Calgary Public Transit II

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by lubicon

Brilliant idea. I am still working on a ticket book from several fare increases ago (I think it's $2 or maybe $2.25 or something). Always thought it was stupid that they might expire before I could use them all.

You take transit maybe twice a year and yet you bought a ticket book?

(yeah yeah, I know, it's probably from when you last used it regularly or something - just came out kinda funny)

[lubicon]

Originally Posted by freeweed

You take transit maybe twice a year and yet you bought a ticket book?

(yeah yeah, I know, it's probably from when you last used it regularly or something - just came out kinda funny)

I know I know.....

To be honest we bought the thing back when you could only purchase individual tickets with cash only. Very inconvenient when you were taking the family to an event like Stampede, a Flames game etc, and needed to buy 8 tickets (4 each way). It was easier to but the 10 pack but you ended up using only 4 tickets. And as you say, that's only once or twice a year so we ended up with these stupid tickets sitting in our desk at home for several years.

[suburbia]

Thought this would be of interest to some on this forum. Some guy decided to put away his car and use only public transit for a week, and documented some of his experiences.

He has several posts up - this one is the last post, IE day 7, with links to prior posts at the end:

http://www.beyond.ca/car-less-in-calgary-day-7-the-final-stretch/21305.html

The skinny:

Day 1: 318mins (transit) vs 65mins (car). 4.9x longer by transit.
Day 2: 183mins (transit) vs 95mins (car). 1.9x longer by transit.
Day 3: 120mins (transit) vs 65mins (car). 1.8x longer by transit.
Day 4: 320mins (transit) vs 84mins (car). 3.8x longer by transit.
Day 5: 84mins (transit) vs 50mins (car). 1.7x longer by transit.
Day 6: 34mins (transit) vs 10mins (car). 3.4x longer by transit.
Day 7: 160mins (transit) vs 50mins (car). 3.2x longer by transit.

Total: 1219mins (transit) vs 419mins (car). 2.9x longer by transit. An additional 13 hours and 20 mins was spent by using transit over a car for a week.

There are lots of ways that this can be sliced and diced. While I wouldn't want to start a debate about distance for downtown, as sometimes living in the core is simply not an option, the fact he chose to live not close to an LRT station or BRT stop is a huge factor. On the other hand, when using public transit (which I love and do whenever I need to get to the core) we do lose quite a bit of control.

Anyway, not meaning to argue for or against too much here - just putting the link out there for you forumers.

[DizzyEdge]

I find if I can get somewhere on a single trip via transit, it's decent. If I have to transfer, I'd rather drive due to the time suck of waiting + often you have to take a bus not in the direction of your destination, so you can transfer to a bus which does go towards your destination.

[MasterG]

Originally Posted by suburbia

Thought this would be of interest to some on this forum. Some guy decided to put away his car and use only public transit for a week, and documented some of his experiences.

He has several posts up - this one is the last post, IE day 7, with links to prior posts at the end:

http://www.beyond.ca/car-less-in-calgary-day-7-the-final-stretch/21305.html

The skinny:



There are lots of ways that this can be sliced and diced. While I wouldn't want to start a debate about distance for downtown, as sometimes living in the core is simply not an option, the fact he chose to live not close to an LRT station or BRT stop is a huge factor. On the other hand, when using public transit (which I love and do whenever I need to get to the core) we do lose quite a bit of control.

Anyway, not meaning to argue for or against too much here - just putting the link out there for you forumers.

I like this guy's experiment. His list of observations/recommendations don't include live in a more transit friendly area (there are still plenty for the same cost). Also check out the map of what he was trying to do on Day 2 of his experiment:

http://www.beyond.ca/car-less-in-calgary-day-2-of-my-adventures/20781.html

That is not a route that is accessible by transit easily. Essentially Kincora - Crowfoot by transfering downtown.

There is nothing wrong with a car, in the suburbs the route he is trying is exactly what a car is good at: random point of the suburbs to another random point in the suburbs.

It would be interesting to see how much money he spent on gas vs. transit as well (not to mention insurance, cost differential based on his living location or somewhere more accessible).

[suburbia]

Originally Posted by MasterG

There is nothing wrong with a car, in the suburbs the route he is trying is exactly what a car is good at: random point of the suburbs to another random point in the suburbs.

It would be interesting to see how much money he spent on gas vs. transit as well (not to mention insurance, cost differential based on his living location or somewhere more accessible).

It does seem he had his points set-out in advance, and then selected his trips to make those points. I agree that for a trip like the one you've highlighted, just drive your car mate!

