Calgary Public Transit II

[Reecemartin]

[Deleted]

[MalcolmTucker]

Something like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_Innovia_APM_100

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Mover

Or if there is a lower weight version of these.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by milomilo

But that does beg the question, what is the point then? Playing devil's advocate here, because I support transit investment, but if building more public transit makes the system less cost efficient, then it can't be a very good project?

I agree with your sentiments with transit, but it seems (to me) that the City had gotten too enamored with the "City-shaping" and TOD aspects of the Green Line and forgotten about the part of moving people cost-effectively.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by accord1999

I agree with your sentiments with transit, but it seems (to me) that the City had gotten too enamored with the "City-shaping" and TOD aspects of the Green Line and forgotten about the part of moving people cost-effectively.

The cost effective part was lost not from city building, but from limiting the impact on traffic, and speeding up the train and traffic, especially from eliminating the level crossings across Macleod Trail.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

The cost effective part was lost not from city building, but from limiting the impact on traffic, and speeding up the train and traffic, especially from eliminating the level crossings across Macleod Trail.

Sure, but isn't that more of a hit to capital costs rather than operating costs? The West LRT also went way over its construction budget but replaced enough buses to not affect the net operating costs.

To clarify my previous post, I think that the City didn't prioritize the parts of the Green Line where, in the words of milomilo, it would "make running buses more efficient, pushing down the cost per trip, requiring fewer drivers and buses for the same frequency etc".

[MalcolmTucker]

Oh, keeping a tunnel in a flood plain operating is a continuous process of maintenance and pumping.

And in addition to that huge expense, we are building it way before it was needed, and in the direction that it is less needed, due to political reasons. Now, without those reasons there would be no line at all, so I'm fine with them. And the line we are building is way better than buses, and way better than earlier Green Line scenarios (spending a few billion to speed up trips compared to the then proposed BRT by 2-4 minutes)

The West LRT is also a not great comparison, as it was small enough to not require an incremental maintenance facility all on its own, and it is capacity constrained by 7th Ave. And planners did a really bang up job choosing the rough route in the 80s for maximizing ridership, even if all the incremental changes made by council did make it expensive to build (three times the cheap estimate, which granted, had way more elevated track and more level crossings).

[joe498]

Originally Posted by accord1999

I agree with your sentiments with transit, but it seems (to me) that the City had gotten too enamored with the "City-shaping" and TOD aspects of the Green Line and forgotten about the part of moving people cost-effectively.

Originally it was supposed to be a busway but council ended up opting for the LRT for a number of reasons. Firstly, there would be millions in wasted dollars having to pave a roadway and then rip it out when the end goal would be to convert it to a train line afterwards anyways. The costs would have increased if the city was to wait much longer to build it. The federal government also offered $1.5B in funding for an LRT project so the city decided to just go for the LRT.

There is also truth to the idea that a busway would not have the same ridership as an LRT. Calgary is a car city and to many, riding a bus is unfathomable but riding a c-train for trips downtown is still considered doable.

Originally Posted by accord1999

Sure, but isn't that more of a hit to capital costs rather than operating costs? The West LRT also went way over its construction budget but replaced enough buses to not affect the net operating costs.

To clarify my previous post, I think that the City didn't prioritize the parts of the Green Line where, in the words of milomilo, it would "make running buses more efficient, pushing down the cost per trip, requiring fewer drivers and buses for the same frequency etc".

As for the West LRT, that project was a major mistake. It was also a huge oversight for the West LRT to skip Mount Royal University. It didn't help council had their own personal interests for having the West LRT built with the route that exists today.

I'm curious if there was ever a result of this study they did on a Spur Line to Mount Royal University: https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-new...nto-lrt-to-mount-royal-u-currie-barracks

The circumstances are quite a bit different now, MRU has grown as a campus noticeably and there are a number of major new residential and business developments currently underway in the area.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by joe498

Originally it was supposed to be a busway but council ended up opting for the LRT for a number of reasons. Firstly, there would be millions in wasted dollars having to pave a roadway and then rip it out when the end goal would be to convert it to a train line afterwards anyways. The costs would have increased if the city was to wait much longer to build it. The federal government also offered $1.5B in funding for an LRT project so the city decided to just go for the LRT.

