Calgary Transit

[CBBarnett]

Absolutely, that’s the only reason this station will exist, is to transfer to the airport. If you look in a map, it’s so close to the Saddletowne station that there’s no other reason for it

Yeah, one of the reasons the Blue Line station ends up elevated is the airport line having a vertical transfer.

Kind of an awkward arrangement - like many stations, 88 Avenue's local land use sucks - storm ponds, a future interchange and low density take up the majority of "potential" on this one, which will probably evolve into a pretty important transfer point one day.

Also awkward is the bus network consolidates around the higher capacity Saddletowne loop, so any transit non-Blue Line doesn't go here (although it could through a network redesign). But even a redesign creates awkward dilemmas for route and stop design - we now will have two semi-important transfer points a few hundred metres apart instead of one more seamless one. The cost is a bunch of busses messing around with stops too close together, yet both important to have a time-point to try to accommodate both.

Lots of my concerns (apart from bad land use) may be mitigated once we see the design and route rearrangements, but so far I am unconvinced this 88 Avenue one is going to work out as good as it could be.

 

[CalgaryTiger]

I'm confused, why is 88th elevated? Is this where it is supposed to be? Guess it is right beside a strip mall. Too bad there wasn't more space at Saddletown to run the airport line down there.

 

[darwink]

I'm confused, why is 88th elevated? Is this where it is supposed to be? Guess it is right beside a strip mall. Too bad there wasn't more space at Saddletown to run the airport line down there.

A couple reasons.
1: The land is wet.

2: The land owned by the city isn't wide/flexible

3: Airport Trail and 60th will have an interchange, and the LRT needs to go over.

and finally:
The selection of an automated people mover to reduce the transfer penalties from the blue and green lines, protect the frequencies of the northern blue and green lines, and greatly increase frequency on the airport line, necessitates that users not use level crossings to access the platforms of the people mover. Nor is it desirable to set the geometry to solve this problem with a long walk (see transfer penalty).
So we rejected this (from 2012):

we end up with:

The two level iteration may have been from consultation documents for the current ongoing study--it isn't on any website I can find.

 

[CalgaryTiger]

A couple reasons.
1: The land is wet.
View attachment 628510
View attachment 628511
2: The land owned by the city isn't wide/flexible
View attachment 628512
3: Airport Trail and 60th will have an interchange, and the LRT needs to go over.
View attachment 628513
and finally:
The selection of an automated people mover to reduce the transfer penalties from the blue and green lines, protect the frequencies of the northern blue and green lines, and greatly increase frequency on the airport line, necessitates that users not use level crossings to access the platforms of the people mover. Nor is it desirable to set the geometry to solve this problem with a long walk (see transfer penalty).
So we rejected this (from 2012):
View attachment 628515
we end up with:
View attachment 628518

The two level iteration may have been from consultation documents for the current ongoing study--it isn't on any website I can find.

Appreciate the thorough breakdown.