Excellent point about gas, insurance, maintenance, depreciation, etc. (I usually just double my gas costs for the full estimate, but would also need to adjust for age / cost of vehicle). What that would need to be balanced against, however, is 13 extra hours. If I map that to my work rate, it would be a LOT of dollars.

[MasterG]

Originally Posted by DizzyEdge

I find if I can get somewhere on a single trip via transit, it's decent. If I have to transfer, I'd rather drive due to the time suck of waiting + often you have to take a bus not in the direction of your destination, so you can transfer to a bus which does go towards your destination.

Agreed on the transfers. I avoid then. Another option is to change your destination based on how you're getting there . For example, on Day 4 of his week he did the route Arbour Lake to Wentworth to go for dinner after rush hour. I know this is a matter of personal preference, but he really could not have chosen a commute that makes transit look more terrible.

I change where I go all the time based on where I live and how long it takes me to go there. If the barbershop I want to go to is 2 hours away, I choose a closer one. I used to go to Westhills cineplex when I lived there. Now I go to Eau Claire / Chinook because I live closer to there. I understand the point he is trying to make, however transit doesn't have and shouldn't work well from everywhere to everywhere.

It doesn't matter really what the errand or desire is, this is a big enough city for multiple choices in every category. No one should ever be trying to go for dinner in Wentworth if they are coming from Arbour Lake

[MasterG]

Originally Posted by suburbia

It does seem he had his points set-out in advance, and then selected his trips to make those points. I agree that for a trip like the one you've highlighted, just drive your car mate!

Excellent point about gas, insurance, maintenance, depreciation, etc. (I usually just double my gas costs for the full estimate, but would also need to adjust for age / cost of vehicle). What that would need to be balanced against, however, is 13 extra hours. If I map that to my work rate, it would be a LOT of dollars.

True, opportunity cost of time is a big factor. I just am getting tired of the argument that Calgary Transit is failing everyone because I can't go from Kincora to Arbour Lake in a reasonable fashion. If lots of people had that commute, I am pretty sure you'd see a more direct bus.

[freeweed]

Interesting numbers, but I do have to ask: isn't beyond.ca a car-enthusiast forum? And I don't mean soccer moms who hate taking the bus because of homeless people. I'm talking ENTHUSIASTS - the guys who spend $5k on a neon kit for their car because they like it so much.

Seems like a weird place to see a transit experiment, but bully on the guy for doing it. He really paints the picture I've been telling people for years - Calgary has absolutely excellent transit for downtown commuters, and otherwise, transit is still a bit of a dog. But that's not exactly news to anyone here.

[suburbia]

Originally Posted by MasterG

True, opportunity cost of time is a big factor. I just am getting tired of the argument that Calgary Transit is failing everyone because I can't go from Kincora to Arbour Lake in a reasonable fashion. If lots of people had that commute, I am pretty sure you'd see a more direct bus.

Yeah - Kincora is not my first choice for buying a place.

[Cage]

Originally Posted by MasterG

That is not a route that is accessible by transit easily. Essentially Kincora - Crowfoot by transfering downtown.

If the 430 still ran out to Crowfoot station (now stops at Sandstone), this trip would have been a lot easier.

[fusili]

Originally Posted by Cage

If the 430 still ran out to Crowfoot station (now stops at Sandstone), this trip would have been a lot easier.

Yeah, that is what I thought.

[You Need A Thneed]

I pretty much need a vehicle for my work (and I use a company vehicle right now, thankfully), so it doesn't matter to me, but I looked up on Google Maps what it might be like to take transit to work.

Currently, it's a 16-18 minutes drive in the morning, and maybe 20-22 coming home.

Transit would take nearly an hour to get me to the closest point, and then I'd have to walk 5 km from there to get to work. Around another hour.

When the ring road opens, cycling might become an option, but is not an option now as I plan on living longer than only the next month or two. It would be absolutely insane biking down 84th Street right now.

If I didn't have a company vehicle to use, I would pretty much be forced to buy our family a second vehicle.

[fusili]

Originally Posted by You Need A Thneed

I pretty much need a vehicle for my work (and I use a company vehicle right now, thankfully), so it doesn't matter to me, but I looked up on Google Maps what it might be like to take transit to work.

Currently, it's a 16-18 minutes drive in the morning, and maybe 20-22 coming home.

Transit would take nearly an hour to get me to the closest point, and then I'd have to walk 5 km from there to get to work. Around another hour.

