Green Line LRT | ?m | ?s | Calgary Transit

Go Elevated or try for Underground?

  • Work with the province and go with the Elevated option

    Votes: 52 75.4%

  • Try another approach and go for Underground option

    Votes: 14 20.3%

  • Cancel it altogether

    Votes: 1 1.4%

  • Go with a BRT solution

    Votes: 2 2.9%
  • Total voters
    69
Surrealplaces said:
Heading there myself in a few months, and looking forward to checking out those elevated lines. I'll probably ride the whole loop of the Yamanote line, just for the sight seeing.
Click to expand...
That line runs 11 car trains, totaling 220m with frequencies less than 5 minutes all day long. We went to Seoul after, which also has a strong transit system, but Tokyo's was a step above. If you have an iPhone, you should get the ICOCA card (or Suica/Pasmo) but ICOCA is slightly better in that it shows your card number without needing another app. So if you end up taking the Shinkansen, the tickets you buy online (Smart-Ex) can be linked to your IC card and you can just tap that to get in, without printing the ticket.
 
trtcttc said:
That line runs 11 car trains, totaling 220m with frequencies less than 5 minutes all day long. We went to Seoul after, which also has a strong transit system, but Tokyo's was a step above. If you have an iPhone, you should get the ICOCA card (or Suica/Pasmo) but ICOCA is slightly better in that it shows your card number without needing another app. So if you end up taking the Shinkansen, the tickets you buy online (Smart-Ex) can be linked to your IC card and you can just tap that to get in, without printing the ticket.
Click to expand...
I'll have to check out the ICOCA card as we will be taking the Shinkansen. I was planning on getting the Suica card. As long as the ICOCA card works for both rail systems in Tokyo, it should do the trick.
 
whatchyyc said:
Imagine how cool it would be if one day a MyFare card and Edmonton's Arc card were fully interoperable and implemented on regional rail between the cities
Click to expand...
Presto in Ontario is exactly that - can use the same card in Ottawa or the many various Toronto area transit agencies. There's some technicalities to figure it all out - but it's hardly new tech and it's 2025 - common fare card systems have been done the all over the world at provincial and national scales. Just needs a jurisdiction (i.e. the Province) to take a more active and consistent role in transit operations and planning outcomes to make it happen.
 
CBBarnett said:
Presto in Ontario is exactly that - can use the same card in Ottawa or the many various Toronto area transit agencies. There's some technicalities to figure it all out - but it's hardly new tech and it's 2025 - common fare card systems have been done the all over the world at provincial and national scales. Just needs a jurisdiction (i.e. the Province) to take a more active and consistent role in transit operations and planning outcomes to make it happen.
Click to expand...
Presto works pretty well in Ontario now and accepts credit card taps which is nice. But I remember a decade ago when it was introduced there was a lot of problems with the card readers etc. Also, discussions about how expensive it was to develop, over a billion dollars to develop plus another billion to install all the new readers. I just don't ever see the Alberta government putting that kind of money into transit that isn't as tangible as Km's of track.
 
whatchyyc said:
As much as people harp on MyFare, the slow rollout MaaS development for a fraction of the cost of a bespoke system like Compass or Presto is perfectly fine to me. Account based ticketing and credit card tap is on the roadmap to be implemented into MyFare as well
Click to expand...
Yeah that part is all good, we’ve saved some money and are future-proofed … but also it’s 2025 and it’s a transit system for a city approaching 2 million people. When are we just going to live in the present and start acting like a contemporary transit agency that’s actually interested in competing for mode share?

Smart card payment systems are over 20 years old in many cities, we are approaching a decade for many phone-based tap to pay card systems being widespread too.

It fits into a narrative of aiming to have the minimum viable transit product, but not trying to ever make the service truly attractive and competitive. We’ve saved some costs, but at the expense of a diminishing transit brand, regressive and inflexible fair structures, and clunky systems that aren’t intuitive to use.
 
CBBarnett said:
Yeah that part is all good, we’ve saved some money and are future-proofed … but also it’s 2025 and it’s a transit system for a city approaching 2 million people. When are we just going to live in the present and start acting like a contemporary transit agency that’s actually interested in competing for mode share?

Smart card payment systems are over 20 years old in many cities, we are approaching a decade for many phone-based tap to pay card systems being widespread too.

It fits into a narrative of aiming to have the minimum viable transit product, but not trying to ever make the service truly attractive and competitive. We’ve saved some costs, but at the expense of a diminishing transit brand, regressive and inflexible fair structures, and clunky systems that aren’t intuitive to use.
Click to expand...
The % of users using cash fares was realllllly low. Calgary pushed a far higher percentage of users to concessionairy fares than most systems. Calgary decided to make passes make sense for commuters. This is not true in a lot of places. Calgary used ticket books. Most places didn’t.

