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Cars, Pedestrians, Cyclists and Transit

In order to bend the curve on car ownership, you need to invest more - a lot more - on both transit and inter-city transportation. I live inner city, and still need a car. I wish I didn't, and I bike or walk whenever I can, but the fact is the way this city is built makes it very difficult to get by without a car. Transit here is great if you live on an LRT line and are going somewhere also on a line, but lousy if you're not. Our bus system is circuitous and confusing. It would be great if Calgary had a good enough transit system to get everyone where they needed to go, and a decent enough inter city rail system for DiscoStu to get out of town without taking his car, but it simply doesn't.

If you look at some of the comparable European cities in Calgary's approximate size range - places like Oslo, Helsinki, Copenhagen or Prague - their transit networks have multiple subway (ie, not surface LRT) lines. They have trams. And they have a great inter-city rail system so that even if you don't have a car, it's easy to get around both locally and beyond. Those cities obviously have a big head start on us, and invested in those things a long time ago, but 9 years after the Feds announced funding we haven't even managed to get construction (beyond enabling works) started on the Green Line. Airport LRT is talked about but there's no serious plan to make it happen.

Governments at all levels talk a big game on climate change, for example, but have done precious little to actually enable Canadians to move away from car ownership. Here in Calgary, Council declared a "climate emergency" and showed how serious they are about it by jacking up transit fares every year since. And I lament the tens of billions our Federal government has blown on things like battery plants and subsidies for rich EV buyers, and how much that could have done to build a truly exceptional inter-city rail network linking Canada's major cities.
 
I love cycling as a hobby, and also find it useful for transportation as I often cycle to work, but I still use a car a fair bit. I find we aren't setup infrastructure-wise for life without cars and probably never will be. I personally know people who live in cities like Paris, London, Barcelona, Toulouse and they still have cars. They don't rely on them as much as North Americans, but they use them a fair bit. My friends in London and Paris probably use their cars more than I do due to their location in those cities.

The key for us, is to keep improving, transit, cycling and pedestrian infrastructure continually. We may never get to the levels of European cities, but we need to improve either way.
With Calgary being such a large spread out city, maybe the city needs to focus more on the inner city where people some people are already living car free. Make it even better and lead by example. After building up the inner city areas start hitting other strategic locations keep going from there.
 
Surrealplaces said:
I love cycling as a hobby, and also find it useful for transportation as I often cycle to work, but I still use a car a fair bit. I find we aren't setup infrastructure-wise for life without cars and probably never will be. I personally know people who live in cities like Paris, London, Barcelona, Toulouse and they still have cars. They don't rely on them as much as North Americans, but they use them a fair bit. My friends in London and Paris probably use their cars more than I do due to their location in those cities.
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I was born in the early 80s in Central Europe, and still have many relatives there…pretty much all living in denser urban settings (high rises, next to trams, lots of biking and walking). When the iron curtain fell, and my relatives standard-of-living started rising and they began attaining western things...the first good that they pretty much all wanted was a car (the second was air conditioning, and the third was and still is a detached house). It happened in China too...30 years ago you saw a sea of bikes everywhere...but as soon as the middle class gained the financial ability, the bikes were replaced with cars. Same thing in India and Indonesia and Africa and any other part of the world where people go from poor to middle class. You can certainly live without a car in these places, but clearly people feel like the added mobility improves their lives.

Living without a car in Calgary (and most of North America) is certainly possible too... but I would say for most people would be quite limiting given our geographies, distances, and infrastructures. I find most people who are anti-car are either young, childless, or rich enough to buy their way into comfort. It works for them, so they think it should work for everyone too. But for most of us in the meaty part of the population…people with kids or elderly parents, or who run businesses, or who work in trades, or who have to make Costco and Walmart trips to make the numbers work, or like to take advantage of the outdoors… I would say a car adds value to our lives. It can be an expense and headache no doubt, but it still adds value.

Having said all that, I do agree with Albertasuarus and others, and think there is plenty value in building out other infrastructure. Bikes paths, trains, trams, wider sidewalks...personally I welcome all those things because I think having a good mix of transportations options is a good thing. Our needs change as our lives change, and that's often true with transportation too. You may love biking in your 20s, have to train it across town for work in your 30s, and need that car to shuttle kids in your 40s. Or you may want/need to do all those things all in one day! I like living in a city where you have the ability for that mix.
 
Here in NA so much of one’s lifestyle depends on where they live and work, where their children go to school, what their hobbies are, etc
My wife and I lived in lower Mount Royal and lived without a car for three years. It broke down and we planned on getting it fixed, but eventually made do without it and never bothered getting it repaired. We didn’t have children, we both worked downtown, and life without a car was surprisingly easy.
As always in life, things change. All it took was my next job being up near McKnight and Barlow and it was back to owning a car. Enter a couple of kids and the car becomes more useful than ever.
It’s the reason I don’t judge people for driving a car. Everybody’s situation is different.
 
