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Calgary Transit

I hear complaints about commuting quite a bit ever since people started coming back into the office. From people who live in places like Legacy, and Chaparral, or Airdrie. I don't judge them for wanting to live where they live as everyone's circumstance is different, but certain things come with the territory, and also people don't always factor everything in.
I don't think a lot of people think about the cost or time involved in commuting. A coworker of mine who bought in Legacy was actually looking at inner city areas, including my area, but decided on Legacy, and got a place for 150K cheaper.
There's a straight up cost savings, and depending on where you work or the nature of your work, you could fully realize those cost savings. If you work downtown or inner city, things change. He burns at least $10 in gas round trip, and pays $26-30 for parking.
Just the $36-40 a day in gas and parking adds up to around $300 per month - for only two days a week. Over time that eats into the money saved on buying in the burbs, and then you have the indirect costs. An hour of travel each way, plus high usage on the vehicle.
I paid more to live inner city, but when I cycle into work, it's $0 gas $0 parking, and it's 15 minutes travel by bike or car, about 20 by bus. Round trip travel by bus is just over $7. There's almost no time or financial cost in my commute. My wife's 2010 vehicle is still in great shape and has rarely been in for maintenance because it hardly gets driven.
 
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Could we see a bus route on the ring road one day? The city could use overpasses as stations.

 
Surrealplaces said:
I hear complaints about commuting quite a bit ever since people started coming back into the office. From people who live in places like Legacy, and Chaparral, or Airdrie. I don't judge them for wanting to live where they live as everyone's circumstance is different, but certain things come with the territory, and also people don't always factor everything in.
I don't think a lot of people think about the cost or time involved in commuting. A coworker of mine who bought in Legacy was actually looking at inner city areas, including my area, but decided on Legacy, and got a place for 150K cheaper.
There's a straight up cost savings, and depending on where you work or the nature of your work, you could fully realize those cost savings. If you work downtown or inner city, things change. He burns at least $10 in gas round trip, and pays $26-30 for parking.
Just the $36-40 a day in gas and parking adds up to around $300 per month - for only two days a week. Over time that eats into the money saved on buying in the burbs, and then you have the indirect costs. An hour of travel each way, plus high usage on the vehicle.
I paid more to live inner city, but when I cycle into work, it's $0 gas $0 parking, and it's 15 minutes travel by bike or car, about 20 by bus. Round trip travel by bus is just over $7. There's almost no time or financial cost in my commute. My wife's 2010 vehicle is still in great shape and has rarely been in for maintenance because it hardly gets driven.
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Yeah, when we bought in Lake Bonavista, it was very much due to transit and amenity proximity. Our realtor thought we were nuts, when we showed them a map of where we were willing to look--10 minutes to stations, and 20 additional minutes to downtown. Created all sorts of pockets over the city.
 
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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In today's day and age there's literally no excuse.. one can plug locations into Google Map with live traffic data, to see how long your commute is and how close it is to certain amenities. It's also possible to type in other times and it uses historical traffic data to estimate how long it'll take. Surprised people don't do that when making one of the biggest purchases of their lives
 
Red Star said:
Could we see a bus route on the ring road one day? The city could use overpasses as stations.

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Overpasses are terrible stations because often it's 400m or more just to cross from one side to the other. And then once you cross, you're still far away from everything as typically they are surrounded by berms and low density residential.

That said, I still think there are some places where a bus route utilizing Stoney could be handy - but Stoney would just be an in-between for higher utility destinations.
Something like this could possibly work great in the SW, beelining to Westhills, then the LRT, then UofC:
1721701729769.png
 
jhappy77 said:
That said, I still think there are some places where a bus route utilizing Stoney could be handy - but Stoney would just be an in-between for higher utility destinations.
Something like this could possibly work great in the SW, beelining to Westhills, then the LRT, then UofC:
Click to expand...

I think roads like Sarcee could have a lot more potential for efficient transit. Access is always going to be a bit further, but you really make up for that with travel times.

Of course that kind of road would have to be slowed down quite a bit with crossings added, but that's just another big plus in my eyes!

Connecting to the Blue Line around 17th would be a bit clumsy to route, but I suppose it would probably just be a timepoint on the route anyways. SB could be configured to be barely any detour at all. NB might make more sense to go east to 45th St Station by looping around the AMA building.
 
lemongrab said:
I think roads like Sarcee could have a lot more potential for efficient transit. Access is always going to be a bit further, but you really make up for that with travel times.

Of course that kind of road would have to be slowed down quite a bit with crossings added, but that's just another big plus in my eyes!

Connecting to the Blue Line around 17th would be a bit clumsy to route, but I suppose it would probably just be a timepoint on the route anyways. SB could be configured to be barely any detour at all. NB might make more sense to go east to 45th St Station by looping around the AMA building.
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The info isn’t completely public yet but those who read the CPTDB forum may have heard that one section of Sarcee will be put to use for transit. A new crosstown route from Tuscany to Westbrook via Bowness is coming in the fall.
 
Transit Apologist said:
The info isn’t completely public yet but those who read the CPTDB forum may have heard that one section of Sarcee will be put to use for transit. A new crosstown route from Tuscany to Westbrook via Bowness is coming in the fall.
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That sounds interesting - can you link to a post about this?
 
jhappy77 said:
Overpasses are terrible stations because often it's 400m or more just to cross from one side to the other. And then once you cross, you're still far away from everything as typically they are surrounded by berms and low density residential.

That said, I still think there are some places where a bus route utilizing Stoney could be handy - but Stoney would just be an in-between for higher utility destinations.
Something like this could possibly work great in the SW, beelining to Westhills, then the LRT, then UofC:
View attachment 582638
Click to expand...

I think that would be a successful transit route. What software did you use to generate that map? That's amazing.
 
Fall Service Update is here: https://www.calgarytransit.com/news/fall-service-changes-2024.html

A few notable ones, particularly a new Route 26 - Sarcee Trail Crosstown that goes between Tuscany and Westbrook LRT Stations. Frequency is quite low so seems like a trial, but would be one to watch. Essentially, it's the first service to connect the SW and NW that doesn't route through Crowchild or Downtown.

1724172477858.png



A bit disappointed in the trip length (~45 minutes) for anyone going end-to-end as it's not competitive to driving (15 minutes), but it's that balance between providing service along the way or operating a true express shuttle. Another issues that's painfully obvious with this kind of route is that buses need to leave the high-speed roads to access the bus bays at the Red Line, the result is circuitous and winding routes to get to the LRT, and not able to take advantage of the expressway fully which cars can easily. A way for a bus to quickly get to Tuscany station from Crowchild and back onto Crowchild again would save significant time.

As for other changes - not clear. Transit's change log system is opaque so it tells us things have changed but not necessarily if that change is good, bad or neutral. Take these key MAX routes for example:

1724172744203.png

Confusingly, I think MAX Orange isn't different than today - but the definitions of "evening" are not provided. So no changes?

304, 306 and 307 all seem to be modest service improvements. The strategy does seem to make these MAX routes a bit of a stable back-bone - not quite at 15 minute all week service, but slowly getting there.

Overall not an overly exciting updated, but seems to have a few incremental improvements.
 
CBBarnett said:
304, 306 and 307 all seem to be modest service improvements. The strategy does seem to make these MAX routes a bit of a stable back-bone - not quite at 15 minute all week service, but slowly getting there.
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Believe new buses need to be added to start to ramp up service more, but the good news is service hours are already funded via last fall's budget adjustments.
 
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