Sure, but my problem with it was that it was predicated on $4.5B being enough to build the majority of the line and that the increase in service (and costs) in the SE would be (partially) offset by replacing a large number of buses on Centre Street N, therefore closer to fulfilling one of milomilo's requirements for a good public transit project.

But that's no longer true with the total line cost probably exceeding $8B.

There is also truth to the idea that a busway would not have the same ridership as an LRT. Calgary is a car city and to many, riding a bus is unfathomable but riding a c-train for trips downtown is still considered doable.

But is it enough to make up for the several times higher operating cost of LRT? $40M net operating cost is equivalent to about 400,000 hours/year of bus service. Calgary Transit is already trying to rationalize its bus service hours and would have cut over 40,000 hours/year without a one-time funding of $4M from Council last November.

[mellbell416]

What is the present projection for when the Green Line will be operational?

[milomilo]

I do wonder about the Green Line. It's a confused project. Starting out as basically a cheap busway then streetcar in the SE, it morphed into what is almost a fully grade separated metro with extensive tunneling, but still keeping the light rail trains. A line that's now so expensive we can only afford to build half of it. I don't think we'll ever be able to afford to get the line to where it should go - north.

So we have kept all the disadvantages of light rail - cramped trains and poor service, without the only true advantage - low cost. If we remove the final grade separations, we could have made this line automated and lower the operating cost, but what we get will offer the worst of both worlds.

[MalcolmTucker]

At the time, ridership projections of an MRU line were lower by around 10,000 a day, at an even higher capital cost. Even today, MRU is around 11,000 students and staff, a quarter of UCalgary and marginally smaller than SAIT.

Plus universities have a different ridership pattern - all those peak buses that are just sitting around can up service midday to postsecodaries. And the students are the definition of captive riders, which if your going for capital efficiency and the use case is to try to limit traffic to downtown, you’re not removing either buses or cars on downtown access roads with service to MRU.

[Reecemartin]

[Deleted]

[Reecemartin]

[Deleted]

[suburbia]

Originally Posted by Reecemartin

I think the airport question is actually super interesting . . . . currently Toronto and Vancouver have gone 2 routes and Calgary might want to consider a third. . .

Vancouver has Metro service direct to the airport with smaller trains with high frequency.

Toronto has regional express rail service direct to the airport that operates slightly larger trains at 15 minute frequency (the minimum for a "frequent service" in my mind).

Of course both these services have different patterns but, since YVR is so much closer to Downtown Vancouver than YYZ to Pearson the Canada Line makes several stops on the way downtown while the UP only makes 2.

I think an APM of some sort might be a good option for Calgary, or perhaps even something like Skytrain (JFK uses this for their airport shuttle) . . . since such a line would likely not be super long you could even tunnel it and avoid the weather restrictions to open up more APM choices (also note that theres nothing stopping an APM from eventually becoming like a Subway Line, one of Tokyos Metro Lines does just that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yurikamome#/media/File:Yurikamome_shiodome.JPG)

Anyways of course the ideal option is to have a wide variety of transit at the airport but, perhaps an APM is best in the short term since it can allow some easy transportation on airport grounds AND isn't limited or limiting to the frequency of the C-Train.

If you think of the airport as a transportation hub, which it of course is, there should indeed be multiple connection points there, and further, city development should form around the airport. When you look at Calgary's map, it is elongated south for historical reasons, but if all things were even, because of the airport specifically, it should have expanded north faster than south.

[joe498]

Slightly more detailed maps than any others released so far.

[Reecemartin]

[Deleted]

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Reecemartin

Still don't get the point of a BRT with low frequency and no 24 hour service, seems like a waste to me . . .

