Calgary Public Transit - Discussion

[puckedoff]

No one takes the train anymore, its too crowded.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by puckedoff

No one takes the train anymore, its too crowded.

Not true at all. I took the train (albeit for the first time in a long while) on Monday to Studio Bell because it was my mom's birthday and she wanted to go.

We had a very interesting conversation with a fine gentleman who got on the train after us...sure, he was casually puffing away at his crack pipe, but sometimes that just cant be helped.

He assisted us in dodging the dude passed out at the station with a needle in his arm though, I thought that was rather thoughtful of him.

[Looch City]

Abolish transit entirely. It's for communists anyway.

What are we, a commie sanctuary city??

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Looch City

Abolish transit entirely. It's for communists anyway.

What are we, a commie sanctuary city??

Silence you! We need the plebs to get to work and slurp their gruel so that the rest of us may benefit from the proceeds of their underpaid labour!

Besides...it keeps them off the roads.

[getbak]

Originally Posted by GGG

None of those things are related.

They are related in the fact that all three (getting rid of the free fare zone, adding gates at the stations, adding fare zones) are really bad ideas for the CTrain system.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by getbak

They are related in the fact that all three (getting rid of the free fare zone, adding gates at the stations, adding fare zones) are really bad ideas for the CTrain system.

I think adding a short-trip fare would be a potentially good idea. You'd need tap on/tap off capability, that's probably worth getting anyway.

I think it would incentivize transit use for short trips, many of which would replace private vehicle trips. It would also be almost entirely new revenue as I think a large portion of the people taking short C-Train only trips don't pay under the current system as the risk of getting a ticket on a 1 or 2 stop trip is very low.

[getbak]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

I think adding a short-trip fare would be a potentially good idea. You'd need tap on/tap off capability, that's probably worth getting anyway.

I think it would incentivize transit use for short trips, many of which would replace private vehicle trips. It would also be almost entirely new revenue as I think a large portion of the people taking short C-Train only trips don't pay under the current system as the risk of getting a ticket on a 1 or 2 stop trip is very low.

That's the thing, they wouldn't bring in a zone-based fare system to make shorter trips cheaper. They would do it to make longer trips cost more.

[para transit fellow]

So will the expense to implement and operate the tap on tap off system be covered by the ultra low short ride fare?

All these tap on tap off systems have processing costs (per tramsaction)

[Wormius]

I don’t feel like there is any trip long enough in Calgary to justify the $4 fare to begin with. I would be amenable to increasing the duration from 90 minutes to maybe a half-day type thing. Or maybe having an in-motion based fare, which is probably a lot like tap-on/off, but not if you happened to get on the bus just when the driver starts a break.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by para transit fellow

So will the expense to implement and operate the tap on tap off system be covered by the ultra low short ride fare?

All these tap on tap off systems have processing costs (per tramsaction)

You wouldn’t use a credit card for that would you? Or do the non-credit card ones have that too?

[para transit fellow]

Originally Posted by Wormius

You wouldn’t use a credit card for that would you? Or do the non-credit card ones have that too?

If you make a $1 fare category, you probably have to make it work for everyone, even the folks who have no credit cards/ debit cards.

An easier solution to make transit more approachable is a fare cap system. if someone consistently uses the same digital payment card, the trips are counted and once number of trips reaches the equivalent of a monthly pass activity, no further fares are charged but the card's digital reference number is taken as proof of payment. (caveat: fare capping does not work well for anything other than a standard adult fare as it has no way of knowing who the card holder is).

if $4 is too much for transit, a $1 fare zone will still never get you out of your car on any frequent basis. Tech infrastructure working City-wide in near- realtime will cost $$. if you want a $1 zone, someone is going to have decide to where to charge higher fares to balance (oddly enough, this is one of the arguments against a free-fare zone)

2024 trivia
Calgary has several fare categories: Low Income, U-pass, Blind/CNIB, Day Pass, Weekend Pass, Seniors Annual Pass, Free-fare zone seniors monthly pass, Etc - Average fare from all categories was about $1.36 /linked trip

Total Direct Operating Cost Per linked trip: $5.21
(A single linked trip includes whatever transfers required)

Total regular service linked trips 101,149,900
Average length of a linked trip: 13.95 km