Quote:
Originally Posted by GGG
Can you explain to me why occupying 3500 square feet of land at the edge of the city is more impactful on the total distance commuted by Calgarians then 3500 square feet in the inner city. The answer is clearly it doesn’t matter the total distance commuted would be the same.
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No, someone at the edge of the city proportionally costs much more than someone in the inner city. It's patent non-sense to believe otherwise. "Total distance commuted by Calgarians" is very heavily skewed up by the suburbanites who drive—who
have to drive—much farther to go to work, the grocery store, etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Bumface
Gas tax works a bit. Until you have electric cars. Toll roads work, but are expensive to implement and maintain.
Building transit to a low density community, far from services, and employment centres is way more expensive. You could charge more for transit, but now you're punishing low income people who have fallen victim to bad planning practices that leave all the affordable housing on the fringes of the city, which are notoriously underserved by transit (see: challenges providing transit to low density, far flung communities). Now you have low income people paying too much for transit, and also spending less time with their children, and putting them at an immediate disadvantage.
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Gas taxes are probably the most equitable way of dividing the "load" on our roads system, but unfortunately the level of government that pays for most of it doesn't collect any gas taxes.
We're in a pickle with transit. We build it out to the fringes of the city nominally so we can get cars off the roads and thereby get away with spending less on roads. But, the travel times involved in taking transit from the fringes to... anywhere, really, are so much longer than simply jumping in the car and driving that people won't take transit. And if they won't take transit they're clogging up the roads, and city council gets bombarded with complaints about traffic being crappy and we need more roads, which we build, which makes driving easier and steers more people away from taking transit, and the cycle repeats itself.
With respect to the LRT, I think the best thing we could do is: 1) get rid of the honour system, put up turnstiles at every station, and 2) initiate zone pricing. If you commute downtown from the end of the line, taking up a spot on the train the entire way in, you pay more than someone hopping on at Sunnyside or Bridgeland or Erlton.