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Calgary Transit
- Thread starter Always_Biking
- Start date
JoeUrban
Active Member
One of the desired changes to that station for years was to allow 17th Avenue to continue eastward into the Stampede grounds. Is that still in the plans and when would we expect that to happen?
whatchyyc
Active Member
Yes, and the plan is to finish in time for Stampede 2024
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
Only to be closed for Stampede 2024 haha
JoeUrban
Active Member
Look what I found (1996)
Page 7... the DiscoTrain! A rush hour-only DMU that took people to some park & ride or bus transfer near 162nd and Macleod. I remember seeing that thing at Anderson, but never riding it because I wasn't sure if I could get home afterwards. I never took a picture of it, either.
whatchyyc
Active Member
boreal96
New Member
That's actually not too far from reality, pretty impressive.
I was born in 1996 so I am curious to know was the dominant view on urban development in Canada back then? Is that when the notion of TOD emerged?
I don't recall any mention of TOD back then. If it was around it wasn't a hot topic. The city might have been looking at various concepts similar to TOD as shown in the brochure, but I don't think it was the reality. They didn't seem interested in leveraging the system we already had.
Back in 1996
Attachments
ByeByeBaby
Active Member
I don't think the specific buzzword TOD existed until the mid 1990s (a 3 second search seems to credit Calthorpe in 1993). But the key principles existed.
From 1995:
And there's been a formal TOD policy for about 20 years now:
Sad to think that the city was on to the idea of TOD as far back as 1995, and still struggling with it today.
CBBarnett
Senior Member
A couple of key things also happened along the way in which TOD strategies and plans were the net loser to.
Notably, during this era, LRT expansion was always imagined as a commuter service and linked entirely to major transportation projects (i.e. Roads) in general. That's why we ended up with Crowchild Trail LRT/freeway upgrades throughout the 1990s and 2000s. In one sense, that's logical - combining road and LRT grade-separation is probably a bit cheaper than if each had their own separate programs. But the downside is LRT is now stuck in ugly, unsafe, loud corridors with limited redevelopment potential due to the sheer size of the right-of-way for the highways that surround it. The assumption that LRT is only about mobility was the main fallacy here - totally undercuts the upside of rapid transit if you don't account for the land use.
Related to this was an incorrect assumption that park-and-ride is an important land use tool for transit. Park-and-ride ate up the best of the few sites remaining that weren't just pure car circulation infrastructure and highway ramps. Transit stuck way too long to the model where park-and-ride was important for ridership and political reasons even though it's never achieve anything more than 10 - 15% of a LRT station's ridership (even smaller % considering systemwide).
To be fair to CT, In the 1990s, park-and-ride was pretty in vogue in most North American cities. But the TOD leaders of today also pivoted hard during this era once they had the political and economic cases to do so. For example, Translink and it's predecessors also were park-and-ride fans but pivoted hard in the 2000s on the grounds that park-and-ride had to be financially self-sustainable (paid parking only) and also in situations where there were no development potential. That combo and the political shield of being a regional authority not as easily subject to the whims of local politics resulted in few park-and-rides in the Lower Mainland, non of which are free parking.
Together that results in most of the difficulty to realize high quality TOD sites in Calgary during the past 20 - 30 years. Obviously Calgary was a smaller market for tower product than a TOD powerhouses like Vancouver, but it's not like we had any problem building 50,000+ mid-density low-rise apartments everywhere in the city including far flung burbs over that period, just rarely if ever built them in a TOD-style integrated way (due to the problems mentioned above).
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
With the growth potential of the province and how the major cities will generally share the same interests it is important to consider a similar agency to Translink here. The infrastructure project cost efficiencies alone would make it worthwhile. Not to mention that they would have a much more regional view (not just Calgary but Airdrie, Cochrane, Chestermere, Okotoks and Calgary operating as one). Nothing would anger the city's more as it would take a lot of power away from them. Perhaps there are other negatives I am not thinking of but I think it would be better.
darwink
Senior Member
No line of direct accountability between voters and funders. It is already diffuse enough. Making it more so would be even worse.
If the voters of Airdrie want to fund a very low fare box ratio route so they don’t need to buy their kids a car, I don’t know why tax payers in Haysboro should pay for it while having had no input in the urban form of Airdrie which is causing a lot of the cost.
JoeUrban
Active Member
This reminds me of the parcel here
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