Calgary Public Transit II

[Full Mountain]

Originally Posted by Cage

According to the City/s Annual Report for fiscal 2011, Net taxes available for municpal purpose amounted to 1.467 billion. This line item covers: property taxes, community revitalization levy, business taxes, revenue in lieu of taxes, and local improvement levies and special taxes LESS provincial portion of property taxes.

For arguement sake lets put the catchment area at a generous 40% of total city area. A 10% property tax increase (round up to 150 million) at 40% catchment area would yield additional revenue of $60 million assuming you could get the province to forgo its 1/2 share of revenue increase. Or about 50 years to pay off the debt associated with the SE/NC LRT.

So given that in an ideal world half the cost would be picked up by other orders of government, this leaves the city to raise ~$1.5 billion. Given a 10 year time frame = $150 mil per year this would result in an 25% levy. This would be substantial but not excessive and given that it would be implemented prior to construction starting allowing the money to flow into a fund specific to the project rather than into general revenues as so often happens.

Edit: Alternatively cut that in half to 10% city wide into a fund for transit improvements, this way everyone puts their money in.

[Doug]

How about higher transit fares? $4 to ride off peak and $6 during peak. $90 for a monthly pass only valid outside peak and $135 for one valid during peak. I doubt it would impact ridership at all.

How do the economics compare to the west line, which at double its original budget can't have that great an ROI.

[O-tacular]

Was just listening to QR77 and they were discussing future LRT and the debate over whihc line should be built first (SE or NC). Frankly I think it would be ridiculous to delay the SE LRT any longer as it is already 15 years overdue. Just because NC has higher ridership doesn't mean it merits it more as the SE has terrible bus routes and times. Also, the argument about future employment nodes around Keystone Hills etc is lame b/c the S.E. already has those employment nodes and is building a little greenfield TOD called Seton around a mega hospital which will employ thousands of people.

[polishavenger]

The reasons I suggest a levy and gradual pay back are as follows:

1) Passed by plebisite it would indicate how badly these people want the line early. When its time to put your money were your mouth is, the real degree of interest comes out.

2) It would be paid back because as a city, we dont make specific areas of the city pay for their own infrastructure, it comes out of the general pool of taxes. We did not expect the people around GE5 to pay for it exclusively, or for any of the neighborhoods around other ctrain extensions. This proposal is only to speed up the new line when the funds are not available.

[polishavenger]

Originally Posted by Cage

The special levy would require approximately $25,000 per home in the NC and SE area (based on TransitCamps numbers of following catchment area assumptions SE = 90K, NC 160k, 2 residents per home, plus an assumed 3B cost for the entire line). Further Calgary transit only recieves 47% of funds from the fare/customers, so it is not realistic that there would be excess funds to pay back the owners over time.

The SE LRT will always have the problem of economics and ridership for Inglewood to Douglasdale portion. NC LRT option does not have this problem.

The levy can be applied for several years before, and during construction to ease the burden.

The revenues generated by fares are irrelevant since each project has to have its construction costs paid one way or another, and all this does is generates the funds from a different source to speed up delivery of the project. Think of it as a public public partnership, the gov borrowing from its own citizens.

[O-tacular]

I think the city needs to just bite the bullet on the SELRT because no matter what we'll never have the cash ready to start up. The longer the SELRT takes to get going the more expensive it will become. The need is only increasing by the year.

Not sure if this has been covered on here yet or not, but can someone explain to me why the city can't look at doing the SELRT in phases like they did all the other lines instead of building it all at once?

EDIT: The city should have built the LRT before the SE Ring Road imo.

[Elbownian]

Originally Posted by Doug

How about higher transit fares? $4 to ride off peak and $6 during peak. $90 for a monthly pass only valid outside peak and $135 for one valid during peak. I doubt it would impact ridership at all.

Fares that high could virtually kill the occasional rider base. I know my world would shrink a whole lot if every outing was going to cost me $8-12.

[You Need A Thneed]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

I think the city needs to just bite the bullet on the SELRT because no matter what we'll never have the cash ready to start up. The longer the SELRT takes to get going the more expensive it will become. The need is only increasing by the year.

Not sure if this has been covered on here yet or not, but can someone explain to me why the city can't look at doing the SELRT in phases like they did all the other lines instead of building it all at once?

