Calgary Public Transit II

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by UofC.engineer

P3 the Center Street Subway! Com'on Sir.Humphrey.Appleby back me up here!

I also think the Douglasdale station is a complete waste of money making it grade separated. The is no reason for a bridge to be built over 29th street.

Policy is to grade separate on roads over a certain flow. They aren't going to make the same mistake as they did with Heritage Dr.

As I have said many times before P3s are just a different way to borrow money while hopefully saving a bit in a cheaper design and lower operating costs, of which some of the savings is captured by the investors. If the city decides to build the SE LRT and the NC LRT with debt or a P3 always have to remind ourselves that realistically there will be no rail transit expansion afterwards for at least 15 years - more like 30 years.

P3s no panacea. Ballot initiative financing these projects is something I really believe in however. (oh, just to let you know I was Appleby)

[UofC.engineer]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

Policy is to grade separate on roads over a certain flow. They aren't going to make the same mistake as they did with Heritage Dr.

29th street has no significant volumes and never will. I live near the area and the road is pretty much a dead end. It is definately no Heritage or Southland. I'd rather see more grade separation on roads south of 22x along 52nd street in Auburn bay and Mohagany.

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

As I have said many times before P3s are just a different way to borrow money while hopefully saving a bit in a cheaper design and lower operating costs, of which some of the savings is captured by the investors. If the city decides to build the SE LRT and the NC LRT with debt or a P3 always have to remind ourselves that realistically there will be no rail transit expansion afterwards for at least 15 years - more like 30 years.

Vancouver built the Canada line using P3 and the green line is scheduled to open in 2014.

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

P3s no panacea. Ballot initiative financing these projects is something I really believe in however.

Forgive me, I'm unfamiliar with Ballot initiative finacing. What is it exactly?

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

(oh, just to let you know, I was Appleby)

Nooooooooo!

[UofC.engineer]

I didn't notice U had the same website at the bottom

[Policy Wonk]

I think the Centre Street alignment is idiotic for a number of reasons, ignoring the fact it will never be built due to cost and community opposition to intensification.

1. Duplication of service: Even with the LRT in the proximity of Centre Street bus traffic will remain substantial if not unchanged.

2. Reconnecting to the LRT right-of-way North of Beddington Trail will be practically impossible from a 64th Ave. without a tonne of redundant tunneling to reach the grade of Nose Creek. Or alternatively bulldozing two miles of solid residential before going underground somewhere in the proximity of the 78th ave bus loop. The Centre Street LRT is already economically nonviable simply terminating at 64th Ave.

3. In the coming decades there is going to be solid growth and annexation to Balzac and beyond while significant intensification of the Centre Street corridor is pretty unlikely - PlanIt or not.

It might be fun to plot out urban fantasies but aggressively advancing half-baked schemes is a good way to end up with nothing and can give rise to local demagogues. One should find a cautionary tale in Rob Ford in Toronto.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by UofC.engineer

29th street has no significant volumes and never will. I live near the area and the road is pretty much a dead end. It is definately no Heritage or Southland. I'd rather see more grade separation on roads south of 22x along 52nd street in Auburn bay and Mohagany.

Looking at the drawings again the grade separation at 29th St is more to reduce land cost allowing a climb up a hill than for traffic purposes.

Originally Posted by UofC.engineer

Vancouver built the Canada line using P3 and the green line is scheduled to open in 2014.

With a population double the size supporting projects at a total of maybe $3.5 billion. And yes, they have figured out they have no money for the UBC Skytrain extension because they are expanding rapidly. The Evergreen line still isn't fully financed on the Translink side and will need additional provincial contributions. They haven't announced the concessionaire for the evergreen line yet (according to the project website) - it is doubtful they will be able to open on the planned date.

Calgary being half the size authorizing a full NC and SE LRT would be north of $5 billion. Would take a while to pay off.

Originally Posted by UofC.engineer

Forgive me, I'm unfamiliar with Ballot initiative finacing. What is it exactly?