When the ring road opens, cycling might become an option, but is not an option now as I plan on living longer than only the next month or two. It would be absolutely insane biking down 84th Street right now.

If I didn't have a company vehicle to use, I would pretty much be forced to buy our family a second vehicle.

Contrast that with me. It takes me 20min (approx) to walk to work, which includes a trip down 7th avenue on the C-Train (free). Driving during rush hour would cut this to 10min, but sometimes increase it to 45min. I would then have to pay $200/month in parking or so as well.

I think we can all accept that each situation is unique and no mode of transportation can meet every single need.

[You Need A Thneed]

Originally Posted by fusili

Contrast that with me. It takes me 20min (approx) to walk to work, which includes a trip down 7th avenue on the C-Train (free). Driving during rush hour would cut this to 10min, but sometimes increase it to 45min. I would then have to pay $200/month in parking or so as well.

I think we can all accept that each situation is unique and no mode of transportation can meet every single need.

Exactly. If I was in a scenario like yours, walking would definitely be preferable.

We should provide good quality transit so as many people as possible can get around by using solely transit. But I have long argued, and some of the pro-transit people have failed to recognize, that there is a significant percentage of the workforce for which living close to their work is simply is an impossibility, due to their work - even with one company - moving around from place to place (daily, monthly, yearly), or their being no houses close to the industrial park they work at, or their work being mostly rural. Add on top of that people who need a vehicle of some kind to do their job. Depending on exactly how you define categories, I think you could get up to a number approaching 50% - people that essentially "need" a vehicle to get to work.

For our company, workers have to have a vehicle to get to work, and generally we won't even look at candidates that don't have one. Many of our projects have been inside the city, but a significant distance from any transit. Having employees without cars means that someone who has a car needs to pick up that person, which, at the best of times, is a hassle. We just finished a project where employees were working at the same place for 14 months straight, which is certainly on the long side, for us. But further to the uselessness of trying to locate closer to work, before that (2011), we had two projects going, one in Sparwood, BC, and the other south of Brooks. You hire a few guys locally, but the core guys worked all week, and then came home to their wives and families for the weekend. We've done projects right in the heart of downtown, and we've done projects just across the border into BC, projects 2+ hours SE of Calgary, and projects in Grand Prairie, Spirit River, and even up by High Level. Just after high school, I worked a fall driving from NE Calgary to the Bar U Ranch every day, in the days before the 2A was twinned, and Deerfoot was extended.

Like I said, for where I am right now (mostly in the office), I intend to try cycling to work once the ring road opens, but for right now, and often (especially for our site employees), there is no other option but to have a car.

Make the transit system good, and the likelihood of someone being able to rely on transit solely goes up. Good crosstown transit (BRT or LRT) into Foothills industrial would increase the options for tens of thousands of people. A SE-NC LRT plus many good BRT routes would increase substantially the percentage of people for which transit would be the best option, and substantially increase the percentage of people for which transit would at least be a decent option, and would improve the mobility for those who for which there is no other option than transit.

[MasterG]

Originally Posted by fusili

Contrast that with me. It takes me 20min (approx) to walk to work, which includes a trip down 7th avenue on the C-Train (free). Driving during rush hour would cut this to 10min, but sometimes increase it to 45min. I would then have to pay $200/month in parking or so as well.

I think we can all accept that each situation is unique and no mode of transportation can meet every single need.

Exactly. I am in a pretty favourable situation for flexibility on mode of transportation to get me where I need to go. From home to the office is 30 mins by transit (combo, bus & train, with walking to and from stations), 30-40 mins walking directly, 15 mins driving in heavy traffic, or 10 mins by bicycle, which is my preferred choice as long as the bike lanes are clear. If I almost didn't get run over by a car using the bike lanes on 10th ave S as a passing lane, I would dare say I enjoy cycling to work.

Everything else that I do, is usually between work and my home, grocery stores, shopping, bars, rec centre etc. I just change up my mode when I go to different places i.e. go shopping for more than 4 bags of groceries or visit someone in the burbs.

[fusili]

Originally Posted by You Need A Thneed

Exactly. If I was in a scenario like yours, walking would definitely be preferable.

We should provide good quality transit so as many people as possible can get around by using solely transit. But I have long argued, and some of the pro-transit people have failed to recognize, that there is a significant percentage of the workforce for which living close to their work is simply is an impossibility, due to their work - even with one company - moving around from place to place (daily, monthly, yearly), or their being no houses close to the industrial park they work at, or their work being mostly rural. Add on top of that people who need a vehicle of some kind to do their job. Depending on exactly how you define categories, I think you could get up to a number approaching 50% - people that essentially "need" a vehicle to get to work.


