I work for Mayor Nenshi, ask me anything!

[SebC]

Originally Posted by Cappy

A c-train stop at MRU would be great, but man is it out of the way. Where would the West line go before and after MRU.

Something like Downtown -> 17th Ave -> Marda Loop -> MRU -> Lakeview/North Glenmore -> Rockyview -> Chinook -> Ogden if I were SimCitying this thing.

Originally Posted by KevanGuy

I'd like know if double length busses cost more to operate than regular busses. And if they are, why are there double length busses on the roads late in the evening when there is little demand, specifically on route 3.

Probably unions.

[para transit fellow]

Originally Posted by KevanGuy

I'd like know if double length busses cost more to operate than regular busses. And if they are, why are there double length busses on the roads late in the evening when there is little demand, specifically on route 3.

From a transit planning course, I recall that you have the operating costs (fuel, repairs parking and cleaning) of two buses and the passenger capacity of two buses but you only have to pay one driver for the two buses..

As to why they are out late? That depends on scheduling i.e. when the bus started and whether drivers change mid route. Where the garage is and how far it lies off route. Sometimes it is cheaper to keep the same bus running instead of paying the deadheading required for equipment change out

over simplified example warning. Proceed at your own risk!

For example if it takes 30 minutes to take the big bus to the yard and park it and 30 minutes to start and bring the regular bus back to the route... You also need a second bus for an hour to maintain the scheduled service.Thus you consume two service hours before the more economical bus toes into service... And you may need a lot of fuel savings to recover those two service hours (avg $100-120/hr).

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by SebC

Something like Downtown -> 17th Ave -> Marda Loop -> MRU -> Lakeview/North Glenmore -> Rockyview -> Chinook -> Ogden if I were SimCitying this thing.

Probably unions.

In my opinion, long term the west line should loop around from the current end of line along the new ring road to 37th street and then run underground to MRU/Currie Barracks. From there they could take it back above ground across the reservoir to the Rocky View and to Chinook. The city should annex the land between 1a Street and Centre Street at Chinook and make that area into a big LRT hub. I would run the SE line from that Chinook hub as well and take it through Deerfoot Meadows underground, under Deerfoot and into Quarry Park and further south to the new hospital.

If I'm not mistaken, there is talk about doing a flood mitigation tunnel from the reservoir down to the Bow around Deerfoot Meadows. Maybe these two projects could be combined into one mega "big dig" project for a LRT and flood tunnel (obviously separate tunnels but running along the same route.)

In terms of LRT planning, the city really needs to start looking at looping lines in the future instead of having all sorts of individual lines running from downtown. This is especially try because we don't have a central station downtown where all the lines can terminate and can easily facilitate system transfers (ie. Grand Central Station, Otemachi in Tokyo, Les Halles in Paris, etc)

[SebC]

Originally Posted by calgarygeologist

In terms of LRT planning, the city really needs to start looking at looping lines in the future instead of having all sorts of individual lines running from downtown. This is especially try because we don't have a central station downtown where all the lines can terminate and can easily facilitate system transfers (ie. Grand Central Station, Otemachi in Tokyo, Les Halles in Paris, etc)

I wish we had planned to loop S to SE via South Health Campus and NC to NE via the airport instead of just expanding them forever. It would have created a bit of incentive to limit growth to near the loops.

2nd Street at 7th/8th Ave will be our "Grand Central" though, underground.

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by SebC

I wish we had planned to loop S to SE via South Health Campus and NC to NE via the airport instead of just expanding them forever. It would have created a bit of incentive to limit growth to near the loops.

2nd Street at 7th/8th Ave will be our "Grand Central" though, underground.

2nd Street at 7th/8th sounds good. From what I understand there is a tunnel/provision for a station under Banker's Hall already.

Our city had put too much reliance on building out the bus network and serving areas via bus and the road network instead of effectively planning a more efficient, albeit costly, LRT/Subway system.

I think an outer loop LRT needs to be planned similar to the ring road. I outer loop would tie the airport to Tuscany via Airport Trail/96 Ave and Country Hills to Stoney, run down the Ring Road from Tuscany through Winsport to MRU/Rockyview, down 14th Street to Shawnessy and the over to the SE (Seton.) The SE can be connected to the Airport going up Barlow/36th or up 52/68th.

[Fuzz]

The city doesn't have the funds to build out LRT's instead of bus routes. If they did, they would have done it. You make do with what you have.

As for your ring route suggestion, it's a nice fantasy, but the ring road itself is over 100km long(when completed). Our current total system length is 60km. How much ridership is there on an outer ring route, compared to what you get going downtown? I'd suggest not much.

There are some good suggestions for fantasy routes here.
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=218185

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

The city doesn't have the funds to build out LRT's instead of bus routes. If they did, they would have done it. You make do with what you have.