Can work many ways, but all involve votes of citizens to authorize projects and new taxes. Most common are two ways:

Project gets tendered and bids come back, a bid is selected and put to citizens in a vote which also authorizes a tax rise to pay for the project over a certain time frame.

Second way is to define your project scope and the tax power you want the project to have and go to the people. Once you have the tax authority, you tender. Usually it authorizes the time frame of construction and tax collection to be flexible to allow for a longer pay off term if the bids come in higher than predicted.

Really is the best way to get things done and take projects out of the hands of politicians once they are authorized. Since governments usually don't like raising taxes to pay for things, it solves that problems too.

[UofC.engineer]

Thanks for the info. It would be interesting to see how that strategy would play out if it was implented on the CenStreet subway. I'm guessing the city would be very polarized between NC Calgary and the rest. Or perhaps apathy would prevail and only a 30% voter turnout would occur...who knows what would happen!

I still think grade separation on 29th street is stupid. The hill going up 114th ave is hardly a hill at all. I'll bring some pics when the weather gets nicer.

[sim]

Originally Posted by Policy Wonk

No LRT in exchange for no upzoning? The surrounding communities would think that is a bargain. A serious deviation from the Nose Creek plan will only serve to guarantee the N.C. LRT is never built, I don't think that is a positive outcome.

Good. I'd rather see nothing get built than to build something so illogical; an embarassment to mass transit.

I actually find it hard to comprehend that such a plan was ever even suggested in the first place. The list of reasoning would be exhaustive and include damn near everything except hard dollar cost.

[Bassic Lab]

Originally Posted by Policy Wonk

I think the Centre Street alignment is idiotic for a number of reasons, ignoring the fact it will never be built due to cost and community opposition to intensification.

1. Duplication of service: Even with the LRT in the proximity of Centre Street bus traffic will remain substantial if not unchanged.

2. Reconnecting to the LRT right-of-way North of Beddington Trail will be practically impossible from a 64th Ave. without a tonne of redundant tunneling to reach the grade of Nose Creek. Or alternatively bulldozing two miles of solid residential before going underground somewhere in the proximity of the 78th ave bus loop. The Centre Street LRT is already economically nonviable simply terminating at 64th Ave.

3. In the coming decades there is going to be solid growth and annexation to Balzac and beyond while significant intensification of the Centre Street corridor is pretty unlikely - PlanIt or not.

It might be fun to plot out urban fantasies but aggressively advancing half-baked schemes is a good way to end up with nothing and can give rise to local demagogues. One should find a cautionary tale in Rob Ford in Toronto.

1. Why would bus traffic on Centre Street remain largely unchanged? I can't imagine the area requiring anywhere near the current level of bus service if a subway is built along the corridor.

2. A solution would be to maintain the tunnel all the way to Beddington Trail. This would result in a nine kilometre long from the terminus of the SE LRT to the at grade portion along Harvest Hills Boulevard. This is essentially the same length as the subway portion of the Canada Line through Vancouver. With a station every half mile we would end up with ten subway stations, slightly more than the Canada line. The route along Harvest Hills Boulevard should be considerably cheaper than the ten kilometres of elevated rail that the Canada Line contains. I think we're overestimating the expense of the project. The Canada Line is really an apt comparison for cost. It is doable.

3. Some level of intensification is going to occur along the corridor regardless of what happens with the NC LRT. It is already happening. There would undoubtedly be a fight if the plan was to transform the corridor into something like Yonge Street but the area can intensify to something in between without it getting brutal. A subway could allow that to happen without overloading the bus network.

All that said, Fusili has really outlined the biggest problem that the Nose Creek alignment will cause. How long would it be until 7 Ave is overloaded with traffic from the NE and N LRT Lines? The extra billion dollar price tag for a Centre Street subway is just about worth it purely for doubling the capacity of the the two lines. With a Nose Creek alignment built, what would we even do when capacity is maxed out on 7 Ave? We could bury it through downtown, which might give us slightly shorter headways and five car consists, but that would only buy us a little more time. Sooner or later we would have to do something about. That something could only realistically be the Centre Street Subway. We would then have wasted a billion dollars building the Nose Creek alignment for nothing.