Make the transit system good, and the likelihood of someone being able to rely on transit solely goes up. Good crosstown transit (BRT or LRT) into Foothills industrial would increase the options for tens of thousands of people. A SE-NC LRT plus many good BRT routes would increase substantially the percentage of people for which transit would be the best option, and substantially increase the percentage of people for which transit would at least be a decent option, and would improve the mobility for those who for which there is no other option than transit.

While industrial jobs have a higher chance or requiring a vehicle, especially contractors, many require you to stay in the same place all day- mostly in manufacturing and warehouses. Some manufacturing facilities employ a massive number of people, which transit can be a viable option. Agreed completely that crosstown routes can definitely help.

[floobie]

Originally Posted by fusili

I think we can all accept that each situation is unique and no mode of transportation can meet every single need.

Bingo.

It's consistently faster for me to drive to the train station in 5 minutes and take the train downtown to work. Though, I'll admit, I make most other trips by car, depending on the season (I'm more likely to walk when it's warm out). Even so, I usually only put about 7000km on the odometer every year (1/3 of which is travel outside the city).

Though, I live in the suburbs, and I don't really expect stellar service in my area. I basically have to drive if I want to buy groceries or something. Walking would turn a half hour errand into a 1.5 hour errand, and taking the bus would be about as fast as walking. This is where I think the Beyond guy's account is a bit flawed. If I read it correctly, he lives in Arbour Lake. I guarantee he didn't give transit connectivity a second thought when he chose to live there. If he lived near a station and didn't have to rely on feeder buses in areas of low transit usage to begin with, his experience would've been much better.

That said, his account is believable and surprisingly unbiased, given his car enthusiast forum and all. Traveling from random spot in a suburb to another random spot in a suburb is definitely not our system's strength. Cars just work better for that. I definitely sympathized with his mega-delayed bus issues. That used to be me in my high school days, and it left me bitter to the whole experience for many years, to the point that I often just opted to walk. The truly sad part is that it was usually actually faster.

I definitely agree on some of his proposed fixes: Cross-town connectivity is lacking. BRT (or, in my dreams, LRT lines) to connect some of the spokes in our system would help immensely. And, the Calgary Transit website is pretty damn junky. It needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. When external services like Google Maps are more useful than going straight to the horse's mouth, something is wrong.

[suburbia]

Originally Posted by fusili

Contrast that with me. It takes me 20min (approx) to walk to work, which includes a trip down 7th avenue on the C-Train (free). Driving during rush hour would cut this to 10min, but sometimes increase it to 45min. I would then have to pay $200/month in parking or so as well.

I think we can all accept that each situation is unique and no mode of transportation can meet every single need.

I think the upside risk on driving (IE 45 min) and also $200/mth parking are both related to it being inner city. The trip done by the transit experimenter we were talking about was from Kincora to Crowfoot. It extremely rarely would be clogged to where the time would increase so much, and parking most places outside of downtown is, well, free.

I'm extremely happy I don't work downtown. Saves me massive amounts of time, grid-lock delays, and parking cost. While we often say it is all about where you choose to stay, it is all about where one chooses to work too.

[RyLucky]

Originally Posted by MasterG

Agreed on the transfers. I avoid then. Another option is to change your destination based on how you're getting there . For example, on Day 4 of his week he did the route Arbour Lake to Wentworth to go for dinner after rush hour. I know this is a matter of personal preference, but he really could not have chosen a commute that makes transit look more terrible.

I change where I go all the time based on where I live and how long it takes me to go there. If the barbershop I want to go to is 2 hours away, I choose a closer one. I used to go to Westhills cineplex when I lived there. Now I go to Eau Claire / Chinook because I live closer to there. I understand the point he is trying to make, however transit doesn't have and shouldn't work well from everywhere to everywhere.

It doesn't matter really what the errand or desire is, this is a big enough city for multiple choices in every category. No one should ever be trying to go for dinner in Wentworth if they are coming from Arbour Lake

That's the truth. This guy seems like some kind of masochist to choose these destinations. It's also pretty obvious he doesn't use transit a lot seeing as how he makes a novelty out of not using a car for a week. For hundreds of thousands of Calgarians, commuting my transit is a way of life. Even in Kincora or Wentworth or Arbour Lake, it is pretty easy to get to just about any service you need day-to-day with only 0-1 transfer.