Quote:
Originally Posted by Flames Draft Watcher
What I did find surprising traveling Europe last summer was that almost every major city had a much better transit system than Calgary's. And we're talking cities that had their core built hundreds of years ago. The subway/tram/bus systems of Prague, Barcelona, Paris, Budapest and Vienna were all well designed with routes going in many directions. They did not suffer from the funnel problem that Calgary has where the major fast routes only go to and away from downtown. I traveled with ease in these places solely with a combination of walking and transit.
If all you need to do in Calgary is go downtown and back or go somewhere on the train line like the University or Chinook then its acceptable for anybody remotely close to a C-Train stop. Trying to go from the NE to the NW, from anywhere to the deep SW, from the SE to the SW, etc is a complete disaster involving multiple bus routes that could take 2+ hours or worse depending on the frequency of certain routes and your timing in catching the connections. I had a summer job once where I had to basically taxi some employees from the newer NE suburbs to the newest W suburbs because transit would have taken that person probably over 2 hours. As it was it took about 45 minutes by car. Having a transit system that takes 3 times longer than by car to go to work is pretty ridiculous.
Anyways I get the sense that some people in this thread are just doing their usual rah-rah Calgary cheerleading role, just getting defensive about Calgary and blindly believing that our city can't really be that bad compared to most cities. I wonder if some of those people have visited or lived in a wide variety of Canadian, US and European cities and used transit there. That said clearly some people that have homes and business conveniently located such that their Calgary transit experience will be positive. But try and imagine going to every one of your friend's houses via transit and you'll soon realize that the system is far from ideal. Personally I can't agree with the idea that if most people can get from home to work (downtown) to home just fine then the system is alright. My standards are a bit higher after seeing what cities who were constructed long before Calgary have managed to accomplish.
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So very true. Those in charge of planing for this city are quite literally idiots. They may some degrees behind their name but attendance at an institution and regurgitation of facts does not equate brainpower. Ditto politicians who just because they managed to get some dufii to vote for them means very little either.
To add some Asian flavor look at Beijing or Singapore or Hong Kong. Heck even before the Oly's it was easy to get around Beijing. Come into the city on the train and you could use the blue line or red line to hit spot after spot. Now there are bullet trains coming into town and additional lines from the airport etc. Singapore is just superb. Clean and efficient. Got around there using just the LRT and the occasional bus and it was excellent. Right from the plane just hop on. Just like Hong Kong where you just walk from the airport right onto the LRT and get whisked downtown.
In comparison Calgary is a sad joke. The roads are comical and the LRT just plain stupid. Have a least one ring line. Put it either above the traffic or below it. Have roads where you aren't battling oncoming traffic to get off.
You know as in have at least half a brain.