneck, it usually flows pretty well.

Either way, this discussion is played out, so I digress.

[Bigtime]

Originally Posted by Wooster

• Calgary Transit and the Mayor have created the Calgary Transit Customer Advisory Group to give customers a greater collaborative voice in the future of Calgary Transit (particularly in the area of customer service). Calgary Transit senior management will also regularly engage directly with customers on transit routes to better understand customer service concerns.
• Calgary Transit is actively working to reduce (where possible) the number of service disruptions and their impact on customers.
• Calgary Transit is planning to release service and reliability measurements for greater accountability and to encourage continual improvement

I'd encourage some of you guys to apply for the Advisory Group.

Paging the following:

-srperry
-Beltliner
-Frinkprof

That is all. You know what you must do.

[LFRENCH]

Originally Posted by jeffwhit

I kind of wish Vascilli didn't go to school elsewhere, he's the only teenager on the entire internet that doesn't seem retarded. He'd be good.

I'll circulate this around some of my fellow urban studies students, I'm sure one will want to step up to the task.