I was in Vancouver back in May and also noticed the more frequently schedule on the sky train. I have to admit it’s nice arrive at a station and know that if you miss the train another one will be along shortly.
Maybe for the city could experiment by having single or dual car trains, but more frequent service outside of peak hours? Having single cars would require more drivers and costs unfortunately, and if they did that, would it actually increase ridership? IDK.
TBH even after using other metros from around world with higher require frequencies I still don’t find the 10 minute frequencies a problem. If it’s cold out I use the app and time my walk over to the station. On warmer days I don’t mind waiting up to 10 minutes for the next train.
Then is the future of the C-Train going to just continue to be work-commute oriented with consistent service only during rush hour or in a more transit oriented future are people going to have to put up with building their lives around a (becoming unreliable) 10-15 min headway schedule?
If I don't live walking distance from the train station and have to drive to it or rely on a bus that may or may not come every 45 min, this makes timing even more difficult, or do those of us that do not live with in walking distance of transit not get included in these considerations?
In that case why not just forget transit and drive?
And then the number of times I have seen 2-3 empty trains go by the opposite direction while waiting for mine; perhaps some considerations could be made and some money could be saved there that could be used for better frequency (this may lead to a more complicated schedule of short-terming trains).
All I know is that I do not consider it as a real option still outside of one certain commute across the city for this reason and also due to public safety, both things world class systems like SkyTrain are considerably better at. Things like this contribute to it costing me 1 hr to do a trip i can do in 25 min in my car despite one station being a 2 min drive from where I live and the other one being essentially on the property of where I am going. Well that and the fact that being on a train so packed that the doors won't close (causing delays) or not being able to get off at my station becomes a possibility.
In that case why not just forget transit and drive?
When I was in Vancouver I was staying in an Air B&B in a predominantly detached home residential area where owning a car would still be ideal if not a given. I asked myself (and the others I was with), would I drive that much if I lived here. The answer honestly dramatically less than I do here. You want to know the best part? That house was farther from a train station than where I currently live and involved a walk to a bus stop (Vancouver busses are also much better and the lack of a paid driver cannot be an excuse for that fact) and a transfer at a train station. That would take
30 min to get downtown where driving the same trip would take 20 min. On the other hand a trip of similar distance from a similar area in Calgary that has a train station within 3km, and has a drive to downtown of about 8-9km, say Fairview, driving would also take almost 20 min, BUT transit would take
45 min unless you are lucky with exactly where you are going and time a 45 min head way bus schedule right. An extra 10 min is nothing, an extra almost half hour (mind you in a much colder city), that is a significant difference that begs the question,
why not just forget transit and drive?
The problem then becomes how many of our population think that way especially in a city that has been predominantly car-centric. How do you ever build a system that you can expect everyone to use to replace the reliance on cars (as many people understandably so want) if driving is just objectively that much better for so many people still. Building more TOD won't take cars off the roads, it will either just increase the population of the city or just supply housing to the shortage that we currently have in Canada; you will still have an increasing number people living in areas where using transit is painfully time consuming and inaccessible. So what is the answer?
I feel like the mentality here and in some other cities is that they sit around and ask the question of what is the bare minimum we can do to make a system that works so that we can just beg people to use it or try to force them to by trying to make other modes less convenient. What they should be doing is asking how they can make a system that minimizes the added inconvenience over say driving (or exceeds it in convenience) based on it's own merit. In my humble opinion, this is what is wrong and 10-15 minute headways is a product of this thinking. I should not have my whole life be planned based an infrequent (and somewhat unreliable) transit schedule, aside from winter Calgary has been one of the better cities for quality of life, if I have been used to that for my whole life why give it up? Perhaps if we changed our approach here, we would see more people using transit late at night for example that aren't either be young adults that are blackout drunk or people doing drugs. Vancouver was always a fairly lousy city to try and drive in relatively speaking, they didn't always have the transit they do though. When they built it and people were used to live without it, they probably could've gotten away with making a system much worse than they have for much cheaper and gotten away with it, but they did not and I think it paid off for them now that people can't afford to drive or do anything there anymore, which is a reality probably on its way to cities like Calgary;.
