I never understand why people take transit when they're with thier bikes. Shouldn't they just ride thier bike?
Do you know how big the city is? The city is not really setup too well for cross-city bike trips on the daily.
Then transit rarely gets you right to where you need to go so riding to/from the bus/train saves quite a bit of time.
For example I work/live downtown but had to meet some friends for drinks up in Crowfoot on a Friday night (one of the snowiest too). No way I could ride my bike there after work, get there in time, have drinks, and then ride home by a decent hour.
Instead I rode my bike to the train, took that and from there rode to the pub.
Took the last train home at midnight and was home in bed at a good hour.
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Exactly what Temporary_User said. Sometimes to get form one end of the city to the other can take 2 buses and a train. I can see this initiative extremely useful. This city is huge, and covering it on a bike alone can take hours depending on where you need to go.
Not to mention the city is notoriously unfriendly to cyclists. Anything that encourages people to bike more and keep their car from congesting traffic is a thumbs-up in my book.
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Will there be any prohibition against taking a bike on a bus during rush hour? I believe there are certain times of the day (i.e. rush hour) that you aren't allowed to take a bike on a c-train...
Sorry, I realize the bikes are put on the rack in front of the bus. I was just wondering if there would be any restrictions on using it during rush hour, or whether the extra 1-2 minutes (?) to load and unload a bike isn't an issue.
I checked the website and it looks like there are no restrictions with the current policy...
Sorry, I realize the bikes are put on the rack in front of the bus. I was just wondering if there would be any restrictions on using it during rush hour, or whether the extra 1-2 minutes (?) to load and unload a bike isn't an issue.
I checked the website and it looks like there are no restrictions with the current policy...
I don't know enough to give a definitive answer, but I wouldn't think there would be, especially if all new buses will get bike racks. They would probably see the most use during rush hour.
The trains though, yeah, no bikes allowed during rush hour.
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Is there enough garage space for these? Equipping the buses with bike racks will increase the space required for storage. Frinkprof?
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Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm
No details but they apparently sorted out
I'm not really sure how this is going to be done, at least in the short term. There is some relief coming to the garage capacity problems fairly soon though, but likely not by the time all these new buses arrive.
There is going to be a new garage up in the northeast off Country Hills Boulevard and Stoney Trail and the Spring Gardens Garage off the 32nd Avenue North Connector is going to be expanded. Not sure on exact timelines, but both will probably be completed sometime in the next 5 years. I think an expansion of Anderson Garage may be in the offing as well.
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Originally Posted by Temporary_User
Do you know how big the city is? The city is not really setup too well for cross-city bike trips on the daily.
Then transit rarely gets you right to where you need to go so riding to/from the bus/train saves quite a bit of time.
For example I work/live downtown but had to meet some friends for drinks up in Crowfoot on a Friday night (one of the snowiest too). No way I could ride my bike there after work, get there in time, have drinks, and then ride home by a decent hour.
Instead I rode my bike to the train, took that and from there rode to the pub.
Took the last train home at midnight and was home in bed at a good hour.
Yeah. There's a concept of effectively utilizing bike racks on buses that enables the cyclists to bike the first and last kilometer of their trip. That is, you put all the buses that have bike racks on the long haul crosstown routes (like the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 19, 20, 32, 72/73, etc.) as opposed to the smaller feeder routes.
The cyclists will bike to the nearest stop along one of those routes, use transit to get within a kilometer of their destination, and bike the rest of the way. That way the bus takes care of the bulk of a long trip or gets them over or around a difficult geographical feature (like the river or the Deerfoot/Nose Creek valley). If they are only going a couple or three kilometers, they will just bike the whole way.
The problem to date with making this happen is that there isn't a critical mass of buses that have the bike racks. You have to have enough buses so as to have nearly 100% coverage on these routes. If you only have enough to have only, say 60% of the buses on Route 72/73 have bike racks, that isn't reliable enough because if someone wants to use it, they have to be able to rely on the next bus having a bike rack and not to have it be a crapshoot and if it doesn't, they have to wait another 15 minutes or half an hour.
So, when there gets to be enough of the bike rack buses, what you'll probably see is certain routes picked to be bike rack routes and that's where all these will be used.
Transit Camp held an event in April of 2012 where Jarrett Walker (the author of the Human Transit blog as well as a book of the same name) came to speak.
Nothing else to add other than it's a good blog and he explains a lot of nuances about transit very well.
People seem to be foaming at how much they'll be inconvenienced by this bike rack. I was curious to see how these things work. If someone knows what they're doing, it shouldn't add more than 20-30 seconds. Could be no extra time if they do this while other passengers are loading and standing in line.
