Renewed passenger rail service between Banff and Calgary?

[Weitz]

I suspect this idea won’t pay for itself and will be shuttered within 10 years.

[Manhattanboy]

Lessee of the Banff Station who owns Mount Norquay had great plans to build a gondola up from the station to the Norquay parking lot. Would effectively stop cars from going up the mountain.

Imagine taking your skis and Starbucks coffee, grabbing a train at Palliser square to Banff and riding the gondola up to Norquay.

Of course, surprise surprise, Parks Canada said nope.

Sigh.

[browna]

Probably covered this, but why a train to get to Banff?
Greyhound used to cost $12 to go out there or $20 round trip.

Ok sure you had to get to the bus station, but now they can run a bus garage somewhere in the NE near the airport and have it pickup at the airport. If it's economically viable to pay back $600M for track, surely some form of Prevost bus fleet and organized service could provide the same experience at a fraction of the cost and no "red tape until 2035 (especially on Indigenous land)" track infrastructure.

You can't tell me that you couldn't get hourly full size bus service at a fraction of the cost direct from YYC. And, have flexible schedules. Not every bus has to stop at the 6 proposed train spots, some can be direct. Conventions could have the same company custom charter busses from Stampede Park or wherever and drop them back at YYC.

No way that set up would come close to a $600M outlay, nor take a decade to get going, and would be much more flexible, nor would it be a white elephant in 2050 when self driving electric shuttles replace that type of transport.

[GGG]

They used green trip funding to set up exactly the above service and it wasn’t used to capacity and it was only $10 each way. Now Banff transit was terrible at that point in time as opposed to sort of useable now

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Manhattanboy

Lessee of the Banff Station who owns Mount Norquay had great plans to build a gondola up from the station to the Norquay parking lot. Would effectively stop cars from going up the mountain.

Imagine taking your skis and Starbucks coffee, grabbing a train at Palliser square to Banff and riding the gondola up to Norquay.

Of course, surprise surprise, Parks Canada said nope.

Sigh.

Don’t you mean great news they didn’t install an eyesore of a Gondala and decrease public access to add private access?

[Flames0910]

Getting a stopover in downtown Calgary would be amazing. First for the tourist dollars it brings from the airport > downtown while enroute to Banff, but also for business travellers. I spent a lot of time in Denver last year and being able to hop on a train from airport > downtown and vice versa was great bc you could skip the airport car rental and never had to worry about traffic.

I can only imagine that a train service to Banff would be popular with tourists, and that would drive additional transit improvements and services in the park. The Morley stop is interesting too. Incredible to think they are talking about doing this within five years!

[Boreal]

Wow. This is a game changer for all the communities involved. Personal rail transport in Canada is a cruel joke.

Hotels at any one of the stops will see a boom based on this. Connections through Calgary will be desired with a day layover. Stay for a night, catch a train to the mountains then be back to catch your connection.

Not to mention downtown. This will make it an exponentially more liveable. Throw your gear on the train and hit the mountains for the day. Have a nap on the way there or the way back.

I was hoping this project would be part of the Olympic bid, but… this might be better because it won’t be rushed.

It would be interesting to know what state of repair the existing track is at, and if a redundant section could be built to assist with repair and maintenance.

[Lubicon]

Originally Posted by browna

Probably covered this, but why a train to get to Banff?
Greyhound used to cost $12 to go out there or $20 round trip.

Ok sure you had to get to the bus station, but now they can run a bus garage somewhere in the NE near the airport and have it pickup at the airport. If it's economically viable to pay back $600M for track, surely some form of Prevost bus fleet and organized service could provide the same experience at a fraction of the cost and no "red tape until 2035 (especially on Indigenous land)" track infrastructure.

You can't tell me that you couldn't get hourly full size bus service at a fraction of the cost direct from YYC. And, have flexible schedules. Not every bus has to stop at the 6 proposed train spots, some can be direct. Conventions could have the same company custom charter busses from Stampede Park or wherever and drop them back at YYC.

No way that set up would come close to a $600M outlay, nor take a decade to get going, and would be much more flexible, nor would it be a white elephant in 2050 when self driving electric shuttles replace that type of transport.

Onit (brand name) which is a division of Southland has been doing this for several years now. It’s been scaled back due to Covid but recently restarted with a reduced schedule. Used to be daily service IIRC in the summer, now it’s weekends. I don’t recall if they ran in winter too. Three calgary stops, Canmore, and Banff.

Can’t link from my iPad but onitregionaltransit.ca.

[Flames0910]

Originally Posted by Boreal

It would be interesting to know what state of repair the existing track is at, and if a redundant section could be built to assist with repair and maintenance.

On CBC Eyeopener the advocate for this project said that they would be building new, dedicated track so they could guarantee the trains run on time. They have an MOU signed with the existing rail like to use their right of way for an additional track. So the big cost savings here isn’t because the track has already been laid out, but because they don’t have to purchase land, demolish buildings, etc.

[timun]

Originally Posted by Weitz

I suspect this idea won’t pay for itself and will be shuttered within 10 years.

Frankly I think that's generous. I suspect it'll never actually happen at all.

[Derek Sutton]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

Not on your life, my Hindu friend!

And what about us drunken slobs?

