Calgary Regional Rail Transit

[darwink]

there's no way there's demand for more than a dozen train trips a day between Calgary and Edmonton.

It depends on service design philosophy. Running the train itself is a relatively small expense compared to the cost of having the right of way available to enable a high speed train to travel for that train.

Conventional thinking would be European style - run as few trains as possible, until the overall profit starts dropping, which has to be the optimal service pattern.

But there is another, Japanese style. Run as many trains as possible. With lower fares. As long as running an individual frequency isn’t making a loss, you run the frequency. Make practical that hyper commute, embrace what many would see as waste as capability. Induce the demand.

Transportation economics says that there should be two profit maximization points on the fares vs profit graph. Much easier to sell the public if it is pretty accessible in my opinion. Even if it will break people’s minds.

 

[CBBarnett]

It's a weird survey. The fare question is not all that useful IMO, because there's no information about the rest of the trip. How much would I pay for a train to Edmonton? How long does it take? Where does it leave Calgary from? Where does it stop in Edmonton? Why am I going to Edmonton? What is the ride like? Is there a meal service? Who am I travelling with? How often do the trains run? When does the train leave? How much does gas cost? What's the traffic on the highway like? How much is a bus ticket?

It's like asking how much you would pay for a roast beef dinner; a pub, Hy's and Arby's all sell roast beef dinners, but I'd pay very different amounts for each.

It also seems a little backwards to announce a rail system plan, and then afterwards find out if anyone would be interested in paying to ride it. What if 90% of the people answer $10 or less? It's already been announced with great fanfare.

A lot of the other questions seem either designed to get the answer they want ("Tell us all the reasons that rail would be great" " Do you want rail soon or as soon as possible"), or make no sense to ask random members of the public ("Which transit operation governance structure would be most effective" "What delivery schedule makes sense for this vaguely sketched out napkin proposal of an infrastructure plan").

Honestly, the most useful set of questions were the ones asking about which groups could get discounts, because societal support behind discounts is a relevant aspect of whether they should be implemented. But for a service that has no cost, no plan and not even any evidence it's warranted, asking about what discounts is pretty silly. It's like asking someone on a first date what song they want for the first dance at your wedding.

The survey was pointless. So few of the questions can even be extrapolated into useful information - remarkable, as it wasn’t even clear how they could bias some of these to favour a particular outcome as they’ve done with many other topics. 75% of questions were about different fare preferences between destinations, that on their own are entirely not useful. It’s like some intern was told they have to do a survey, then never given direction on “why”.

 

[ByeByeBaby]

It depends on service design philosophy. Running the train itself is a relatively small expense compared to the cost of having the right of way available to enable a high speed train to travel for that train.

Conventional thinking would be European style - run as few trains as possible, until the overall profit starts dropping, which has to be the optimal service pattern.

But there is another, Japanese style. Run as many trains as possible. With lower fares. As long as running an individual frequency isn’t making a loss, you run the frequency. Make practical that hyper commute, embrace what many would see as waste as capability. Induce the demand.

Transportation economics says that there should be two profit maximization points on the fares vs profit graph. Much easier to sell the public if it is pretty accessible in my opinion. Even if it will break people’s minds.

Profit maximization assumes that the service would be profitable at any point; otherwise it sounds like the joke about someone losing $5 on every sale but making it up with volume. That said, I don't think that profit is a good motive for a public transportation system; it would be nice if there was limited subsidy for operations (iignoring the tens of billions of subsidy for construction), but public services are worth something.

In any case.. does "provide as much service as possible with a low cost to users" sound like something this government intends to do about anything (where the users are not oil company CEOs)?

The quietest sections of Highway 2 are around 22000 vehicles per day (S of highway 53 by Ponoka). Of those vehicles, only 77% are passenger cars, which is 17K vehicles two-way. The TEMS report ca. 2006 that darwink linked to earlier assumes 2 people per vehicle average, so that's 17K person trips each way. The report concluded that at top speed, HSR could capture 7% of the volume. That's around 1200 people per day, each way at maximum load. (In fact, if half the corridor volume is Calgary to Edmonton and half the volume is Calgary-Red Deer and Edmonton-Red Deer, it's actually 1600 person trips, with 400 getting off and 400 getting on in Red Deer). A typical new TGV train has a capacity of 500 people depending on the specific vehicle configuration. If the peak rail demand is less than 3 full trains a day in each direction, why would we expect 5 times as many trains to be run? (The rub is that the 7% mode share was assuming 17 trains per day, which means that trains would be running 85% empty. Or that fewer trains would run, reducing the mode share further.)

I was wondering about AADT on the highway, and how it's changed since 2006; luckily, it's not that hard to find and to plot in the same way on the same axes (in red, with grids in white):

What's interesting is there are some areas with really substantial growth; in the approaches to Calgary (the peak at 150K is the same; Deerfoot between McKnight and Glenmore was full in 2006 and remains full today), the approach to Edmonton from the south, as well as from north of Red Deer into town. But there's much less growth on the true inter-city portion that HSR is intended to serve; the 2023 volume is up from 20 to 22K at Lacombe, from 20 to 24K at Wetaskiwin (km 491) and Olds (km 351); it's actually lower at the Red Deer bypass at Taylor Drive, only 20K today.