Perhaps a case of where Transit got the capital funds to setup the lines when transit ridership was growing, but the significant decline in bus ridership since 2014 means that they don't have the operating funds or justification for such high service levels.

[Jaspertf]

Not too sure if this has been brought up before, but after a couple of news reports over the summer I decided to do some research.

As the new BRT routes now start coming on line, all Calgary Transit funding now prioritizes the Green Line. Although the Green Line was primarily advertised to relieve congestion on Center St north, the south section is the first phase to get built.
The parking lot at Anderson station is going to be re-developed into a Transit Orientated District, a review of the parking there showed that about 50% of people parking there lived in the area of McKenzie Town, where the first phase of the Green Line terminates, so when the Green Line is built pressure will be relieved from the Red Line south. I commute into the downtown on the Red Line south, and the 4-car trains are packed, I also notice that all the current lines are packed in rush hour.

On a news report, a Transit official noted that as the U2 LRT cars breakdown, they are not going to be repaired but retired as used for spares to keep other U2s on the road until they need more spares, and so on and so on as the parts are no longer manufactured. The U2s are on average over 35 years old.

So here's the thing:
There are currently 78 U2s, 72 SD160s, 37 SD160NGs, and there will be a total of 63 S200s. That creates a total of 61 4-car trains.
Eliminating the U2s, you get either 42 4-car trains or 57 3-car trains.
If all Transit funding in Calgary is to be dedicated to the Green Line, which could take almost 10 years to complete just phase 1, Calgary Transit is going to hit a massive problem.
A lot of the U2s are reaching the end of their operable life, the U2s in Calgary could even now be the oldest rolling stock in active commuter service in the developed world, 27 of the U2s are 37 years old! Very shortly the number of 4-car trains are going to be reduced, if you thought commuting in Calgary was starting to get unbearable with 4-car trains, in the next few years it is going to get worse.

Quick note on headway, 5 mins between trains is the closest they will get, and only in perfect conditions. The traffic lights downtown cycle 45 seconds each way, therefore in the downtown corridor the absolute max is 1.5 mins, but the lights aren't sequenced so one set will always get missed, only rarely can 1 train immediately follow another. The downtown corridor is also shared by the Red and Blue lines, therefore, in general 3 mins between train downtown leads to 6 mins between trains on each line, sometimes that may go down to 4.5 mins but that is rarely.

[milomilo]

Great points and I share your concerns. The only thing that can solve future capacity needs on the Red Line (if we can afford to buy the trains) is the 8th Ave tunnel - but I don't think there is any appetite to build that any time soon.

If you haven't seen it, this is a good video from Carra on the process of how the Green Line came to be.

• Video Link

It illuminates a lot of very interesting points. At 9 minutes ish he describes how the surface running on 7th 'works great' (anyone who has commuted on the LRT knows that is false), and that he can't see Calgary ever having the money to fix the 'temporary' situation.

The video also explains how council truly thought they could build the Green Line cheaply on surface downtown. This is shocking as it is so blatantly obvious that it would be impractical, but it took years of study for them to be convinced they could not do it that way.

[Corndogger]

Originally Posted by milomilo

It illuminates a lot of very interesting points. At 9 minutes ish he describes how the surface running on 7th 'works great' (anyone who has commuted on the LRT knows that is false), and that he can't see Calgary ever having the money to fix the 'temporary' situation.

The video also explains how council truly thought they could build the Green Line cheaply on surface downtown. This is shocking as it is so blatantly obvious that it would be impractical, but it took years of study for them to be convinced they could not do it that way.

Great find! Another example of how stupid the planning was initially starts around the 5 minute mark. To me it sounds like within two days they pulled a cost number out of their butts to get the feds to finance 1/3. If the feds were the ones that came to them why would they ask for the cheapest solution? And like you said, why would they think a surface route would be okay? Do these guys actually use the system? Doesn't look like it.