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

[Faust]

Letter sent to Calgary city council reminds members of repeal promise on campaign trail:

https://livewirecalgary.com/2025/12/...mise-campaign/

[Wormius]

This still seems so unnecessary. Only 458 people who spoke at the re-zoning hearing were opposed. Put it to a plebiscite then, with a clear outline of what's to gain and what's to lose by undoing this. If we're losing a load of Federal funding by going back to the original zoning, then just forget about it and move on your with life.

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by Wormius

This still seems so unnecessary. Only 458 people who spoke at the re-zoning hearing were opposed. Put it to a plebiscite then, with a clear outline of what's to gain and what's to lose by undoing this. If we're losing a load of Federal funding by going back to the original zoning, then just forget about it and move on your with life.

Rightly or wrongly, we just had an election on the topic. I doubt they will put it to a plebiscite when they already feel it is a part of their mandate.

More likely, Farkas will work with the Feds to make the money be attached to outcomes (houses built) instead of methods (blanket rezoning) and once they have agreement then they can go ahead with rolling back the blanket rezoning, which the majority of the current council said they would do.

[Fuzz]

The problem is a whole bunch of people made promises they shouldn't have made without facts, and did not present those facts to voters. So now they have to do a thing they can't really do because they had no business saying the things they did to get themselves elected. Anyone mad or frustrated at anyone here should probably go buy themselves a mirror.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

The problem is a whole bunch of people made promises they shouldn't have made without facts, and did not present those facts to voters. So now they have to do a thing they can't really do because they had no business saying the things they did to get themselves elected. Anyone mad or frustrated at anyone here should probably go buy themselves a mirror.

Just trying to make sense of what you mean here. Are you saying that people shouldn't have campaigned on getting rid of blanket-rezoning and that we can't go back to the way things were?

[Fuzz]

It seems no one who campaigned on this knew what the reality of implementing their promise was going to be. If we lose federal housing funding it could require tax increases. But no, I'm pretty sure "cutting taxes" would also have been a promise they made. And probably discussed housing affordability. Common sense, for sure. Gonna bring common sense back to city hall.

[The Fisher Account]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

It seems no one who campaigned on this knew what the reality of implementing their promise was going to be.

This municipal election in a nutshell

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

The problem is a whole bunch of people made promises they shouldn't have made without facts, and did not present those facts to voters. So now they have to do a thing they can't really do because they had no business saying the things they did to get themselves elected. Anyone mad or frustrated at anyone here should probably go buy themselves a mirror.

Absolutely. The last election should not have been a "rezoning" election. So, why was it a rezoning election?

I think that two factors were a big portion of the "why":
1) Had the last council rolled in a more gradual zoning change and worked to get more buy-in from voters then more of them would have been re-elected.
2) Perhaps more importantly, they needed to get more positive results from recent programs (like Main Streets) to demonstrate how these strategies would benefit people and build up a record of success (and trust)

Instead, main streets was a bit of a flop that failed achieve it's goals or demonstrate any value to people and the rezoning was too big of a change (with zero change management) as you could now build an 8plex in the middle of a SFH community. Home owners who had been fighting with the city over renovating their house or building a garage were now suddenly watching developers get away with whatever they want right next door.

Not only was the city not building up proof of success with their strategies but they were giving voters whiplash. If you do not have that trust that your strategies won't suck then when you implement more impactful strategies people will assume that they will only yield the worst results.

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by Wolven

Absolutely. The last election should not have been a "rezoning" election. So, why was it a rezoning election?

I think that two factors were a big portion of the "why":
1) Had the last council rolled in a more gradual zoning change and worked to get more buy-in from voters then more of them would have been re-elected.
2) Perhaps more importantly, they needed to get more positive results from recent programs (like Main Streets) to demonstrate how these strategies would benefit people and build up a record of success (and trust)

Instead, main streets was a bit of a flop that failed achieve it's goals or demonstrate any value to people and the rezoning was too big of a change (with zero change management) as you could now build an 8plex in the middle of a SFH community. Home owners who had been fighting with the city over renovating their house or building a garage were now suddenly watching developers get away with whatever they want right next door.

Not only was the city not building up proof of success with their strategies but they were giving voters whiplash. If you do not have that trust that your strategies won't suck then when you implement more impactful strategies people will assume that they will only yield the worst results.

For quite some time, you already could.
It just took 9 months to do a rezoning application that something like 97% of which were approved.

I for one applaud our councilors for having the guts to add a bunch of red tape, delays, and costs. Just like they campaigned on.

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz

For quite some time, you already could.
It just took 9 months to do a rezoning application that something like 97% of which were approved.

I for one applaud our councilors for having the guts to add a bunch of red tape, delays, and costs. Just like they campaigned on.

That percentage is misleading. No developer was ever applying to convert an RC1 bungalow into an 8 plex in the middle of an RC1 neighbourhood because they knew it would be rejected.

It is like the reverse of the Gretzky shooting saying. Developers won't get rejected on applications that they do not submit.

Also, do the rejection stats include edits and revisions? I've seen a number of DP where the developer was shooting for the moon and was going to get rejected based on zoning non-compliance and community feedback and then edited their plans until it complied with RC1. Technically their plan was approved but only after they failed to get everything they originally asked for.

Anyway, my point was simply that blanket rezoning could be great, or at least met less resistance, if they had done a better job of rolling it out (do a better job of organizational change management) or executed previous rezoning strategies better to demonstrate value and establish trust. Instead, it became the primary issue of the last election and we should count ourselves lucky that Sharp is not mayor.

[Roughneck]

Originally Posted by Wolven

That percentage is misleading. No developer was ever applying to convert an RC1 bungalow into an 8 plex in the middle of an RC1 neighbourhood because they knew it would be rejected.

Then what were they applying to convert?