Calgary Transit

[darwink]

"This investment of $4 million in base-operating budget is for transit service improvements to high ridership routes and corridors, base service and local routes, and On Demand service to additional communities."

There is also:
$8 million is base budget to among other things “ ramp up operations through the introduction of new bus services feeding the future Green Line”.
Max Orange anyone?

And the $15 million for public safety on transit will enable at least some rejigging, absorbing at least the one year incremental increase that would otherwise just happen otherwise.

 

[jhappy77]

@whatchyyc and I made a video about fixing bus transit in Calgary, centering on the bus network redesign I made a while ago:

 

[SlippinJimmy]

It's also a matter of ridership. The easiest way to increase safety perception is by getting more people on the trains/buses. If your late night commute has 20 people instead of 3, the 1 problematic individual would be a lot less of a concern.

This is very true for perception as problematic actors are less noticeable in that situation. This however has no actual effect on whether or not people choose to board a train and shoot up heroin or smoke meth in front of everyone. No matter how much more statistically dangerous driving is, and we are splitting hairs here because these stats do not tell the whole story, many people would always rather take that risk than have to inhale those fumes on their way home from wherever they are.

There was this global pandemic a few years back that absolutely crushed ridership and service frequencies for a few years but it's been building back up. A few notable examples, which are probably the most frequent routes in the network:

• Red Line (mostly 4 car trains) and Blue Line (3 car trains), this must be at or exceeding pre-pandemic service levels for LRT:
  • Weekdays: 10 minutes or better all day ~5am to ~9pm, including peak hours between 7 - 10am and 3 - 6pm is closer to every 5 minutes..
  • Weekend: 10 minutes all day ~5am to ~2am for Red Line; 10 to 12 minutes all day for Blue Line
• Route 3 / 301 on Centre Street
  • Weekday: ~10 minutes combined frequency all day, closer to 5 minutes during rush hour
  • Weekend: 10 to 15 minute combined frequency
• MAX Orange on 16th Avenue N, probably the best improved service of any route as it didn't exist prior to 2016.
  • Weekday: 10 to 12 minute all day
  • Weekend: ~20 minute frequency

[Quick aside]: this is yet another opportunity to rant about the inaccessible CT data - the only way to know the frequency of any given route I gave above is look them up one-by-one and make some inferences on the stop pattern. As far as I know, there is nothing published that lists all routes and the current frequency which is just wild to me this isn't readily available.​

The big lessons here is it's far more useful to put additional service on fast direct routes (all the examples listed above) than on winding, slow and inefficient ones (much of the feeder bus routes).

To implement the PTN there will need to be some substantial rethinking of many routes to create more of this direct, fast ones and fewer slow, winding ones. MAX is a good start, but we need to get serious about some bigger changes to get all busses moving a lot faster - i.e. remove about 30% of all stops, remove stupid deviations to service low-ridership areas etc.

I'm not sure if something has changed in the past few weeks, but there have been no 4 car trains on the Red Line for the past few months that I have seen. The 5 minute frequency on the Red line at least is misleading as by 8:30 it is only 5 minutes outbound from the centre of the city as those are trains from earlier in the morning still in service. Any time I would take the train north through the city at that time, I would notice 5 minute frequency if I arrived at my station a little earlier but after 8:30, 10 minutes. I know many will not agree with what I keep saying, staying with 10 minute frequency with a rush hour bump to 5 minutes will forever keep an excessive portion of this system's use case as a commuter train. I have been away for some time now so I may not be familiar with the current state of the system though.

The ridership has also exceeded pre-2020 levels and I can't remember that far back anymore, but it feels like the service level has not exceeded what we had back then for trains. I could be gravely mistaken here however.

I will maintain that, as least for me, the biggest thing that discourages me from transit (other than the state of it at night) is the frequency. If they suddenly got rid of all park and ride lots as most want, the development would be beneficial, but with this current structure, I could no longer use transit. It would not be at all feasible. Why? There is a bus that runs every 45 minutes during the day from close enough to where I live to the station. Once there, odds are I will then be waiting for 10 minutes for a train. More than once, I have walked to/from the station and never seen a single bus drive by in the direction I would have needed it for, meaning it was faster to walk for 40 min. This means that if I had just missed the bus and had to wait for the next one, a 1 hr commute is now 1 hr 45 min.

This is why I wholeheartedly agree that there needs to be a substantial rethinking of many routes and that MAX is a good start but that we indeed do need to be serious about heavily optimizing the bus network. In my experience a more logical and direct bus trip ended up being slower than just taking the train and going significantly out of my way.

 

[Transit Apologist]

I'm not sure if something has changed in the past few weeks, but there have been no 4 car trains on the Red Line for the past few months that I have seen.

Currently the Haysboro LRV garage (responsible for storing all 4 car trains) is closed to undergo expansion, so we’re going to see strictly 3 car service until Spring 2025.

Haysboro Storage Facility Expansion

www.calgarytransit.com