[frinkprof]

Good and thorough article on the C-Train in today's Herald.

Calgary's C-train at 30

Skepticism met people-mover plan

By Jason Markusoff, Calgary Herald January 15, 2011 9:00 AM

Crammed. Feels like a sauna. Winter coats, wool scarves and coffee breath emit more heat.

Newspaper pages rustle loudly. Smartphone buzzes. Can't answer it, or even scratch an elbow, without getting five people to move one step over.

Finally, the doors slide open and the rats spill out into the concrete canyon. Free from the C-Train, and off to another holding cell known as the office cubicle.

Cities with light-rail systems all over North America experience varying degrees of the morning rush, but for the past 30 years, only few know the morning crush like users of Calgary's busy system.

Those who have long boasted that it's the busiest LRT system in the continent overlook the heavier ridership of the Metrorrey system in Monterrey, Mexico. But second ranking is little to be ashamed of in a city notorious for the car's dominance.

[...]

It would roll along the roads, just like the streetcars Calgary had scrapped, rather than the big eastern cities' full-fledged subway systems? When Edmonton's system opened in time for the 1978 Commonwealth Games with stations smartly burrowed underneath its downtown?

But flash forward to the present, when Calgary's 38-station system boasts 268,000 riders on an average weekday and Edmonton's newly expanded 15-stop LRT moves around 74,000 people daily.

Staying above-ground let Cowtown do more by spending less building the initial 13-kilometre Anderson-to-downtown stretch for $175 million, opening in May 1981. By contrast, the 1980s extension of the Edmonton LRT by less than two kilometres and three downtown subway stations cost $160 million.

[...]

New cars finally have air conditioning -- the same new-style cars Edmonton has, Mandryk notes -- and platforms this year will tell riders how many more minutes they have to wait. That might bode for a slower system, but not necessarily a less successful system. North America's No. 1 LRT system in Monterrey runs sleek-looking cars on lines that are fully underground or elevated, not on the road like some lowly streetcar.

And for those wary of that morning crush, stay tuned for longer, four-car trains. In 2014.

Link to rest of article

The C-Train turns 30 on May 25th, 2011