[outoftheice]

Originally Posted by Policy Wonk

3. In the coming decades there is going to be solid growth and annexation to Balzac and beyond while significant intensification of the Centre Street corridor is pretty unlikely - PlanIt or not.

I definitely agree with you here.... the variable is time. With intensification along Centre Street, we may be able to delay the inevitable by 10-15 years which would result in a fairly large savings for City taxpayers. When the day does come that Calgary stretches out to Balzac, there is a plan in place for it. The Calgary Regional Partnership has already drawn up plans for a regional commuter rail network that would serve the sprawling growth of city all the way to Airdrie. These plans include running commuter rail up the Nose Creek valley... right beside the current alignment for the NC LRT. Why should we build this LRT line as a commuter rail option when there will be a much better option provided in the long term, when it's needed.

Several people have also made the suggestion that Centre Street could grow into something similar to Yonge Street in Toronto. I think that this is an extreme that we will never see in Calgary, for many of the reasons that have already been mentioned. However, people seem to forget about the Bloor Street W subway line in Toronto. This would be a much better example to compare the future of Centre Street to. The Bloor subway line runs along Bloor Street for approximately 12 kms. Both sides of Bloor Street are lined with 3-4 story mixed use buildings and not the high rise towers the are along Yonge Street. The neighbourhoods surrounding Bloor Street use a grid system for street lay-outs and one can find many in-fill duplexes and 3 story walk-ups close to the various subway stations. If the City of Calgary were to approach the communities along Centre Street using Bloor Street as an example, I think they will find people much more receptive than if they were to promote the urban jungle that is Yonge Street. One final point here is that the City has officially adopted Plan It: Calgary and one of the big goals mentioned in Plan It is to change Centre Street into a major mixed-use corridor. So for the communities along Centre Street, change is coming no matter what. Why not an LRT to help stimulate, focus, and then service the change that is wanted.

[outoftheice]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

Policy is to grade separate on roads over a certain flow. They aren't going to make the same mistake as they did with Heritage Dr.

As I have said many times before P3s are just a different way to borrow money while hopefully saving a bit in a cheaper design and lower operating costs, of which some of the savings is captured by the investors. If the city decides to build the SE LRT and the NC LRT with debt or a P3 always have to remind ourselves that realistically there will be no rail transit expansion afterwards for at least 15 years - more like 30 years.

In response to your point about joint construction of the SE LRT and NC LRT, I have one question.... is that such a bad thing? By 2012, both the NW, NE, West and South legs of the LRT will essentially be fully built out to the existing city limits. By 2014, all of these lines will be capable of running 4 car trains. If we were to drop all our cash on building the SE LRT and NC LRT simultaneously, we might not have the cash to build any more rail transit for 15 years, but what rail transit would we build? Calgary's LRT network would essentially be complete... minus a few small extentions to all the lines, which could easily be delayed. The only question becomes, are Calgarians willing to put off the efficiencies gained by tunnelling the NW-S LRT line under 8th Ave in order to have almost every corner of the city served by LRT? I guess that's up for debate, but personally I think the answer to that would be yes.

In response to your point about grade seperation for roads with a certain traffic flow... Am I crazy or does it look like the plans for the SE LRT show it running at grade along 10th Ave and then crossing Mcleod Trail N and S with a 7th Ave style at grade crossing? To be honest, I was surprised in general to see the LRT running along 10th Ave to begin with as I assumed it would simply use the CPR right of way, but to have the LRT cross the busiest route into and out of downtown at grade seems a little strange to me....