The TEMS report had forecasts of total car volumes in the corridor; I've added an indication of what those might look like in orange (interpolating the 2021 and 2026 forecasts); we're less than halfway there, and much less at the lowest volume points -- and by definition all through traffic that might take HSR passes through these low points. This is despite the population growth to 2021 exceeding the medium forecast; in Edmonton by 11% and in Calgary by 19% (2% low in Red Deer). Volume is nowhere near the forecast. It's a lot easier to justify HSR if you double or triple the potential market size.

 

[CalgaryTiger]

Profit maximization assumes that the service would be profitable at any point

From my reading, I don't see anywhere in their study where they're looking at whether it should be built...

Alberta’s Passenger Rail Master Plan is expected to be completed by summer 2025 and will include a feasibility assessment, financial and delivery model options, governance and operations recommendations, a 15-year development plan, and public engagement.

Maybe that will be covered in the feasibility assessment but to me that will look at how practical it is to do passenger rail in general. Could be wrong but I think the train has already left the station on if this is something they want to do.

 

[darwink]

Take a look at 2019. A Quick Look at the open data has the low point in AADT in 2019 at 27,180 and 2023 at 20,200. Both numbers might be thrown off by protracted construction at or around the measurement point, south of 2A & Taylor Drive, in addition to pandemic travel changes as the same point is higher in 2014-2018.

 

[InfrastructureEnthusiast]

It depends on service design philosophy. Running the train itself is a relatively small expense compared to the cost of having the right of way available to enable a high speed train to travel for that train.

Conventional thinking would be European style - run as few trains as possible, until the overall profit starts dropping, which has to be the optimal service pattern.

But there is another, Japanese style. Run as many trains as possible. With lower fares. As long as running an individual frequency isn’t making a loss, you run the frequency. Make practical that hyper commute, embrace what many would see as waste as capability. Induce the demand.

Transportation economics says that there should be two profit maximization points on the fares vs profit graph. Much easier to sell the public if it is pretty accessible in my opinion. Even if it will break people’s minds.

Given that high speed rail is literally a foreign concept in north america, Inducing demand is going to be critical for success, which means HSR as fast as possible, and then as cheap as possible.

Full travel time less than 90 minutes with a fare less than $90 and it will get used well.

 

[InfrastructureEnthusiast]

Profit maximization assumes that the service would be profitable at any point; otherwise it sounds like the joke about someone losing $5 on every sale but making it up with volume. That said, I don't think that profit is a good motive for a public transportation system; it would be nice if there was limited subsidy for operations (iignoring the tens of billions of subsidy for construction), but public services are worth something.

In any case.. does "provide as much service as possible with a low cost to users" sound like something this government intends to do about anything (where the users are not oil company CEOs)?

The quietest sections of Highway 2 are around 22000 vehicles per day (S of highway 53 by Ponoka). Of those vehicles, only 77% are passenger cars, which is 17K vehicles two-way. The TEMS report ca. 2006 that darwink linked to earlier assumes 2 people per vehicle average, so that's 17K person trips each way. The report concluded that at top speed, HSR could capture 7% of the volume. That's around 1200 people per day, each way at maximum load. (In fact, if half the corridor volume is Calgary to Edmonton and half the volume is Calgary-Red Deer and Edmonton-Red Deer, it's actually 1600 person trips, with 400 getting off and 400 getting on in Red Deer). A typical new TGV train has a capacity of 500 people depending on the specific vehicle configuration. If the peak rail demand is less than 3 full trains a day in each direction, why would we expect 5 times as many trains to be run? (The rub is that the 7% mode share was assuming 17 trains per day, which means that trains would be running 85% empty. Or that fewer trains would run, reducing the mode share further.)

I was wondering about AADT on the highway, and how it's changed since 2006; luckily, it's not that hard to find and to plot in the same way on the same axes (in red, with grids in white):
View attachment 614829

What's interesting is there are some areas with really substantial growth; in the approaches to Calgary (the peak at 150K is the same; Deerfoot between McKnight and Glenmore was full in 2006 and remains full today), the approach to Edmonton from the south, as well as from north of Red Deer into town. But there's much less growth on the true inter-city portion that HSR is intended to serve; the 2023 volume is up from 20 to 22K at Lacombe, from 20 to 24K at Wetaskiwin (km 491) and Olds (km 351); it's actually lower at the Red Deer bypass at Taylor Drive, only 20K today.

The TEMS report had forecasts of total car volumes in the corridor; I've added an indication of what those might look like in orange (interpolating the 2021 and 2026 forecasts); we're less than halfway there, and much less at the lowest volume points -- and by definition all through traffic that might take HSR passes through these low points. This is despite the population growth to 2021 exceeding the medium forecast; in Edmonton by 11% and in Calgary by 19% (2% low in Red Deer). Volume is nowhere near the forecast. It's a lot easier to justify HSR if you double or triple the potential market size.

Interesting graph, makes me think that Calgary is ready for N/S commuter rail already, maybe it should be be built at the same time as the Banff line?

Also wondering if Red Deer area might not benefit from a small commuter line before or along with HSR, a set of trains going between Lacombe and Innisfail could take care of some of that traffic..

Like you said though, overall HSR isn't going to take a lot of traffic off the highway, but it would effectively eliminate the need for YYC/YEG flights, which is a win for both airports in freeing up runway slots, and for travellers offering a more comfortable journey and in many cases reducing transfer times.

 

[thecivilengineer]

 

[lemongrab]

View attachment 615189

I didn't catch a few of the points in the first three paragraphs, but they really started to sink in with the next three paragraphs