Quote:
Originally Posted by iggy_oi
People literally make day trips to Banff from Calgary everyday.
I could see this appealing to a lot more people than you think. Not having to rent a car, buy park passes or spend 10-20% more for basically every necessity would be
I’m not saying the financial numbers work out to make this viable or not as I haven’t looked very closely at any of that, but you seem to be of the opinion that no one would have any reason to use this service. If they could make it where using the same infrastructure we would have a line from the airport to Banff with a stop downtown and extra trains dedicated for more frequent airport to downtown runs it could really help hotels and conference centres downtown attract more business.
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You still need a park pass.
Anyway, my point was the assumption that Calgary would capture some huge billion dollar windfall from this is nonsense. I don't doubt it would be attractive to tourists to take directly from the airport to Banff. When I travel, I almost always look for a train option first. I'll consider a bus, but probably rent a car. So I get the appeal. it also has big benefits to cutting traffic in Banff. There are good reasons to do this.
I'm not sure I get the finances. We can't build a small section LRT in this city for less than a billion, but they are going to build a train from the airport to downtown, twin the track to Banff, and all the costs of trains, train yards, stations etc for under $500 million? While dealing with CP of all companies, for the privilege? Uh huh.