Calgary Transit Fantasy Maps

[CBBarnett]

Love all these plans and ideas!

Why does everyone always skip Chinook Centre though? It's the 9th largest mall in Canada currently. Chinook has got to be the single most popular destination south of downtown in the whole city - it already is the centre of a hub of activity today.

I've always thought a Chinook - Rockyview Hospital - MRU / Currie - Richmond Road 37th Street - Westbrook line would be killer. Add a more ambitious extension over the river to hit Foothills - University District - Market Mall - Dalhousie Red Line and you'll boost system ridership about 100%. It all starts with Chinook as the regional anchor as it already is.

For that matter, I don't really get why the existing MAX routes didn't try to hit it Chinook - maybe the bus circulation are tricky around the Chinook LRT / Glenmore interchanges?

Whatever the case surely a fantasy maps we should figure it out!

 

[InfrastructureEnthusiast]

Here's an interesting idea that I've been working on a little bit, not as a high fantasy trains everywhere thing, but a more modest proposal. It's a set of additional/enhanced MAX BRT routes. Here's the MAX and LRT service as it exists (including the NC 301 which is actually a better service than any MAX):
View attachment 589765

And then this is the core of the proposal, which adds two MAX lines (shown in rose and mint) and extends the purple.
View attachment 589766
The purple is now a through service, connecting the downtown to the U of C/Foothills area and then on up Shagnappi to North Pointe. The rose and mint are circumferential north-south routes. Rose connects Saddleridge to Somerset via 52 St, the SE industrial and South Health campus. Mint connects Crowfoot to Somerset via Bowness, Sirocco LRT, Westhills and Buffalo Run.

But you may have noticed that some of the lines extend past the page. Here are the four regional MAX routes I propose (in the interest of saving data, I've used thumbnails for the detailed routes): To give them a stupid name, I'll call them Regional MAX, or ReMAX for short.
ReMAX Orange: Airdrie to Cochrane, connecting the north and south Airdrie transit hubs with west Airdrie, Cross Iron Mills and vicinity, then the existing orange route, extending to Crowfoot and then on to central Cochrane. (Cochrane's road layout cannot meaningfully be served by transit.)
View attachment 589772


ReMAX Purple: Airdrie to Strathmore, including central Airdrie, Cross Iron Mills, North Pointe, U of C, downtown, then the existing purple route with a more streamlined through run of Chestermere and on to Strathmore.
View attachment 589773


ReMAX Mint: Cochrane to Diamond Valley, connecting Crowfoot, Bowness, Sirocco, Westhills, Buffalo Run, Evergreen and running through Okotoks
View attachment 589774



ReMAX Rose: Crossfield to High River, connecting east Airdrie, the airport, the 52nd St corridor (stopping at the same places as Orange, my mistake), South Health Campus and then on to Okotoks
View attachment 589775


And then putting it all together, we would have:
View attachment 589767

Assuming half hourly frequency to start, this layout would actually result in 30 minute headways most places, but 20 minutes to Okotoks and Cochrane, and 10 minutes to Airdrie effectively.

To be slightly more practical, lines this long are really difficult to keep schedule to, and I don't know that it actually makes that much sense to do this much through-running. However, one service pattern that could make sense would be having alternate trips go out of town at each end. For example, a ReMAX Orange stop westbound on 16th Ave could have the following pattern:

From Time To
Saddletowne 8:00 Brentwood
Airdrie 8:07 Brentwood
Saddletowne 8:15 Brentwood
Saddletowne 8:22 Cochrane
Saddletowne 8:30 Brentwood (repeating)
where the regional runs alternate with in-city runs, and the buses that do regional runs only go into the region on alternate directions. It would be a little more complex to use (although we already refer to LRT lines by their end stations) and would make region-to-region trips a little slower, although to be honest, if you're on the bus that long you need a bathroom break anyways.

Great detail, and some very interesting ideas there!

Ultimately I think regional rail would replace a fair bit of the exurb portion, but it would be a good way to get service started and gauge real world demand for routes.

