Calgary Public Transit II

[Policy Wonk]

Originally Posted by RyLucky

Centre Street is only an option because of how bad the other options are. Nose Creek alignment fails to serve the 123 000 who will live in existing communities south of Beddington,

It doesn't need to and was never intended to. That can be accomplished very satisfactorily with BRT.

and provides indirect, ineffective service to those North of Beddington.

That is negated almost entirely by the ability of the LRV's to operate at their maximum speed along Nose Creek.

On top of that, it will impact service for the W-NE LRT, making the entire LRT network worse.

SSP Groupthink, modern interlocking (already being implemented) and an inevitable 7th Ave grade separation negate that completely, all this will be accomplished long before any North Central LRT. New Jersey Transit created the equivalent of a third track in the North River Tunnels out of thin-air by way of modernizing their interlocking. The bottle neck is 7th Ave - not interlining.

By the time this thing gets built, the city expects about 10% more population here, but we'll have to do better than that. I'd argue that only with a rapid transit option is investment in Yonge-Street-like TOD density practical on Centre Street... so a bit of a chicken and the egg thing.

I wouldn't even be opposed to that if I thought it was possible. But the danger is just as great we could wind-up with some of the Bloor stations, of which the newest are thirty years old and surrounded by most of the same parking lots of single family housing that was there before.

Personally, I think this would be a great project in the long term and that Nose Creek Alignment is a non-starter,

How is exactly that a line that can be built almost entirely on city owned land, on a flat right-of-way where LRV's can operate at 110km/h over much of the route, will serve an area that will be sprawling for decades to come and be populated by archetypal C-Train commuters be a non-starter? This was quite possibly the least controversial standing transit plan ever until the mayor latched on to it. It isn't sexy - but as a SDBDS (Suburban Douchebag Delivery System) it would be second to none.