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Calgary Transit

Red Star said:
Do we know if the Centre street BRT is going to be a new MAX line (and colour)? Or will it still be route 301?
Click to expand...
This to me is the kind of basic information that should be pretty readily accessible I would think? Perhaps it exists on different pages or buried in the links - but that goes to my point. It's not easy to understand what is happening and what the benefit is.

For example, I am assuming all these upgraded stops are existing 3, 300, and 301 stops. Any other routes that will benefit from this? Any routes adjusting stop locations or closing stops to consolidate on these more fancy BRT stops?

I would imagine the project has some impact to the above questions - this has to have been figured out by someone otherwise they wouldn't have been able to pick which stops to upgrade in the first place - the problem is, me as a member of public/transit user has no real way to confirm or know any of that with the way the information that is provided.

The project looks great but it's just so hard to figure out what's going on and how users benefit except with vague summary-level qualitative statements.
 
Red Star said:
Do we know if the Centre street BRT is going to be a new MAX line (and colour)? Or will it still be route 301?
Click to expand...
It’s a MAX line, as shown by the MAX shelters and signs currently being installed at several Centre Street stops. Colour is unknown though - at the moment they only say “MAX TBD”
 
CBBarnett said:
For the Centre Street upgrades, have they ever released any estimate on the travel time improvements for this work? Nicer stops and next bus times are great - especially on Centre Street as a powerhouse corridor of transit ridership - but I want more details. I assume there is information that has been generated at least internally or as part of public discussions and engagement, but it's painfully never available for this kind of project.
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The best source I've found is the North BRT functional study that was presented to council in 2021 (Attachment 2 especially) which presents some numbers and breakdown of short to long-term improvements and their costs:

Green Line Committee - May 19, 2021

pub-calgary.escribemeetings.com pub-calgary.escribemeetings.com

Probably the biggest BRT upgrade looked at is to convert 16th Avenue to McKnight to have two bus-only lanes (or at least during peak hours) which was estimated to save 3 minutes on a trip from North Pointe to downtown but that was a middle-term option. It also made assumptions that the Green Line was still going to get to 16th Avenue and somehow reduce the number of cars entering and leaving downtown from Centre Street N.
 
Transit Apologist said:
It’s a MAX line, as shown by the MAX shelters and signs currently being installed at several Centre Street stops. Colour is unknown though - at the moment they only say “MAX TBD”
Click to expand...
This is kind of dumb... colour is arguably the easiest (and most meaningless) thing, and now at the end they gotta go to each stop to replace the 'TBD'?
 
The BIA and Green Line advocates are trying to get the City to ditch the Centre St lane reversals and bring in rush hour bus only lanes. Sounds like the idea will at least be studied but studies seems to be where Council tries to look like they're making changes without actually making changes.

globalnews.ca

Green Line advocates call for bus-only lanes, end of lane reversal on ‘broken’ Centre Street - Calgary | Globalnews.ca

Advocates are arguing for a 'transit-first approach' on Centre Street in lieu of a northern leg of the Green Line, as the project's future remains uncertain.
globalnews.ca globalnews.ca
 
Red Star said:
Do we know if the Centre street BRT is going to be a new MAX line (and colour)? Or will it still be route 301?
Click to expand...

CBBarnett said:
This to me is the kind of basic information that should be pretty readily accessible I would think? Perhaps it exists on different pages or buried in the links - but that goes to my point. It's not easy to understand what is happening and what the benefit is.

For example, I am assuming all these upgraded stops are existing 3, 300, and 301 stops. Any other routes that will benefit from this? Any routes adjusting stop locations or closing stops to consolidate on these more fancy BRT stops?

I would imagine the project has some impact to the above questions - this has to have been figured out by someone otherwise they wouldn't have been able to pick which stops to upgrade in the first place - the problem is, me as a member of public/transit user has no real way to confirm or know any of that with the way the information that is provided.

The project looks great but it's just so hard to figure out what's going on and how users benefit except with vague summary-level qualitative statements.
Click to expand...
Technically it's already the best running "MAX" service in the city. There's a 301 bus that runs every 5 minutes during prime peak time. The next best frequency MAX bus is the Orange, which is 6-8 minutes during it's peak.