 

[Transit Apologist]

I've always thought a Chinook - Rockyview Hospital - MRU / Currie - Richmond Road 37th Street - Westbrook line would be killer. Add a more ambitious extension over the river to hit Foothills - University District - Market Mall - Dalhousie Red Line and you'll boost system ridership about 100%. It all starts with Chinook as the regional anchor as it already is.

For that matter, I don't really get why the existing MAX routes didn't try to hit it Chinook - maybe the bus circulation are tricky around the Chinook LRT / Glenmore interchanges?

The existing route 9 runs from 37 Street & MRU to Chinook, and since there are very few stops between MRU and Chinook a BRT would offer little advantage over the current service (hence the MAX Teal going to Heritage instead). For that matter, the 9 successfully runs more-or-less the exact routing you described (albeit skipping U district/Market Mall and cutting right thru the university itself on Campus Drive, stopping at Brentwood Mall and then continuing to Dalhousie).

 

[UrbanWarrior]

Here's an interesting idea that I've been working on a little bit, not as a high fantasy trains everywhere thing, but a more modest proposal. It's a set of additional/enhanced MAX BRT routes. Here's the MAX and LRT service as it exists (including the NC 301 which is actually a better service than any MAX):
View attachment 589765

And then this is the core of the proposal, which adds two MAX lines (shown in rose and mint) and extends the purple.
View attachment 589766
The purple is now a through service, connecting the downtown to the U of C/Foothills area and then on up Shagnappi to North Pointe. The rose and mint are circumferential north-south routes. Rose connects Saddleridge to Somerset via 52 St, the SE industrial and South Health campus. Mint connects Crowfoot to Somerset via Bowness, Sirocco LRT, Westhills and Buffalo Run.

But you may have noticed that some of the lines extend past the page. Here are the four regional MAX routes I propose (in the interest of saving data, I've used thumbnails for the detailed routes): To give them a stupid name, I'll call them Regional MAX, or ReMAX for short.
ReMAX Orange: Airdrie to Cochrane, connecting the north and south Airdrie transit hubs with west Airdrie, Cross Iron Mills and vicinity, then the existing orange route, extending to Crowfoot and then on to central Cochrane. (Cochrane's road layout cannot meaningfully be served by transit.)
View attachment 589772


ReMAX Purple: Airdrie to Strathmore, including central Airdrie, Cross Iron Mills, North Pointe, U of C, downtown, then the existing purple route with a more streamlined through run of Chestermere and on to Strathmore.
View attachment 589773


ReMAX Mint: Cochrane to Diamond Valley, connecting Crowfoot, Bowness, Sirocco, Westhills, Buffalo Run, Evergreen and running through Okotoks
View attachment 589774



ReMAX Rose: Crossfield to High River, connecting east Airdrie, the airport, the 52nd St corridor (stopping at the same places as Orange, my mistake), South Health Campus and then on to Okotoks
View attachment 589775


And then putting it all together, we would have:
View attachment 589767

Assuming half hourly frequency to start, this layout would actually result in 30 minute headways most places, but 20 minutes to Okotoks and Cochrane, and 10 minutes to Airdrie effectively.

To be slightly more practical, lines this long are really difficult to keep schedule to, and I don't know that it actually makes that much sense to do this much through-running. However, one service pattern that could make sense would be having alternate trips go out of town at each end. For example, a ReMAX Orange stop westbound on 16th Ave could have the following pattern:

From Time To
Saddletowne 8:00 Brentwood
Airdrie 8:07 Brentwood
Saddletowne 8:15 Brentwood
Saddletowne 8:22 Cochrane
Saddletowne 8:30 Brentwood (repeating)
where the regional runs alternate with in-city runs, and the buses that do regional runs only go into the region on alternate directions. It would be a little more complex to use (although we already refer to LRT lines by their end stations) and would make region-to-region trips a little slower, although to be honest, if you're on the bus that long you need a bathroom break anyways.

Wow, that’s really impressive. Thanks for putting all that work in. The city should actually look at this I feel like if we had a more solid regional strategy for infrastructure development, like this, developers would move on our next layer of bedroom communities.

 

[ByeByeBaby]