Quote:
Originally Posted by iggy_oi
couldn't agree more, do these city planners not stop and think "why has every other major city(with good public transit) in the world either put their rail transit below ground or elevated above the ground?".
they should also have a pretty good view from city hall of all the morons crashing into trains downtown every couple of weeks too.
and those same clowns at city hall might also think to themselves when they are stuck in gridlock downtown on their way home "hmm... maybe if we put the train underground we'd have an extra road to drive on and i'd be home by now?" (you know they are all driving, because not one person in charge of planning public transit would use this service as is)
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Let me think, I can put up a few good reasons of the top of my head:
1) Capacity - Subway systems typically hold huge capacities of people, something around 45000 people per direction per peak hour. Whereas LRT holds 30000 per direction per peak hour. Calgary does not have the population density or density of jobs (except for downtown) to support the larger capacity. Definitely in 1980 when the downtown track was completed they did not have the capacity and we still do not.
2)Cost - Subway systems typically cost about 100 million dollars per kilometer of track and then another 4-8 million for each car. LRT costs Calgary 15 million per kilometer of track and 4 million per car.
3)Downtown traffic - it has been city policy to not increase downtowns capacity for cars since 1960s. Opening up a road on 7th ave would have done exactly that and then further reduced reliance on transit....however if it were made a pedestrian street it would be a different story.
Regardless, the Calgary Regional Partnership is doing some really interesting work right now. Calgary's Plan-it initiative is calling for densification and increased transit and active modes of transportation. The planners appear to be worried about outlying communities just going with a business as usual approach and creating further sprawl. This would really just push the sprawl problem outward. A challenge is convincing the outlying communities that they would have to change development standards along with the city to ensure we are not jsut moving the problem. I would bet that initiation of transit service to those communities is just a part of those negotiations.