MF YYC Politics - there, I mega did it

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Cutting something preemptively so you can then investigate how much of it you could stand to cut is so uniquely and entertainingly dumb.

This is essentially how Musk fixed Twitter and made it a profitable well respected organization.


Only, what, 10 months or so until we can recall him? Not seriously, but it sure would be fun to watch his reaction to it.

[topfiverecords]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

This is essentially how Musk fixed Twitter and made it a profitable well respected organization.


Only, what, 10 months or so until we can recall him? Not seriously, but it sure would be fun to watch his reaction to it.

I bet we could trick him into doing all the work to collect signatures to recall himself. Just have some lackey tag along to get the paperwork right this time.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Table 5

On one hand, it makes sense to pass the cost increase on to the actual people who use a service. At the same time, I imagine it will most likely affect people who are already most sensitive to any price increases.

This also definitely won't help with incentivizing more people to use public transit. The value proposition for the casual user like me is already fairly suspect. Even with one kid riding free, and the other getting a lower fare ($2.55), with this increase it would cost $21.10 for me to take my family of 4 somewhere and back. 99% of the time that's gonna be a "no thanks, we're driving".

It flat-out doesn’t make financial sense for a family to take the train downtown from the burbs. We did it sometimes as a kind of civic duty and to get the kids comfortable on the C-Train. But it’s way cheaper and easier to drive and park.

Even for a single rider, the value proposition is questionable. $8 for a round-trip vs $13 a day for me to park during the week. I mostly take the train, but I don’t feel irresponsible when I splash out the extra $5 for the convenience of driving. And of course on weekends, driving and parking is the way to go.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

It flat-out doesn’t make financial sense for a family to take the train downtown from the burbs. We did it sometimes as a kind of civic duty and to get the kids comfortable on the C-Train. But it’s way cheaper and easier to drive and park.

Even for a single rider, the value proposition is questionable. $8 for a round-trip vs $13 a day for me to park during the week. I mostly take the train, but I don’t feel irresponsible when I splash out the extra $5 for the convenience of driving. And of course on weekends, driving and parking is the way to go.

Depending on a number of variables (trip length, your car, maintenance intervals, how you get to the train station) you're paying another few-several dollars on car operating costs, so you're probably paying double. Which doesn't change your point unless you scale it to daily, and then the question is monthly discounts for parking vs transit.


Monthly transit probably offers more utility/opportunities for non-commute use than monthly parking, but that doesn't mean we should charge more for it. Yet it seems we often do.

$8 day-max CPA lots charge $115.50 per month (14.5 days breakeven). Compared to $8 return fair translating to $126 monthly transit (31.5 trip breakeven). A $10 max lot is only $126. There's a bunch of different lots and breakeven seems to be anywhere from 12-21 days https://www.calgaryparking.com/find-parking/passes.html

We also tend to price parking much lower for times of lower demand (e.g. $2 max evening/weekend), but we don't do that for transit. Which is understandable to an extent, but we do more creative and strategic things for parking (flex passes that give a discount) that we don't really do for transit (no discount on a ticket book, though it doesn't expire as fast as a flex pass)

Every use of parking means a vehicle trip with associated negative externalities like utilizing expensive+scarce resources (road lanes), while most transit trips mean the opposite. There's a bunch of [bad] policy reasons for this, like allowing so much private parking competition - underutilizing those lands (lower property taxes) and driving CPA prices down. We could/should turn CPA into a monopoly and charge higher prices to subsidize transit. Of course this would be unpopular with suburbanites who also love to complain about traffic and property taxes that are directly increased by car dependency policies.

[Fuzz]

The pandemic really did a number on transit. Hybrid work means monthly passes may not make sense for a lot of people, so instead of automatically taking transit, you then weigh all the other factors and I think many end up driving a lot more than they would if they had committed to the pass.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

The pandemic really did a number on transit. Hybrid work means monthly passes may not make sense for a lot of people, so instead of automatically taking transit, you then weigh all the other factors and I think many end up driving a lot more than they would if they had committed to the pass.

So the Pro-WFH people are concurrently Anti-Environmental Zealots.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Locke

So the Pro-WFH people are concurrently Anti-Environmental Zealots.

No, the WFH are superior in every way because they don't ever leave their caves. It's the hybrids who break it.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

No, the WFH are superior in every way because they don't ever leave their caves. It's the hybrids who break it.

But the WFH people have devastated ridership of public transit making people prefer to use their cars and so are directly responsible for the resulting pollution and Global Warming thus making them inhuman monsters who should be rounded up and taken to the Gulags where they cant do any more damage...like vote.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

The pandemic really did a number on transit. Hybrid work means monthly passes may not make sense for a lot of people, so instead of automatically taking transit, you then weigh all the other factors and I think many end up driving a lot more than they would if they had committed to the pass.

Yep. I think it also helped some people try cycling - doing it a day or two a week is a lot less daunting than trying every day or mixing up a daily routine