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Calgary Regional Rail Transit

This fare debate should include what the goal is. Remember 40 percent of Calgary Transit ridership is from the Low Income Pass. If a discounted fare or pass is available ridership could be higher, and probably equal the 40 percent that CT gets. Maybe not the more tourist centric Banff train but the regional and airport rail ridership would surely be higher. Getting someone to pay a partial fair is better than someone not paying or riding at all.
 
KrisYYC said:
I filled out the survey and I too was a bit unsure of what to put for fares. I just put similar prices to European trains I've taken and then just doubled it for the high speed option.

The airport trains should priced in a way to encourage airport staff to take the train to work. Maybe slightly more than regular Calgary Transit or a steep discount for airport workers. I would gladly take the train to work but if they tack on some ridiculous premium making it basically just a tourist train then I'll just keep driving.
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Airport workers in general are unlikely to take a train from the downtown to work, because they don't live in the downtown. There are broadly two groups of jobs at the airport; highly aviation specific ones (e.g. aircraft mechanic, Customs officer, pilot) and really generic service jobs (e.g. Tim Horton's or cleaner). If you're working in an aviation-specific job, you will want to live near the airport because that is literally your only possible workplace in the city. (If you're a lawyer, in contrast, there are any number of law firms, not all of them downtown.) If you work at Tim Horton's, you are likely to live near the airport because there are jobs like that everywhere in the city and if you live in Cranston, why would you drive past 100 Tim Hortons to get to the airport?

So the bulk of airport workers live in the northeast or north centre, and there is not really any fare low enough to justify taking the C-train 15 km downtown just to transfer to an airport train to travel 15 km back to the job that is only 5 km from your house. A people mover type system that connects to transit nodes in the northeast and north centre on the other hand...
 
ByeByeBaby said:
Airport workers in general are unlikely to take a train from the downtown to work, because they don't live in the downtown. There are broadly two groups of jobs at the airport; highly aviation specific ones (e.g. aircraft mechanic, Customs officer, pilot) and really generic service jobs (e.g. Tim Horton's or cleaner). If you're working in an aviation-specific job, you will want to live near the airport because that is literally your only possible workplace in the city. (If you're a lawyer, in contrast, there are any number of law firms, not all of them downtown.) If you work at Tim Horton's, you are likely to live near the airport because there are jobs like that everywhere in the city and if you live in Cranston, why would you drive past 100 Tim Hortons to get to the airport?

So the bulk of airport workers live in the northeast or north centre, and there is not really any fare low enough to justify taking the C-train 15 km downtown just to transfer to an airport train to travel 15 km back to the job that is only 5 km from your house. A people mover type system that connects to transit nodes in the northeast and north centre on the other hand...
Click to expand...

Many of us in the highly aviation specific jobs do not live in the NE or even North Central. It's more mixed. The bulk of the generic service workers at the airport probably live in the NE.

But if they're going to build a train to the airport anyway why not give airport staff a discounted rate to encourage those who do live in areas where taking the train makes sense to actually use it?
 
ByeByeBaby said:
If you're working in an aviation-specific job, you will want to live near the airport because that is literally your only possible workplace in the city.
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But that airport worker might have a spouse that needs to live near a different job, or kids who need to be near specific schools, or want to live near an aging parent.
 
Looks to me that to settle the lawsuits, some land swaps have gone on. Additional acquisition may have enabled this.
1734565287147.png

Yellow CPR
Yellow with hatching, CPR with provincial air rights
Red Provincial
Blue Remington
Green City
 
darwink said:
Looks to me that to settle the lawsuits, some land swaps have gone on. Additional acquisition may have enabled this.
View attachment 620549
Yellow CPR
Yellow with hatching, CPR with provincial air rights
Red Provincial
Blue Remington
Green City
Click to expand...
For the air rights, and judging by the Grand not-so-Central rendering doesn't look like the normally required (15 metre?) clearance applies.
 
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CalgaryTiger said:
For the air rights, and judging by the Grand not-so-Central rendering doesn't look like the normally required (15 metre?) clearance applies.
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Rail to rail clearance is different than rail to pedestrian clearance.

As can see in Sunalta.
1734626200355.png
 
darwink said:
Rail to rail clearance is different than rail to pedestrian clearance.

As can see in Sunalta.
View attachment 620678
Click to expand...
Yes, great point. Appreciate you.

It is exciting that the Grand Central and other rail plans are pretty much a sure thing. I say that because why else would they insist on putting an actual LRT station in Grand Central without the Province not being fully committed to it happening.
 
I wonder when the province will setup the rail crown corporation. I can't see how they do not take over all the rail building in the province including Calgary and Edmonton. These projects are too large for a city to oversee, and you also benefit from the knowledge kept and lessons learned instead of always starting from scratch.
 
Aside: It is still really funny, that Smith is doing what Ed Stelmach wanted to do, 15 years later, after her playing a pivotal role in getting all of this stuff derailed in the first place between 2009 and 2012.
 
HudsonA08 said:
I wonder when the province will setup the rail crown corporation. I can't see how they do not take over all the rail building in the province including Calgary and Edmonton. These projects are too large for a city to oversee, and you also benefit from the knowledge kept and lessons learned instead of always starting from scratch.
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Agree but this province seems allergic to taking on responsibility. Want to dictate the whole plan and wash their hands of the inevitable overruns.
 
trtcttc said:
Agree but this province seems allergic to taking on responsibility. Want to dictate the whole plan and wash their hands of the inevitable overruns.
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It was ever thus between the city and the province. Somehow our council has got so risk averse they cannot fathom taking any risk.

And yeah, the province doesn't want to agree to overruns, when the city has demonstrated no ability to control scope or say no to any stakeholder.
 
Not willing to blindly trust the 'report' that the Province pushed out of which the report itself identifies, that other than, will a track and station barely fit on a road, basically no other impacts were assessed (pg48).
That's not being risk averse, thats accurately assessing the risks that have been presented to you clearly by them being omitted in the first place.
 
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