As for your ring route suggestion, it's a nice fantasy, but the ring road itself is over 100km long(when completed). Our current total system length is 60km. How much ridership is there on an outer ring route, compared to what you get going downtown? I'd suggest not much.

There are some good suggestions for fantasy routes here.
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=218185

Denver is managing to double their system from just under 50 miles to just under 100 miles. It is a pretty comparable system to Calgary. If they can do it surely we can/could have built out ours much quicker as well.

[Fuzz]

I'm not sure where Denver gets their money, but unfortunately the city has limited taxing powers. The green line will add 40km to our system, which is a huge percentage increase. Unfortunately we are forced to go cap-in-hand to the province for funding, and the PC's weren't very loose with the purse strings. The next big priority is to bury the red line through downtown. Obviously that won't be cheap either.

[Bunk]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I'm not sure where Denver gets their money, but unfortunately the city has limited taxing powers. The green line will add 40km to our system, which is a huge percentage increase. Unfortunately we are forced to go cap-in-hand to the province for funding, and the PC's weren't very loose with the purse strings. The next big priority is to bury the red line through downtown. Obviously that won't be cheap either.

Denver got most of their transit system expansion money from a small increase in their sales tax.

Here, we oddly take pride in not having a more local sales tax than GST, yet have chronic shortages in infrastructure funding sources and AD Hoc politically driven grant programs.

[Coach]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I'm not sure where Denver gets their money, but unfortunately the city has limited taxing powers. The green line will add 40km to our system, which is a huge percentage increase. Unfortunately we are forced to go cap-in-hand to the province for funding, and the PC's weren't very loose with the purse strings. The next big priority is to bury the red line through downtown. Obviously that won't be cheap either.

*spark* *bubble bubble bubble* *Wooooooop* - hold - *Wheeewwaaahhhhh*

[getbak]

Originally Posted by MattyC

*spark* *bubble bubble bubble* *Wooooooop* - hold - *Wheeewwaaahhhhh*

We should get on that. Calgary has to get the money to pay the city's share of the "Green" line somehow.

[cam_wmh]

Do provinces have the power to legislate the legalities of marijuana?

[frinkprof]

Yikes. Lots to tackle here.

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

It's so people going to Mount Royal U from the Southwest can take a bus rather than bus > train > bus. The route follows several popular sites (Heritage Park, Rockyview Hospital, MRU), connects communities with aging populations to the Rockyview, and will serve as a direct SW to NW transit corridor.

Yeah, you'd think that would be obvious. More people taking the bus to MRU and Heritage Park means fewer driving.

This route will do those things, but probably the biggest purpose it will serve is to act as a relief line for the south leg of the Red LRT line and the Route 3 Elbow Drive bus route in peak hour, peak direction. Someone mentioned this "relief" point above, but the conversation seems to have focused more on the MRU and Heritage Park talk, when really the Heritage Park trips are a very tertiary aspect to this project. The MRU thing is fairly important. Definitely will be a large secondary function to the route.

The SW communities south of Glenmore and north of Fish Creek Park, particularly west of 14th Street are currently served by the feeder buses that go to the south leg LRT stations. In the years since the line was first built, it has been extended from Anderson Station to Somerset-Bridlewood, and will see future expansion to more stations to 212th Avenue. It is the busiest line in the city, and is at capacity. In the morning rush, it is full heading north into downtown well before it gets to the stations that these communities feed into. That is, the areas south of Fish Creek, plus exurban commuters have essentially a monopoly on the train capacity.

In the last 15 years while this situation with the LRT has developed, the route 3 bus along Elbow Drive has provided some relief as a means to reach downtown. It has the highest ridership of any route that is not an LRT or BRT route. It is also reaching its limits in terms of capacity. It runs every 5 minutes at peak and the higher capacity articulated buses are used heavily on it. There is a policy to implement transit-only lanes on 4th Street in downtown and Beltline, in large part to get more capacity and reliability out of the route 3.

The SW BRT route is a big part of the next step for relieving the south LRT. Actually, the Green Line LRT route in the southeast will alleviate the south LRT leg as well.

There are a lot of central southwest commuters who have turned away from transit over the years after not being able to reliably board trains, such that there is likely a pent-up demand. Or, how it usually works in the transit world, more riders will be retained from these areas.

----------------

Scaling out to the entire city, this route is part of a greater set of BRT routes which are meant to augment or relieve the primary transit network.

Map:

Spoiler!

Of course the North Central and Southeast routes have since been developed into the Green Line proposed LRT line.

The 17th Avenue East BRT will act similarly to the SW BRT as a relief line, whereas the 16th Avenue North and the south route between Westbrook and the SE LRT line will serve more as crosstown routes, which would also alleviate downtown a bit in that some transfers would not have to occur there.

[snowshoe]

Does the city have any kind of incentives or policies for businesses that want to utilize brownfield sites?

[frinkprof]

Originally Posted by Slava

I just don't understand why the west leg of the C-train wasn't built to go to MRU to begin with. I know that ship has sailed, but that was the obvious opportunity at the time.

