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Calgary Transit

CalgaryTiger said:
"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."
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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.
 
trtcttc said:
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.
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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.
CBBarnett said:
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.
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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.
 
SlippinJimmy said:
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.
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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 www.calgarytransit.com
 
AtlanticAvenue said:
Would love something like a Metrocard, Opus (montreal), or a presto card where u can just keep the card and reload fares as needed.
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Systems like this are much more expensive to implement that the general public appreciates, and very resource intensive to operate any advanced features (automatic reload, fare capping, balance transfer between cards, lost card deactivation, online reload, reload via any method other than an NFC equipped fare machine that require proximity to the card).

AtlanticAvenue said:
Tapping a credit/debit card to get on a bus would also be great.
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Have to think about return on investment. Before and after the app based system it was ~11% of all trips that had a cash (Adult Single Ride) fare of any kind. How much money is one willing to put into a fare collection system for those 11%? A good percentage of those would be using ticket vending machines which take credit cards, a huge portion are now using single fare purchases and tickets are on the app (1 in 5 of all 'fares' in 2022). So how many people are left under served?

To add on top of it, you have to look at the cost of transferring some users onto a more expensive way to pay fares.

AtlanticAvenue said:
I suppose this would require some kind of gate at train stations to work effectively though?
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Not any more than the current system.
 
darwink said:
Systems like this are much more expensive to implement that the general public appreciates, and very resource intensive to operate any advanced features (automatic reload, fare capping, balance transfer between cards, lost card deactivation, online reload, reload via any method other than an NFC equipped fare machine that require proximity to the card).


Have to think about return on investment. Before and after the app based system it was ~11% of all trips that had a cash (Adult Single Ride) fare of any kind. How much money is one willing to put into a fare collection system for those 11%? A good percentage of those would be using ticket vending machines which take credit cards, a huge portion are now using single fare purchases and tickets are on the app (1 in 5 of all 'fares' in 2022). So how many people are left under served?

To add on top of it, you have to look at the cost of transferring some users onto a more expensive way to pay fares.


Not any more than the current system.
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If anyone is interested in (part of) the gory details of some of this, I saw a teardown of a Montreal occasional paper tap card (the image below is the antenna that both transmits data and powers the chip; the chip is the dot in the lower right -- they come on a wafer of 100,000 for $9000, i.e. 9 cents per chip). Link to teardown which includes an image of the chip next to grains of salt.

antenna.jpg


It's one of the fractally complicated parts of fare systems.

Transit is weird, in that there seems to be a substantial popular opinion that it doesn't matter whether the system works well, but that it matters whether the system "feels modern". I think about the water system; nobody cares whether the pipes were 10, 50 or 100 years old, as long as they provide clean water when you turn the tap. They don't need to feel cool, or look stylish; they need to do the job of getting stuff where it needs to be when it needs to be there. Nobody is upset about the water main break because it was an "iconic" pipe that is being replaced with steel segments; we just want the water to work and be reliable again. And yes, it's true that the systems other cities use are slightly more convenient in some cases (personally, I like not having to carry and dig out yet another card to get on transit), and convenience is part of the deal. But people say "trains are cool" or "train to the airport" in actual discussions involving grown ups as if that should have some impact on how transit is developed.
 
Engagement is now closed, but I noticed a page for engagement around building multifamily on the south Franklin park and ride lot. Four alternatives were shown; with two different designs for bus loops (a P-shaped loop closer to the station and a smaller Q-shaped loop shown below) as well as the option to have the bus zones on Radcliffe Drive, rather than in the loop (even though the loops would still be built, for kiss-and-ride/CT Access I suppose).

1719505281412.png


A good spot for a modest TOD; Franklin doesn't have a lot of retail services.
 
calgary.citynews.ca

Residents of new Calgary communities without easy transit access

The City of Calgary is rapidly growing, and some residents in newer communities are finding it difficult to access public transit.
calgary.citynews.ca calgary.citynews.ca

From the article:

The issue hits close to home, my family moved to MacKenzie Towne in 1999, where they harvested across the street the year we moved in. Needless to say there was no bus. People buy out in the deep suburbs, where they can afford, which means maybe they cannot afford a car but perhaps because they're new to the city they don't even think about how they'll get around?