They could do it in phases, but the first phase would be a billion dollars and not get very far. Also, the city doesn't have a billion dollars available.

[MichaelS]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

I think the city needs to just bite the bullet on the SELRT because no matter what we'll never have the cash ready to start up. The longer the SELRT takes to get going the more expensive it will become. The need is only increasing by the year.

Not sure if this has been covered on here yet or not, but can someone explain to me why the city can't look at doing the SELRT in phases like they did all the other lines instead of building it all at once?

EDIT: The city should have built the LRT before the SE Ring Road imo.

It is not the City building the SE ring road, but the province. I am sure most of council would have agreed with you, but it was not their decision.

Also, as far as biting the bullet and just starting, they have no money to even start, so not much can be done there unfortunately.

[Cage]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

Not sure if this has been covered on here yet or not, but can someone explain to me why the city can't look at doing the SELRT in phases like they did all the other lines instead of building it all at once?

Phased approach is somewhat plausible for first phase, which would likely be Inglewood, Ramsay, East Village or Belt Line, and downtown. This can presently be accomplished by bus network.

Beyond Ramsay/Inglewood there is a huge traffic dead zone for Bonnybrook and Ogden. Its a billion dollar hurdle to get over and a deal killer on any SELRT proposal.

To make the SELRT work, the line has no ROI until it gets to Douglasdale. Then as one gets further south the LRT ROI starts to make sense.

[andasen]

Originally Posted by Cage

To make the SELRT work, the line has no ROI until it gets to Douglasdale. Then as one gets further south the LRT ROI starts to make sense.

With that in mind...

***Warning Thought Experiment***

Just for the sake of hearesy how about we just build LRT from Seton to South Hill first and then build up a second city core either in Douglasglen/Shepard/Quarry Park or Hospital/Seton. For a connection to downtown make a peak level commuter service along existing track express to downtown from Shepard with a stops at 52nd Street and South Hill with the option of extending it out to Langdon should they want it. Inglewood and East Village would get screwed, commuters would have an inconvience but would relieve some strain on the system. Would help move people within the southeast and crosstown BRT routes (SW Crosstown, 52nd St, and Deep South Cross Town) could off set some of the major ridership loss by not having the downtown connection for people coming from the NE, SC, SW and W. people coming from the NW and NC would have to get onto the South Line and transfer from there.

This thought process depends on there being a high internal demand for trips within the Southeast upon the completion of the hospital and build out of Seton among some other major assumptions. Just trying to think outside the box.

[Doug]

Originally Posted by Cage

The special levy would require approximately $25,000 per home in the NC and SE area (based on TransitCamps numbers of following catchment area assumptions SE = 90K, NC 160k, 2 residents per home, plus an assumed 3B cost for the entire line). Further Calgary transit only recieves 47% of funds from the fare/customers, so it is not realistic that there would be excess funds to pay back the owners over time.

The SE LRT will always have the problem of economics and ridership for Inglewood to Douglasdale portion. NC LRT option does not have this problem.

At that cost, neither line makes sense. I'd like to understand why the SE line is so expensive given that the City already owns most of the ROW. The 19 km Canada Line in Vancouver cost ~$2B and has far more tunneling and elevated guideway than the proposed SE line. Plus Vancouver has more challenging seismic requirements and community opposition.

[Bassic Lab]

Originally Posted by Cage

Phased approach is somewhat plausible for first phase, which would likely be Inglewood, Ramsay, East Village or Belt Line, and downtown. This can presently be accomplished by bus network.

Beyond Ramsay/Inglewood there is a huge traffic dead zone for Bonnybrook and Ogden. Its a billion dollar hurdle to get over and a deal killer on any SELRT proposal.

To make the SELRT work, the line has no ROI until it gets to Douglasdale. Then as one gets further south the LRT ROI starts to make sense.

A first phase from Inglewood/Ramsay to downtown makes no sense whatsoever. It could easily cost a billion dollars and daily ridership would be lucky to approach the mid four figures. Really I wouldn't be surprised if Highfield/Bonnybrook generated more riders than Inglewood/Ramsay; with the industrial stops there is at least a chance for workers to transfer from other lines downtown. The tunnel downtown is the costliest aspect of the whole project.