Money is tight. The smart card system had to be better than paper tickets and paper passes—remember Calgary tried to do that twice and decided it wasn’t worth it.

Advanced features are complicated to implement and require major compromises (either extending credit or turning away users if system updates haven’t propagated). You either need very good data backhaul or storage of card balances on every reader (which can sync back at the depot once or twice a day, Ottawa updates midday). Vancouver and Edmonton both abandoned tap out features on their buses. Chicago’s system more than a decade on still doesn’t meet original contract requirements for processing times.
 
Wow - even the City’s website makes it sound like the City is totally on-board (pardon the pun) with the Province’s plan and everything is hunky-dory:
www.calgary.ca

Project status

www.calgary.ca www.calgary.ca
 
FCC1982 said:
Wow - even the City’s website makes it sound like the City is totally on-board (pardon the pun) with the Province’s plan and everything is hunky-dory:
www.calgary.ca

Project status

www.calgary.ca www.calgary.ca
Click to expand...
The city is. The mayor is not. The city takes direction from council, and despite council's tone, the motions the city has passed is to deliver this project according to the project agreements.
 
CBBarnett said:
Yeah that part is all good, we’ve saved some money and are future-proofed … but also it’s 2025 and it’s a transit system for a city approaching 2 million people. When are we just going to live in the present and start acting like a contemporary transit agency that’s actually interested in competing for mode share?

Smart card payment systems are over 20 years old in many cities, we are approaching a decade for many phone-based tap to pay card systems being widespread too.

It fits into a narrative of aiming to have the minimum viable transit product, but not trying to ever make the service truly attractive and competitive. We’ve saved some costs, but at the expense of a diminishing transit brand, regressive and inflexible fair structures, and clunky systems that aren’t intuitive to use.
Click to expand...
I've never been able to justify the $1B+ cost for a bespoke system in my head. When we have ABT and card tap I don't see how it would be functionally any different to other card systems. Such a system would take years to implement anyways
 
whatchyyc said:
I've never been able to justify the $1B+ cost for a bespoke system in my head. When we have ABT and card tap I don't see how it would be functionally any different to other card systems. Such a system would take years to implement anyways
Click to expand...
I totally get that and appreciate some of the technical considerations that make this stuff complex as @darwink summarized well. Of course, Ontario's Presto isn't going to win any awards for cost-effective and timely execution - but if it's always that complicated, overly expensive and with marginal benefits for transit competitiveness and usability, why has nearly every major city with a large transit system in the world done it already?

Perhaps my frustration is more that Calgary Transit remains painfully slow in all things to improve their competitiveness, with fare technology being a really user-centric example. The fare apps are better than previous, but still come only a decade (or two) behind other transit agencies.

I think the issue is a lack of strategic ambition (and lack of resources, political support or a little of everything) to make transit actually competitive for most people. Over the past decade, there seems to be an increasing acceptance by transit itself that it should be increasingly the mode of last resort, and only that. There doesn't seem to be much momentum to pivot transit to be progressively more useful and competitive for every choice user.

A willingness to accept a slow, decades-long rollout of a not always user-friendly app experience is a symptom of this.
 
CBBarnett said:
why has nearly every major city with a large transit system in the world done it already?
Click to expand...
Cash handling is expensive. While Calgary handled ticket books and monthly passes via convenience stores, the TTC sold tokens and Metrocards (monthly passes) with bespoke machines. Even with the high cost of Presto, for Toronto alone getting transaction costs to 3% from 5% is close to $50 million a year. The provincial government similarly wanted to reduce on train enforcement on Go-Trains, where tap-on-off would provide the data needed to evaluate whether the system needed as many conductors as they had. Tap on data on buses plus tap on and off on the subway/Go-Trains would over hte course of the day show everyones full journey, informing new services.
 
Surrealplaces said:
I'll have to check out the ICOCA card as we will be taking the Shinkansen. I was planning on getting the Suica card. As long as the ICOCA card works for both rail systems in Tokyo, it should do the trick.
Click to expand...
All the cards are interchangeable, there is a very, very small list of operators that only take 1. All can be loaded from your credit card directly within Apple Pay. If you've used Compass/Presto, which are mostly fine now, but the Japanese gates are very fast. I'm not sure how they do it but their response time is unbelievably fast, I had to do double takes sometimes to make sure it actually scanned. The gates also default to open, and close only if it detects someone passing without scanning. It really speeds up the lines during commute times.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top