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I think that talking about living without a car isn't all that useful a rhetorical exercise, except to generate more heat than light. It's great when households can choose to live without a car (my household is one of these), but I think the real reasonable aim is to move away from a situation of car dependence, where every driver in the household needs a car to live. That's the real problem; particularly when we consider the ~1/3 of the population who don't drive -- they are just crippled by that dependence. There will always be situations where a car is vastly superior to other potential modes, but we should be trying to build a city where most people in most circumstances can choose to not use their car.

Ideally, in my books, we'd have something like a balanced system; 1/3 of the trips by active modes, 1/3 by transit and 1/3 by car. It's possible in other affluent countries, but we're falling way short. The figures are from https://citiesmoving.com/; in the first I've highlighted the 1/3 point, in the second, I've highlighted Calgary.

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The problem is that while a car is the most convenient way to make most trips, it's also the most polluting, most dangerous, most space-consuming, most environmentally damaging and most expensive way to make that trip. And we continue to subsidize all of those car costs, while being rhetorically disappointed that cars are so heavily used. The climate change that led to us now just always having a smoke season wasn't caused by pedestrians, cyclists or transit users, but they bear the brunt of the smoke. The most expensive capital project in the history of the city was a car project (the ring road), and our correction is that the most expensive project in the future is... a car project (the tunnelling of the Green Line to avoid crossing Macleod Trail and avoid taking downtown access lanes).
 

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European cities definitely do a better job of offering alternate modes of transportation...although comparing ourselves to Europe is always a bit of tough sell considering their compactness. I'd be curious to see how we compare to someone like Australia, another country with vast distances between most cities.

I absolutely hate taking the bus. In High School, I lived in the SW but went to school in the NW, so had to take 3 busses and one train...one way. 3 years of that totally ruined buses for me.
 
Having to take 3 buses and a train to get anywhere in the city is suggestive of a terribly designed network. I learned to dislike our bus system one day when I took the "circle route" to get to the SE industrial area and it took forever. I love our LRT system and use it frequently but have not taken a Calgary Transit bus in probably a decade or more. Buses are inherently less pleasant to ride in than trains (bumpier ride, more lights, etc) but the way our bus system is designed seems to make it more unpleasant than it needs to be.

I actually use those rentable E-scooters quite often as a substitute for buses for some shorter trips.
 
When I was looking for somewhere to live outside of downtown, being able to cycle was a top priority. I have a car that I use regularly for things like groceries and trips out of town, but I'm not chained to it commuting to work every day. I think people can easily find a scenario that works for them, but there is a lot of resistance to getting out of their cars. Inner city Calgary is starting to get dense enough that driving will be less convenient, hopefully we can be more like Vancouver one day (in the inner city anyway), lots of people drive, walk, cycle, take scooters... many many options for people to get around. Choice is the answer, not banning cars or something extreme like that.
 
I agree with what others are saying. It’s alright and often necessary to drive a car, but we need to do everything we can to get away from that dependency. Allow people a better opportunity to make the choice.

I mean, roads are never going to go away. Firetrucks, ambulances, construction, garbage trucks, delivery etc. aren’t going to use bicycles to get around, so we’re stuck with roads forever.
Given that the roads are here to stay, people will use them.
We just need to give people other options.
 
Surrealplaces said:
With Calgary being such a large spread out city, maybe the city needs to focus more on the inner city where people some people are already living car free. Make it even better and lead by example. After building up the inner city areas start hitting other strategic locations keep going from there.
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I agree 100%. Ultimately it would be nice to have cycling infrastructure throughout the entire city, but realistically that’s not going to happen soon.
IMO, the city should focus on the areas where cycling only is more realistic. Areas like DT and Beltline and the neighbourhoods that surround the core within a boat 3-5 km radius. Get those areas built up substantially and properly (such as finishing 5th street to the Elbow River) then work your way outward.
 
DiscoStu said:
Woosh, I don't necessarily disagree with your points, although you sure seem to love coming at these topics from a confrontational angle. I think Calgarians have more depth than you give them credit for, and plenty of suburbanites use and enjoy many aspects of a more people-focused inner city even if they don't want (or can't) live there.

In general, I think when building good neigborhoods/buildings, it's best to approach it from a good-design viewpoint, rather than trying to stick it to the other guy. There are still plenty of examples where it doesn't seem like either of them was really considered.
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@DiscoStu , moving convo here where it's more appropriate.

Apologies if I come off as confrontational, that is not my intent.

My point is, there is an inherent conflict between a street that is built for cars vs one that is built for people. I'm not trying to "stick it to the other guy", but if we want a better downtown, that means we need to make it less hospitable to cars.

Unfortunately for those suburbanites, the residents of downtown largely subsidize the costs of the infrastructure necessary to allow them to travel by car. We additionally suffer from the annoyances and safety concerns of a daily deluge of cars in a dense urban environment.
 
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