Once these MAX Stations are finished construction, it'll have the same road operation as Orange and Teal does. So it's just a matter of when CT/City wants to upgrade the 301 to a Max label. Maybe they'll wait until the bus only lanes are implemented on Centre Street and downtown. But by then, we could already be getting into detailed design for NCLRT depending on how things play out in the next couple of years...

It is a weird project in trying to figure out what the exact purpose and end goal is. It feels like it was just a thrown in when council was making their decisions with the green line back in 2021, and since money has been allocated to it, they're making use of it.
 
Joborule said:
Technically it's already the best running "MAX" service in the city. There's a 301 bus that runs every 5 minutes during prime peak time. The next best frequency MAX bus is the Orange, which is 6-8 minutes during it's peak.

Once these MAX Stations are finished construction, it'll have the same road operation as Orange and Teal does. So it's just a matter of when CT/City wants to upgrade the 301 to a Max label. Maybe they'll wait until the bus only lanes are implemented on Centre Street and downtown. But by then, we could already be getting into detailed design for NCLRT depending on how things play out in the next couple of years...

It is a weird project in trying to figure out what the exact purpose and end goal is. It feels like it was just a thrown in when council was making their decisions with the green line back in 2021, and since money has been allocated to it, they're making use of it.
Click to expand...
Yeah all that makes sense.

I just want a transit capital project where the transit routes impacted are described in like the 1st or second sentence of the projects description, perhaps with a map of the current v. future state.

After all - the transit route is the actual service we are trying to improve with these kinds of upgrades, that’s the key part of any of this to connect the improvements to actual transit users.

it’s a great corridor for transit and overdue for an upgrade. But they just totally miss the mark for communications again about transit - the public needs to know the facts about actual service changes and improvements expected, not when the pavement “milling” is occurring due to the timing of frost and its impact on pouring cement (as an example from most of the project website is dedicated to similar technical construction stuff that isn’t important)
 
Joborule said:
It is a weird project in trying to figure out what the exact purpose and end goal is. It feels like it was just a thrown in when council was making their decisions with the green line back in 2021, and since money has been allocated to it, they're making use of it.
Click to expand...
That's really all it is. A tiny bone for the NC in 2021 to take away attention from the Bow crossing likely not going to be be part of Stage 1.
 
It's been about 10 years since I"ve used transit. With my car getting some work done this morning I decided to use a combo of the train + buses to get around.

Aside from simply taking forever to get around, this morning was fine.

This afternoon was a disaster on several levels, the climax of which was a man actively doing drugs on the train then aggressively begging me for money.

I think it'll be another 10 years before I attempt to use transit.
 
Acey said:
It's been about 10 years since I"ve used transit. With my car getting some work done this morning I decided to use a combo of the train + buses to get around.

Aside from simply taking forever to get around, this morning was fine.

This afternoon was a disaster on several levels, the climax of which was a man actively doing drugs on the train then aggressively begging me for money.

I think it'll be another 10 years before I attempt to use transit.
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Unfortunately you're public transit experience is not unique. Public transit should be fast and safe for all people of a society.

The issues you faced have less to do with transit service and more to do with a homelessness crisis caused by high housing costs due to our elite class importing roughly a million people per year to suppress wage growth and to the fact that we're not allowed to execute fentanyl dealers. This leads to a lot of homeless people using transit as a way to pass time in the day.

I use transit somewhat often and haven't really had any serious issues. But then again I'm a 6' male, workout three times per week and take boxing classes. So my transit experience will probably differ from that of more vulnerable people such as women, seniors and people with disabilities.
 
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While they're taking forever to put the finishing touches, I'm loving the LEDs they've installed on the southbound platform overhang.
20241113_054353.jpg
 
Yeah definitely. They're still barely started the LED feature on the northbound platform. Either way, the station is turning out very nice. I'm glad they used grasses as the plantings, as actual gardens would have just died with that slope and/or ripped out by people.

20241112_141726.jpg


20241112_141859.jpg
 
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