The only first phase that makes sense is downtown to Douglasdale. Hawkesworth's plan to build a first phase from 10 Ave to Douglasdale, delaying the downtown subway, might even make some sense but it is pointless to build anything unless it actually makes it past Glenmore. The further past Glenmore, the better.

A Centre Street LRT could theoretically make sense to phase from a service perspective, at least as long as it is built as an extension to an already existing SE LRT, but it probably wouldn't from a fiscal one. There could be a great deal of money wasted doing it bit by bit. It would also mean traffic issues would last a very long time.

[ByeByeBaby]

Originally Posted by Doug

How about higher transit fares? $4 to ride off peak and $6 during peak. $90 for a monthly pass only valid outside peak and $135 for one valid during peak. I doubt it would impact ridership at all.

How do the economics compare to the west line, which at double its original budget can't have that great an ROI.

Observed transit fare elasticities (I'm using the APTA values for all cities in table 1 in this report) suggest that those kinds of fares would reduce peak hour ridership by about 50% and offpeak in the range of 60%.

Originally Posted by andasen

Just for the sake of hearesy how about we just build LRT from Seton to South Hill first and then build up a second city core either in Douglasglen/Shepard/Quarry Park or Hospital/Seton. For a connection to downtown make a peak level commuter service along existing track express to downtown from Shepard with a stops at 52nd Street and South Hill with the option of extending it out to Langdon should they want it.

I'm not sure who "we" is here building this "second core"; private developers will spend lots of money to build densely on expensive, accessible, in-demand land like downtown, and they will spend a little building cheap space on cheap suburban land, but no one who is motivated by profit will spend lots of money to build dense space in suburbs where they can't rent expensively. And our existing core took 50 years to build; spending decades building a dense office space in a random suburban location may be a nice ideal, but it doesn't make sense as a response to it taking 20 years before we can afford LRT. The Seton hospital took 5 years alone; the Bow, around the same. So a crash course of socialist office development would produce structures around 2020; the LRT on existing plans would be less than 10 years after that. And all of this is based on some sort of commuter service on what existing track? Certainly not the heavily used freight rail. I don't even think this plan would work in SimCity.

[andasen]

Originally Posted by ByeByeBaby

I'm not sure who "we" is here building this "second core"; private developers will spend lots of money to build densely on expensive, accessible, in-demand land like downtown, and they will spend a little building cheap space on cheap suburban land, but no one who is motivated by profit will spend lots of money to build dense space in suburbs where they can't rent expensively. And our existing core took 50 years to build; spending decades building a dense office space in a random suburban location may be a nice ideal, but it doesn't make sense as a response to it taking 20 years before we can afford LRT. The Seton hospital took 5 years alone; the Bow, around the same. So a crash course of socialist office development would produce structures around 2020; the LRT on existing plans would be less than 10 years after that. And all of this is based on some sort of commuter service on what existing track? Certainly not the heavily used freight rail. I don't even think this plan would work in SimCity.

Actually given those critisms the idea is not as out to lunch as you think.

1) When I used the term core I was not referring a to density of the same scale as downtown has in present day but something of a smaller scale. The area north of douglasglen station already has some employment density. It would require some major shifts in who is occupying the buildings conversion of the existing industrial work yards attatched to the buildings to be redeveloped to medium rise buildings. Density is driven by both market and regulatory forces. Dismissing the possiblity in either of the sites being able to achieve lesser core status is not impossible in the short-medium term, given the density creep already happening.

2) Running commuter service on freight lines just like this is rather par for the course. The other half of this line has plans in the making for a commuter service out to Cochrane and with a potencial stop in Bowness. The West Coast Express in Metrovancouver runs along the tracks leading to Port MetroVancouver-Burrard Inlet (in a similar ball park in terms of volume on the line but may be less as the mainline splits to serve both Burrard Inlet and Deltaport though it having picked up more volume from the interior of BC)

The solution I offer is not anywhere near optimal. There are a lot of critisms that are possible but those are not on the highend of the spectrum in terms of critical issues with it. I'd be more concerned about whether the lack of network connectivity would be too big a blow to the ridership or whether the service would be time competitive. Serious questions whose answers would shape how close or far from the realm of reason the required density increases would be.