The route chosen for the West LRT is the best one for a few reasons:

1. Geographic and political barriers. A line to service MRU would arrive at MRU and it would then be very difficult to extend past it because of the Glenmore Reservoir and the Tsuu T'ina Reserve. A large part of LRT's success in Calgary (and many other North American cities) is it's potential to be scaled up and extended. The chosen route goes right through the heart of where the built area of the City is to expand.

2. Cost/Reserved Right of Way. The Right of Way for the eventually-built West LRT was identified and reserved west of 45th Street from the 1970s onward, whereas basically no such reserved right of way existed for any potential dedicated LRT route to serve MRU. This would mean that extensive property acquisition would have needed to be done. As it was, properties were acquired between 37th Street and 45th Street along the north side of 17th Avenue, plus there was the Ernest Manning High School land swap. A big part of Calgary's success with LRT has been facilitated by identifying routes early and planning for it by setting aside right of way.

3. Demographics. The area served by the West LRT has the highest proportion of downtown workforce. Now, it is true that a post secondary institution is also a good ridership generator, but MRU is also a much better candidate (in comparison with the West Calgary communities) to be served by crosstown routes, given that the trips going to that destination are more likely to be from elsewhere in the city than downtown.

--------------

Actually, the property acquisition aspect is why most of the crosstown routes proposed in this thread (calgarygeologist, MattyC, etc.) will never happen as LRT. For an auxiliary crosstown service, you just can't justify the cost of acquiring the properties needed for the exclusive right of way. That said, MRU and the airport are the most likely candidates to have spur lines serve them in the future. Likely the airport before MRU.

[Titan]

Originally Posted by frinkprof

...

Thanks for two good and informative posts.

On a side note, why are thanks limited? Wrong thread but a good question none the less.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by frinkprof

The SW communities south of Glenmore and north of Fish Creek Park, particularly west of 14th Street are currently served by the feeder buses that go to the south leg LRT stations. In the years since the line was first built, it has been extended from Anderson Station to Somerset-Bridlewood, and will see future expansion to more stations to 212th Avenue. It is the busiest line in the city, and is at capacity. In the morning rush, it is full heading north into downtown well before it gets to the stations that these communities feed into. That is, the areas south of Fish Creek, plus exurban commuters have essentially a monopoly on the train capacity.

Thanks. That makes a lot of sense. I used to be a rider on the South LRT line who got on at Heritage, and you're absolutely right that the riders from the south part of the leg had an effective monopoly on train space. There were many February mornings when train after train after train would pass where not a single person could squeeze on. It was an absolute ####-show.

I always wondered why such an intolerable situation was never publicized in the media. Then I thought of all my friends who work at the Sun, the Herald, and CBC and recognized that not a single one took transit to work. The horrors of the C-train commute are pretty must lost on everyone in this city who doesn't experience it first-hand.

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by frinkprof

The route chosen for the West LRT is the best one for a few reasons:

1. Geographic and political barriers. A line to service MRU would arrive at MRU and it would then be very difficult to extend past it because of the Glenmore Reservoir and the Tsuu T'ina Reserve. A large part of LRT's success in Calgary (and many other North American cities) is it's potential to be scaled up and extended. The chosen route goes right through the heart of where the built area of the City is to expand.

The SW communities south of Glenmore and north of Fish Creek Park, particularly west of 14th Street are currently served by the feeder buses that go to the south leg LRT stations. In the years since the line was first built, it has been extended from Anderson Station to Somerset-Bridlewood, and will see future expansion to more stations to 212th Avenue. It is the busiest line in the city, and is at capacity

I don't understand this with the city's LRT philosophy. We are worried about wanting to extend the line further. We are also extending an existing line that is already at capacity.

By extending these lines further, aren't we just decreasing park and ride distances for suburban and exurban commuters?

Is this not happening in areas where roads still have decent capacity? It seems creating more spurs from downtown would reduce traffic on the most congested parts of our road system, and serve the most people. Building massive parkades would be sufficient to handle people who are happy to park and ride until transit gets closer to them. Yet we extend lines that are already at capacity, to better serve who?

I know spurs out of downtown are far, far more expensive, but we've hit the point it seems like extending existing lines is just taking the path of least resistance and making our total system km stats better.

[Reneeee]

General question. Are there any rules or regulations behind public announcements for the public re new redevelopment? I'm referring to Northland Village where a plan has been mentioned and a long phases end date of 2020 without any real updates. I don't know if Deerfoot City was the same way but it just seems that as each week passes a new shop within the mall closes without so much as a peep from the development on demolition time or anything to do with the project and timeline management. Sorry for the long post

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Titan

Thanks for two good and informative posts.

On a side note, why are thanks limited? Wrong thread but a good question none the less.

If they werent it would be grossly unfair the sheer volume of them I'd collect.

Gotta keep 'em limited to help keep their value.