[Wormius]

I would use it if reasonably priced. Rail isn’t going to be perfect for everybody’s situation, but Banff / Canmore are busy all seasons with tourists, so I am sure it would see decent use.

Maybe somebody expecting to go directly from YYC to a ski slope won’t be happy, but what tourists are going to do that before even checking into their hotels or whatever, and those hotels could do their own shuttle service to the hills, if they don’t already.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Boreal

Wow. This is a game changer for all the communities involved. Personal rail transport in Canada is a cruel joke.

Hotels at any one of the stops will see a boom based on this. Connections through Calgary will be desired with a day layover. Stay for a night, catch a train to the mountains then be back to catch your connection.

Not to mention downtown. This will make it an exponentially more liveable. Throw your gear on the train and hit the mountains for the day. Have a nap on the way there or the way back.

I was hoping this project would be part of the Olympic bid, but… this might be better because it won’t be rushed.

It would be interesting to know what state of repair the existing track is at, and if a redundant section could be built to assist with repair and maintenance.

How often did you use the bus to Banff pre-covid? For the cost of this investing in transit in Calgary would be much better spent.

[Flames0910]

Originally Posted by GGG

How often did you use the bus to Banff pre-covid?

Pretty big difference between a niche regional bus service and a dedicated rail line that travels from an international airport to one of the most sought after UNESCO world heritage sites in the world ten times per day... but I'm sure the folks who got paid to do this feasibility study as well as the numerous economists, investment bankers, politicians and experts who reviewed the application and said that the financial model was sound don't know what they're talking about (well, maybe the politicians ).

Right now people get off the plane, rent a car, and drive directly to Banff via Stoney Trail. The economic activity of travellers skips the city altogether because other than Stampede the draws are not substantial enough, and staying an extra night in Calgary is inconvenient when your goal is to see Banff. The study mentioned in CBC's article here showed that Calgary alone would capture $1B per year in economic activity simply by having this train stop downtown.

The line "you can't justify a bridge by the number of people swimming across the river" comes to mind.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1107684512492912642

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Flames0910

Pretty big difference between a niche regional bus service and a dedicated rail line that travels from an international airport to one of the most sought after UNESCO world heritage sites in the world...

The line "you can't justify a bridge by the number of people swimming across the river" comes to mind.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1107684512492912642

You will have to explain to me how a train and a bus are different.

Currently you have brewsters doing airport bus service to Banff. This high speed rail with multiple stops seems less convenient. It is expensive but I’m not sure Rail would be any different

And then for residents you have the only region bus service with multiple scheduled departures from downtown and crowfoot
https://www.onitregionaltransit.ca/b...SAIEgIZjPD_BwE

How is a dedicated bus service from the airport to a UNESCO world heritage site and a dedicated bus service from downtown Calgary to a UNESCO world heritage site is different from a train.

[Flames0910]

Why do people prefer rail over bus? That's a pretty tricky question to untangle. It's largely emotional because consumer preference is not entirely rational, but it's also a question of investment -- many bus systems are poorly funded and so people's perceptions of buses suffers in comparison.

Could you build a high quality bus system that would move the needle in a similar way to a rail investment? Sure.
Could you do it cheaper than rail? Maybe.
But, would politicians be tempted to cheap out, cut lines, driver schedules, etc to save a buck? Absolutely.
And, would travellers view it in the same way they would view rail? No.

You'd be swimming upstream against consumer / traveller preferences which is almost always difficult. And regardless, I don't see any P3's stepping up with plans, feasibility studies, MOUs, and investment dollars to make a multi-billion dollar investment in a bus transit system.

Two seconds of googling here, but I found a study from a pair of researchers who looked into the question - Bus or Rail: An Approach to Explain the Psychological Rail Factor (2012). Here's the abstract.

Many public transport studies have found that potential passengers consider railbased public transport to be superior to bus systems. Why is this? Two studies have been completed in Germany* and Switzerland in search of explanations for this socalled psychological rail factor. In this article, these two studies are presented and discussed to introduce the schemata approach and to help identify differences of attributions towards rail- and bus-based public transport.

The research found a psychological rail factor (i.e., a preference for using rail assuming equal service conditions) of 63 percent for regional train and 75 percent for trams compared to bus services. The rail factor is highly loaded with emotional and social attributions. They account for 20–50 percent of the share in the different schemata for bus, rail, and tram.

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdo...=rep1&type=pdf

* worth pointing out Germany has traditionally been a preferred market for Alberta's tourism agencies to attract international travellers so the German mindset shown in this dataset is particularly useful to understand.

[Wormius]

Reliability would be one thing. Setting a good first impression to visitor to the city would be another.

[sleepingmoose]

It might also be a better comparison if it was a bus on a dedicated right-of-way vs. The train.

Would I take a train on its own track and five stops over a bus running through the City and then along the TransCanada highway with construction in summer? 100%. I’d take the train every time.

[DownInFlames]

Originally Posted by GGG

You will have to explain to me how a train and a bus are different.

A train goes, "Choo Choo!" A bus goes, "Beep Beep!"

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Wouldn't a train system have issues due to weather? That's a long track through an area prone to extreme conditions for most of the year, whether it's snow, wind or hailstorms. I imagine it would need to be sheltered somehow, which means you're not getting much of a view on the way.