[MalcolmTucker]

n response to your point about grade seperation for roads with a certain traffic flow... Am I crazy or does it look like the plans for the SE LRT show it running at grade along 10th Ave and then crossing Mcleod Trail N and S with a 7th Ave style at grade crossing? To be honest, I was surprised in general to see the LRT running along 10th Ave to begin with as I assumed it would simply use the CPR right of way, but to have the LRT cross the busiest route into and out of downtown at grade seems a little strange to me....

Sometimes the solution is expensive so you have to leave the compromise in - remember this last document wasn't a redo of the plans in my perception, but the fold up of the existing plans into one document (the previous documents were just beasts of files too). With the subway study ongoing I wouldn't put much credence into it. Remember that the West LRT had elevated through the Westbrook Mall parcel before the final study for the route alignment as the study's objective was to design the cheapest route possible that fit the previously approved scope. With a study like that then politicians and planners can work around the edges to improve things.

A study is very different from a plan.

n response to your point about joint construction of the SE LRT and NC LRT, I have one question.... is that such a bad thing?

No it isn't a bad thing. Personally I would throw the Stephen Ave subway into the project as well to get it all done at once (whats an extra $500 million!). It will be a change however to not have continuous improvement, and how that isn't a bad thing.

[fusili]

Originally Posted by Policy Wonk

I think the Centre Street alignment is idiotic for a number of reasons, ignoring the fact it will never be built due to cost and community opposition to intensification.

1. Duplication of service: Even with the LRT in the proximity of Centre Street bus traffic will remain substantial if not unchanged. .

The #3, #4, #5 and #301 would go out of service when the subway opens, or at least be reduced in frequency and changed to feeder service. We aren't duplicating service on other LRT lines, why would we on this one?

Originally Posted by Policy Wonk

2. Reconnecting to the LRT right-of-way North of Beddington Trail will be practically impossible from a 64th Ave. without a tonne of redundant tunneling to reach the grade of Nose Creek. Or alternatively bulldozing two miles of solid residential before going underground somewhere in the proximity of the 78th ave bus loop. The Centre Street LRT is already economically nonviable simply terminating at 64th Ave.

We wouldn't connect through 64th Avenue, the LRT would connect through to the ROW just north of Beddington Trail.

[Policy Wonk]

Originally Posted by Bassic Lab

1. Why would bus traffic on Centre Street remain largely unchanged? I can't imagine the area requiring anywhere near the current level of bus service if a subway is built along the corridor.

Because buses travelling downtown will still need to get over the river?

2. A solution would be to maintain the tunnel all the way to Beddington Trail. This would result in a nine kilometre long from the terminus of the SE LRT to the at grade portion along Harvest Hills Boulevard.

There are solutions to lots of problems when you believe infinite funds are available.

3. Some level of intensification is going to occur along the corridor regardless of what happens with the NC LRT. It is already happening. There would undoubtedly be a fight if the plan was to transform the corridor into something like Yonge Street but the area can intensify to something in between without it getting brutal. A subway could allow that to happen without overloading the bus network.

The locals are upset about the baby step intensification already taking place, the subway would be a declaration of war.

All that said, Fusili has really outlined the biggest problem that the Nose Creek alignment will cause. How long would it be until 7 Ave is overloaded with traffic from the NE and N LRT Lines? The extra billion dollar price tag for a Centre Street subway is just about worth it purely for doubling the capacity of the the two lines. With a Nose Creek alignment built, what would we even do when capacity is maxed out on 7 Ave? We could bury it through downtown, which might give us slightly shorter headways and five car consists, but that would only buy us a little more time. Sooner or later we would have to do something about. That something could only realistically be the Centre Street Subway. We would then have wasted a billion dollars building the Nose Creek alignment for nothing.

The need to bury the LRT on 7th ave is independent of any other issue, a Centre Street LRT is not a solution in and of itself.

[MalcolmTucker]

Pretty much everywhere south of Beddington you have a choice between above ground, below ground and taking out a row of houses. I don't think that is a surprise to anyone.

If the project ever moves forward I could see a big study being done to figure out where is the best place to come out of the subway to either elevated or at ground level.

