Calgary Public Transit II

[sim]

Originally Posted by fusili

Do you have a link to these reports?

The APTA numbers show us doing quite a bit better than both Edmonton and Ottawa.

Err, I believe those are unfortunately behind a paywall - you'd have to find someone who is a CUTA member (the report is Canadian Urban Transit Association (2013), Canadian Transit Fact Book: Operating Data). Could be that if you trawl the web long enough they might pop up. The 2013 are fairly new, but the 2012 will tell the same story (Calgary 6th in ridership / capita in Canada). I'm not sure why APTA is quite different from CUTA. Different methodology I suppose - which probably comes down to the per capita end as opposed to the ridership end.

[1ajs]

how does one look up rout times when u dunno the routes?

everythings changed on me

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by lubicon

Which is still over 10% of the population - not bad.



Would love to see this too, and I truly believe this is the way of the future for funding projects. But agreed, I don't know if Calgarians or even Albertans are ready for this.

In BC it is easier since they can piggy make on the existing administrative costs, and wouldn't impose any extra administrative burden on businesses for the sales tax.

[holhm22]

Look what I found in my house today (Original size):

[lightrail]

Originally Posted by fusili

5th highest transit ridership per capita in North America (top are NYC, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver in that order). A light rail system that trounces every other on the continent and out-performs many US heavy rail systems (only NYC, Chicago, Boston, DC and San Fran beat the LRT- we beat Philly's subway!!). So many riders that we experience crowding issues that only places like NYC or Toronto experience (in North America that is). 500K plus transit trips per day (LRT and bus) for a city barely over 1.2M.

No, our transit system isn't pretty good, it is absolutely spectacular. By no means am I saying we can't or shouldn't improve, and I spend much of my free time advocating for such improvements, but to say transit in Calgary is only pretty good is just incorrect. What we should be saying is Calgary's transit system is a runaway success, and has demonstrated again and again that transit investments in this City yield considerable mobility, economic and social development results. We need more money for transit, not because it is doing poorly, but because it is successful beyond measure.

Not to knock Calgary transit, but the numbers are misleading. Yes Calgary transit is carrying a lot of passengers and that is good. But then look at the land uses in the city. You have large tracts of suburbs and a concentrated core of businesses. So the transit system does very well moving people to the business core and home again. But when it comes to other trips between suburbs, it is pretty dismal. Even with those big numbers, the modal split is still low compared to other big cities. Many people still drive.

Cities like Toronto, Montreal, New York and Vancouver have dense cities but also mixed up land uses. You don't have the big tracts of single family houses like Calgary (at least in the larger inner city areas) so people can also walk, or cycle, or take a bus a short distance - they are much less likely to walk. They may take transit, but they are more likely to walk.

Again, not knocking Calgary Transit. But to get the car dependency down, the City needs to rethink it's land use planning principles.

[fusili]

Originally Posted by lightrail

Not to knock Calgary transit, but the numbers are misleading. Yes Calgary transit is carrying a lot of passengers and that is good. But then look at the land uses in the city. You have large tracts of suburbs and a concentrated core of businesses. So the transit system does very well moving people to the business core and home again. But when it comes to other trips between suburbs, it is pretty dismal. Even with those big numbers, the modal split is still low compared to other big cities. Many people still drive.

Cities like Toronto, Montreal, New York and Vancouver have dense cities but also mixed up land uses. You don't have the big tracts of single family houses like Calgary (at least in the larger inner city areas) so people can also walk, or cycle, or take a bus a short distance - they are much less likely to walk. They may take transit, but they are more likely to walk.

Again, not knocking Calgary Transit. But to get the car dependency down, the City needs to rethink it's land use planning principles.

I agree with your general argument that we need to create better land uses, especially in our inner city (which is happening at a good pace right now). We have a good transit system, one that needs to be expanded, especially with frequent and convenient crosstown routes. There is a lot to be improved, but a low transit-usage city we definitely are not.

If you can name me a single city in North America outside New York, Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver that has better transit modal split than Calgary, I would like to hear it (we beat Boston, DC, Chicago and San Francisco, so don't try looking there).

Also Toronto and New York, which I am a bit familiar with, are not dense urban meccas. Both are sprawling cities with dense urban cores. For both New York and Toronto you have to consider them as their whole, not just the core. People live in Long Island, or out in White Plains and commute into New York. Same goes for people living in Markham, Brampton and Ajax. If you really want to see sprawl, drive east of New York for an hour or so, or take the 401 out to Pickering. That is mile upon mile of sprawl.

But we can learn from both of these cities, and build a dense walkable core (which we are starting to do). Again, there is a lot to improve upon, but we have started taking the necessary steps.

[Policy Wonk]

Originally Posted by lightrail

Again, not knocking Calgary Transit. But to get the car dependency down, the City needs to rethink it's land use planning principles.

That's myopic.

If you want to limit "car dependency" the challenge is keeping the core from succumbing to total gridlock and falling out of favour and fueling more Quarry Park type developments, that requires two new LRT lines and grade separating the LRT downtown. Worrying about much else is a distraction.