The City of Calgary is rapidly growing with new communities popping up everywhere, like Ambleton in the northwest. But for residents in the new community, the closest bus stop is a major road and a community over, in Evanston.

“We need to walk for at least 15 to 20 minutes to take the bus,” one resident told CityNews.

This makes sense, if you're the city you need the basics to operate while if you're living in a new community it can be pretty bare bones and you can still move in.

Before integrating full transit, the city has to make sure a variety of things are in place, including a road network.

“Our buses need to be able to efficiently drive around a community,” Lea explained. “The road network doesn’t need to be complete, but the route needs to be relatively complete.”

I laughed out loud at this... The article mentions that you can use a on-demand service but it isn't available in this community lol.

“We have a new type of service called on demand. So it’s a dynamic and flexible service,” Lea said. “So, rather than set schedules and set routes customers can either call us or through an app book a trip, and then a vehicle is dispatched to them, picks them up, picks other customers up and drops them to a transit hub.

The service is currently available in the northwest communities of Carrington and Livingston.

In summary, these people reap what they sow. With the PTN coming in buyer beware about buying in the suburbs, it is practically car only.
 
CalgaryTiger said:
calgary.citynews.ca

Residents of new Calgary communities without easy transit access

The City of Calgary is rapidly growing, and some residents in newer communities are finding it difficult to access public transit.
calgary.citynews.ca calgary.citynews.ca

From the article:

The issue hits close to home, my family moved to MacKenzie Towne in 1999, where they harvested across the street the year we moved in. Needless to say there was no bus. People buy out in the deep suburbs, where they can afford, which means maybe they cannot afford a car but perhaps because they're new to the city they don't even think about how they'll get around?

The City of Calgary is rapidly growing with new communities popping up everywhere, like Ambleton in the northwest. But for residents in the new community, the closest bus stop is a major road and a community over, in Evanston.

“We need to walk for at least 15 to 20 minutes to take the bus,” one resident told CityNews.

This makes sense, if you're the city you need the basics to operate while if you're living in a new community it can be pretty bare bones and you can still move in.

Before integrating full transit, the city has to make sure a variety of things are in place, including a road network.

“Our buses need to be able to efficiently drive around a community,” Lea explained. “The road network doesn’t need to be complete, but the route needs to be relatively complete.”

I laughed out loud at this... The article mentions that you can use a on-demand service but it isn't available in this community lol.

“We have a new type of service called on demand. So it’s a dynamic and flexible service,” Lea said. “So, rather than set schedules and set routes customers can either call us or through an app book a trip, and then a vehicle is dispatched to them, picks them up, picks other customers up and drops them to a transit hub.

The service is currently available in the northwest communities of Carrington and Livingston.

In summary, these people reap what they sow. With the PTN coming in buyer beware about buying in the suburbs, it is practically car only.
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I swear some people dont think about transportation or location for a single second when choosing where to live. I have a coworker who complains endlessly about commuting on deerfoot everyday. He lives in the SE and we work downtown. He just recently was condo hunting and finally found "the perfect place" that he ended up buying. Location? Airdrie
 
potatopizzafan said:
I swear some people dont think about transportation or location for a single second when choosing where to live. I have a coworker who complains endlessly about commuting on deerfoot everyday. He lives in the SE and we work downtown. He just recently was condo hunting and finally found "the perfect place" that he ended up buying. Location? Airdrie
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Oh great for him - just 12 minutes to downtown now!
 
Certain lobbyists will lose their minds, but how about we state up front that certain new communities will not get transit service, ever.

And we state now that certain communities with low density and low ridership will also lose transit altogether in 10 or 20 years.

Of course this would be immediate pain for politicians (though not actually functional immediate pain for anyone...) and the benefits won't come for years, so it'll never happen.
 
lemongrab said:
Certain lobbyists will lose their minds, but how about we state up front that certain new communities will not get transit service, ever.
Click to expand...

I think at this point, all newly built communities have the street design and density to support bus service, at least when considered in isolation. That's a big improvement from 20-60 years ago. However, we still have some communities like Silverado that are basically an island and pose a problem in the context of a larger city-wide network.

But I agree that certain communities will probably never support a normal bus route. I'm thinking places like Discovery Ridge and the northwestern part of Patterson.
 
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