Personally I don't mind elevated structures and for such a straight route turn noise would be minimal, and it would save a bunch of money.

As for the intensification battle, if you can tie it in the same vote for the LRT, link the two from the start I think it is viable. Perhaps create a small TIF to do some sidewalk and lighting upgrading along the route.

As for buses, there would still be some buses - the 3 or some replacement route would still be needed but at much lower frequencies. The line wouldn't eliminate bus service, but it certainly would allow a huge realignment and the discontinuation of express buses in the northern hills.

[UofC.engineer]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

No it isn't a bad thing. Personally I would throw the Stephen Ave subway into the project as well to get it all done at once (whats an extra $500 million!). It will be a change however to not have continuous improvement, and how that isn't a bad thing.

Yes! Now we are cooking with gas! If they go down there, why not get it done all at once?

[mooky]

Originally Posted by Policy Wonk

Because buses traveling downtown will still need to get over the river?

Yes, but won't there be less of them?

That's like saying the 24 Ogden is going to continue running downtown once the SE LRT is in place (whenever that may be) because it has to cross the river too. Makes.zero.sense.

[Policy Wonk]

Originally Posted by fusili

The #3, #4, #5 and #301 would go out of service when the subway opens, or at least be reduced in frequency and changed to feeder service. We aren't duplicating service on other LRT lines, why would we on this one?

Because buses from elsewhere in North Calgary still need to get over the river, and how does the Centre Street LRT replace any of those routes except the 3?

Everyone here and most of our children will be dead before a Centre Street subway reaches the terminus of the 301.

We wouldn't connect through 64th Avenue, the LRT would connect through to the ROW just north of Beddington Trail.

Sure, why not? It is just another two miles of cut and cover through a residential area

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by Policy Wonk

Because buses from elsewhere in North Calgary still need to get over the river, and how does the Centre Street LRT replace any of those routes except the 3?

Everyone here and most of our children will be dead before a Centre Street subway reaches the terminus of the 301.



Sure, why not? It is just another two miles of cut and cover through a residential area

Routes will feed into the subway. The west sides of route 4 and 5 that go up and down 10th St will continue to exist, whereas routes on Centre St and Edmonton Tr would be reduced in frequency quite a bit. Routes beyond the end of the LRT wouldn't go downtown, forced transfers would be the name of the game.

[Policy Wonk]

Originally Posted by outoftheice

I definitely agree with you here.... the variable is time. With intensification along Centre Street, we may be able to delay the inevitable by 10-15 years which would result in a fairly large savings for City taxpayers.

This is the same deluded thinking that has been used to advance the redevelopment of the City Centre Airport. The hypothetical construction of high-density housing on Centre Street isn't going to offset demand for the type of single-family housing being built north of the city.

These plans include running commuter rail up the Nose Creek valley... right beside the current alignment for the NC LRT. Why should we build this LRT line as a commuter rail option when there will be a much better option provided in the long term, when it's needed.

A commuter service isn't going to have multiple stops within the city before hitting downtown. The CPR simply wouldn't tolerate the disruptions.

However, people seem to forget about the Bloor Street W subway line in Toronto. This would be a much better example to compare the future of Centre Street to. The Bloor subway line runs along Bloor Street for approximately 12 kms. Both sides of Bloor Street are lined with 3-4 story mixed use buildings and not the high rise towers the are along Yonge Street.

And you really imagine this will be all the more acceptable to the NIMBY's?

[Policy Wonk]

Originally Posted by sim

Good. I'd rather see nothing get built than to build something so illogical; an embarassment to mass transit.

I actually find it hard to comprehend that such a plan was ever even suggested in the first place. The list of reasoning would be exhaustive and include damn near everything except hard dollar cost.

How is a route that would efficiently deliver a large number of people to the core an "embarrassment to mass transit"

The plan was suggested in the first place because there are a whole lot of people living in that area who are commuting to the core.

Believe it or not punishing suburbanites for their housing choices does not figure very highly in the route planning of any transit agency.