Anyone else have alternative ways of improving the transportation situation in the short to medium term different than default or mine?

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by andasen

Actually given those critisms the idea is not as out to lunch as you think.

1) When I used the term core I was not referring a to density of the same scale as downtown has in present day but something of a smaller scale. The area north of douglasglen station already has some employment density. It would require some major shifts in who is occupying the buildings conversion of the existing industrial work yards attatched to the buildings to be redeveloped to medium rise buildings. Density is driven by both market and regulatory forces. Dismissing the possiblity in either of the sites being able to achieve lesser core status is not impossible in the short-medium term, given the density creep already happening.

2) Running commuter service on freight lines just like this is rather par for the course. The other half of this line has plans in the making for a commuter service out to Cochrane and with a potencial stop in Bowness. The West Coast Express in Metrovancouver runs along the tracks leading to Port MetroVancouver-Burrard Inlet (in a similar ball park in terms of volume on the line but may be less as the mainline splits to serve both Burrard Inlet and Deltaport though it having picked up more volume from the interior of BC)

The solution I offer is not anywhere near optimal. There are a lot of critisms that are possible but those are not on the highend of the spectrum in terms of critical issues with it. I'd be more concerned about whether the lack of network connectivity would be too big a blow to the ridership or whether the service would be time competitive. Serious questions whose answers would shape how close or far from the realm of reason the required density increases would be.

Anyone else have alternative ways of improving the transportation situation in the short to medium term different than default or mine?

I believe the last time the Cochrane commuter was somewhat seriously explored CPR said it would require triple tracking for much of the route. The number that sticks in my head is north of half a billion dollars. This is because the mainline is at capacity.

Some selections on this:

CRP Commuter Rail Workshop Notes

A Canadian Pacific spokesman, Ed Greenberg, says the Calgary-based railway is open to working with the various partners involved in any potential commuter train service.

"Our priority is to respond to our customers freight shipping needs; at the same time we've had success in other major centres in using our tracks for commuter rail," he says.

"We're open to continuing to discuss the potential with the city and the Calgary Regional Partnership and the provincial government."

Calgary Herald
Tue Dec 20 2011

Breanne Feigel, a CPR spokeswoman, says that while the company's main focus is on freight, CPR is not opposed to commuter service.

"We're always open to exploring new transportation ideas," said Feigel.

CPR has commuter arrangements with independent operators in other regions of the country, but Feigel said the Calgary Regional Partnership would have to invest in upgrades such as sidings and stations.

Calgary Herald
Sat Oct 20 2007

[O-tacular]

Just throwin this out there, but what do you think having Ric McIver as the Transport Minister will do to help or hinder this project? It also happens to be in his ward.

[Northski]

SELRT, NCLRT, and 8th ave subway would probably cost 6 billion dollars. Spread out over 20 years would cost 300 million per year to build it out.

A 5c per liter gas tax increase for Calgary would bring in about 120 million per year.

I would rather see broad based tax increases to pay for lrt rather than special assessments. How would you make special assessments for the ring road, Glenmore, Crowchild, Deerfoot, Metis, John Laurie, McKnight, Airport trail, MacLoud, and BRTs ....

[Doug]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

Just throwin this out there, but what do you think having Ric McIver as the Transport Minister will do to help or hinder this project? It also happens to be in his ward.

It can only help:
1) He lives in the area
2) He is close to the developers in the area
3) Most important: the guy knows how to deliver value. If anyone can structure a deal to deliver the most bang for the buck it is him.

[Cage]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

Just throwin this out there, but what do you think having Ric McIver as the Transport Minister will do to help or hinder this project? It also happens to be in his ward.

It can only hinder:
- McIvor is the judge and jury for deciding which PROVINCIAL projects move forward. That he is also the local MLA means there is no-one in caucus to advocate for SELRT funding above all other projects.
- IF SELRT goes ahead, Edmonton is going to demand their second LRT line (Downtown to Millwoods) is given equal treatment. Costs to the provincial government would explode as everyone gets in line for special treatment (e.g. Ft Mac will want Hwy 63 twinned, GP and NW AB is going to want Hwy 43 twinned, etc.).