Location: Close enough to make a beer run during a TV timeout
Exp:
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Originally Posted by I-Hate-Hulse
People seem to be foaming at how much they'll be inconvenienced by this bike rack. I was curious to see how these things work. If someone knows what they're doing, it shouldn't add more than 20-30 seconds. Could be no extra time if they do this while other passengers are loading and standing in line.
A) You have greater faith in the general public than I do.
B) I have personally seen a lot of cyclists fail to know how to operate their bike in traffic, and now you want me to have confidence in their ability to operate the bike rack.
The above two points were somewhat tongue in cheek, but I also see other issues. People with expensive bikes taking a great deal of care to make sure they don't get scratched. Then you get people who don't know how to use it or aren't good at using it. Then an issue where the rack is full, and another cyclist wants to get on.
The only way I can think it will take someone 1-2 minutes (a time mentioned previously) to load/unload the bike is if they have no arms. I can usually do it in about 5 seconds in the rare occasion that I am going cross-town and would like to ride my bike.
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Calgary Transit has determined what caused the overhead catenary wire to fall last week near Crowfoot Station.
The root cause was a breakdown in the carbon contact strip on top of the pantograph of the middle car of the CTrain involved in the incident. (A pantograph is the jointed framework on top of the train that conveys an electrical current to the train from overhead contact wires.)
With the train’s carbon contact strip partially missing, the overhead wire was rubbing on the bare metal strip of the pantograph, causing electrical arcing which cut through the strip as the train headed northwest to Crowfoot Station.
This weakening of the pantograph head, along with the pressure from pantograph springs pushing constantly up, eventually caused the pantograph head to buckle upwards and protrude slightly above the contact wire.
This buckled portion of the pantograph head struck overhead wire support arms just before Crowfoot station, pulling on the wire and misaligning the wire with the track. This caused the other two train pantographs on the same CTrain to get tangled with the wire and ultimately pulled the wiring down in the area of the Crowfoot Station track switches.
Calgary Transit has removed seven CTrain cars that have the same carbon contact strip technology from service for further inspection. This does not affect normal CTrain service.
Calgary Transit is also reviewing and ramping up its pantograph inspection process, including the investigation of a system to perform automated visual inspections of each pantograph while CTrains are in service.
Following the damage last Tuesday, Calgary Transit continued to provide service between Crowfoot and Dalhousie Stations using shuttle buses and some trains while repairs were made. Crowfoot Station resumed normal service on Sunday.
Calgary Transit thanks customers for their patience.
There has been a vendor chosen that will be handling the revamp of the Calgary Transit website. FCV Technologies was the successful proponent. Not sure on when we will see the result.
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On the topic of New Years Eve and late night service in general, I received this tidbit from a CT contact.
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I learned that we will be hiring a consultant to evaluate late night service options and write a report by the end of the year (in conjunction with our business plans). We will be looking at various options including core service (similar to the party bus loop) 7 days/week, Fridays and Saturdays or just special events like NYE. We will also consider providing service on the full network including outlying communities. Interestingly, we will likely also look at a bus-only approach. We need time to maintain the LRT network and know that weekend maintenance is a nuisance - more time at night would help a lot. So... stay tuned. It's in the RFP stage right now.
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Late-night trains pondered as transit numbers grow
By Tamara Gignac, Calgary Herald January 24, 2014
Calgary Transit may run later into the night as ridership continues to soar.
More than 107 million customers crammed into buses and trains last year — a record for the city’s transportation network and an increase of five per cent over 2012.
Transit officials suggest a few reasons for the spike. Council bolstered service hours by 2.5 per cent in 2013, adding a new bus route in southeast Calgary and making changes to existing routes.
A growing number of jobs in the city also translated into additional passengers, as did an extension of the Blue Line to the city’s northeast.
And the city saw a healthy uptick in ridership — 11 per cent — from the $1.4 billion west LRT, which transports commuters from as far away as 69th St. SW.
[...]
Late-night transit service is being considered. “We’re going to do some studies to see what kind of market there is. Should ridership continue to increase, that provides us with funding to look at it on a priority basis,” Morgan said.
The issue is whether it’s the right place to spend money. “Are there other acute areas where we have overloads or ridership gains? We’ll look at all the options to see what the biggest bang is for our buck.”
[...]
Calgary Transit plans to hire additional peace officers to improve security and keep a better eye on drunk and rowdy passengers this year.
I would rather them put their extra money for increasing service durring the times of the day that the majority of people would use it.
45 minutes between buses on the weekend or after 6pm means my bus pass is useless to me durring that time.
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