[joe498]

Interesting, just visited Hanoi, Vietnam during the winter break and was shocked to see not only a massive new Airport terminal but also a 20km+ elevated LRT with bridges over rivers also well under construction all without any taxes and funded primarily through foreign investment.

It's amazing the infrastructure they can build without any "property taxes" and most residents don't pay federal taxes either but they do rely on toll roads.

[Rusty van Reddick]

Originally Posted by lightrail

Not to knock Calgary transit, but the numbers are misleading. Yes Calgary transit is carrying a lot of passengers and that is good. But then look at the land uses in the city. You have large tracts of suburbs and a concentrated core of businesses. So the transit system does very well moving people to the business core and home again. But when it comes to other trips between suburbs, it is pretty dismal. Even with those big numbers, the modal split is still low compared to other big cities. Many people still drive.

We can improve for sure, but everything you're claiming is either totally false or is equally true of other cities. North American cities are either dense cores and sprawling suburbs OR they are non-dense cores and sprawling suburbs. As well, as terrible as cross-town transit is in Calgary, it's every bit as bad in other cities- try taking transit from Scarborough to North Etobicoke in Toronto (and that's all in the city limits). It is impossible to get from SE Portland to NE Portland without going downtown- utterly ridiculous. There are worse examples of course but those come to mind.

Our modal split is not "low." That's utter nonsense.

[Aegis]

Originally Posted by joe498

Interesting, just visited Hanoi, Vietnam during the winter break and was shocked to see not only a massive new Airport terminal but also a 20km+ elevated LRT with bridges over rivers also well under construction all without any taxes and funded primarily through foreign investment.

It's amazing the infrastructure they can build without any "property taxes" and most residents don't pay federal taxes either but they do rely on toll roads.

I'd be curious how exactly "foreign investment" may be contributed to funding this deal. Perhaps it was just simply national borrowing (which could loosely be described as "foreign investment"), or perhaps they were financed by SNC Lavalin or a similar firm. In order for an infrastructure investment to be attractive to a private investor, there needs to be a stable revenue pool from which to pay the debt financing (taxes, user fees, etc), or a government guarantee that is taken seriously. When you factor in the currency risk (to a Canadian or American currency based investor) of holding a physical asset valued in Vietnamese currency), these are risky propositions that require a high return to be attractive to capital. If it was just financed through standard government borrowing, that doesn't provide a compelling case against property taxes.

Also, when staring in amazement at the new shiny infrastructure that developing countries can build, we shouldn't forget that it's a hell of a lot cheaper to build this stuff on Vietnamese wages than on Canadian wages.

[MalcolmTucker]

Just looking at a high level into the Hanoi projects, they are financed mostly through debt, with some aid, which helps to steer the rolling stock contracts to countries that finance the debt (at lower rates than the government could secure on its own) and give the aid. The government will be making payment on the debt. It isn't some mythical privately financed transit project.

[Joborule]

This seems to be much more challenging than it should be.

Still no launch date as transit smart card faces glitches — again

[AgentGibb]

Originally Posted by Joborule

Still no launch date as transit smart card faces glitches — again

alternative providers would be far more costly

It turns out that when you go with the lowest bidder, sometimes you get what you pay for.

[J-D]

[holhm22]

Originally Posted by Joborule

This seems to be much more challenging than it should be.

Still no launch date as transit smart card faces glitches — again

And again. CT was stupid enough to hire the same people. Of course you will get the same result. Delays. Should've learned from Hong Kong with the Octopus card.

[Rusty van Reddick]

Originally Posted by holhm22

CT was stupid enough to hire the same people. Of course you will get the same result.

You're aware of the issues here, right?

[speedog]

Originally Posted by AgentGibb

It turns out that when you go with the lowest bidder, sometimes you get what you pay for.

Do you know for sure it was the lowest bid?

[AgentGibb]

Originally Posted by speedog

Do you know for sure it was the lowest bid?

No I don't. I was inferring that based on the article saying that "alternative providers would be far more costly". The article may be wrong.

[MalcolmTucker]

If there was an easy way to do this, someone would sell an off the shelf solution. To get all the necessary features in a card you have to have reliable ultrafast databases accessible to each reader, or a backup capacity for when the database has issues. Or a tolerance for loss. When you're building a system where one requirement directly reduces your ability to implement another requirement, there is going to be problems.

Calgary's existing fare system has pretty low admin costs compared to many around the world if i recall correctly, which makes it harder to justify either permenantly paying a fee to a provider or causing outright loss of revenue. (credit card companies offered a system for free to City of Toronto, but wanted forever a 3% cut of revenue, and to ban alternate providers by being a mastercard or visa only system, not both)

Guarding against theft I would imagine is the hardest thing, making sure no one is spoofing U-Passes.

[speedog]

U-Passes, now that's another whole ball of wax. Will that little black market ever be eliminated?