[Claeren]

Calgary property taxes are actually quite low compared to a lot of places, in absolute dollars not to mention as a percentage of property value or as a percentage of average income. Then on top of that the province takes half which further reduces the total money available. Yet people still mindlessly rant against small tax increases just to keep up with inflation....


The bigger issue though is that property taxes are basically the only way the city has, outside of user fees, to raise money. So it should be the province that people are going after to make LRT a big big priority.

Especially now with the core of the provincial conservatives being either farmers or wealthy (non-LRT taking) Calgarians, it really may not be on their radar like it should.


What is funny is that i look at transit as a relatively conservative measure in the future (despite its liberal minded roots). It is one of the most efficient ways there is dollar for dollar to cut emissions, reduce gridlock, maximize transportation spending, enable the poor to get to work on their own ('hand up' not a 'hand out'), allow consumer choice relative to the car/gas and increases porperty values (which in turn should indicate just how valuable it is to people).



The one good thing Calgary did was getting the LRT as built-out as they have with as few dollars allocated by the province as they had. A tunnel up-front would have hamstrung the entire system for its first 20 years, and only now would we be getting out to Brentwood or Anderson (if even that far?). I think everyone would have loved a tunnel but it is just not that simple.

That being said, it is sad that 'route EXTENSIONS' have been confused with 'capacity EXPANSIONS' the last decade. Extending to Crowfoot and Rocky Ridge (the same applies on all routes) has done nothing to address the actual capacity of the line. In fact it actually spreads cars out over more line which would reduce the capacity in any given peak hour. All for what? To help people in Cochrane or Okotoks (who don't pay city taxes) get to work more easily? A few city commuters save 2 kms in their commute, going to Crowfoot instead of Dalhousie or Brentwood which are still before the true downtown bottlenecks?

Stations need 4 (and really 5) car trains and more cars (they have started receiving some) more than they need extensions - and those should be affordable (but less politically flashy) options! And then they need new roots to out beyond the inner-city bottlenecks before they need FAR suburban extensions. Then a tunnel, and only then does it make sense to have all these politically flashy suburban extensions.

Of course I am stuck acknowledging that the NW extentions, for example, have as much to do with piggy-backing on the road expansion of Crowchild as they do a political desire for LRT transit. But it is still frustrating to see the ring road (which is still awesome, but not nearly as important comparatively in my mind) getting so much provincial attention while hundreds of thousands of trips PER DAY on LRT are looked at as some sort of accident!

I wonder what ring road traffic numbers will look like compared to any of the LRT line's traffic numbers?




Claeren.