I guess the Green Line is the "win/win" idea but would be interested in a candidate with a laundry list of ideas.
The Green Line Stage 1 costs $5B in capital spending for daily ridership of 55K-65K and will take $50+M in new operating spending to operate it and to run new feeder buses. That's roughly 1/3rd of the net operating costs of roads, which carry more than 3M passenger-trips per day, plus buses, freight and goods.
The Green Line has become more of a lose/lose as its construction costs have skyrocketed forcing it to be shortened to the point where it doesn't really achieves its original goals.
If you just simply took combined provincial and Federal excise taxes plus licenses and compared it with spending on roads, it's close to 100%.
Total revenue is about $2.46B in 2019.
Government of Alberta maintenance and capital spending on bridges and roads appears to average about $1.3B/year.
The City of Calgary's net operating budget for streets is about $140M-$150M/year.
Calgary's capital sending for streets for the next several years averages to about $175.2M/year.
If we scale Calgary's spending per capita to the rest of the province, we end up with total spending of around $2.4-2.5B.
People tend to over-estimate the costs of roads, which given how much people and goods they carry are remarkably cheap (for the taxpayer).
If you're looking for a subsidized mode of transport, then that would be transit, especially in recent years as most of North America have lost the ability to build rail affordably.
Great start, but now we add emergency services due to car accidents and the cost to health of car emissions.
Great start, but now we add emergency services due to car accidents and the cost to health of car emissions.
And the vast majority of people have decided that those costs and risks are less than the costs of using the older forms of transport, which is much slower travel, resulting in much less range of possible trips, less choice of jobs and housing.
The car dominates all over the Western World because it simply is a better form of transport for the vast majority of people.
The Following User Says Thank You to accord1999 For This Useful Post:
Are you joking? I brought the car item into this thread... and when I did I stated the following:
"Car's require a massive taxpayer subsidiary from road maintenance emergency services and pollution in our air."
Now, you may disagree these should be included, but to accuse me of moving goal posts is quite simply factually false- I was consistent from the start of what I felt should be included.
Last edited by Mull; 03-26-2021 at 04:25 PM.
The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to Mull For This Useful Post:
And the vast majority of people have decided that those costs and risks are less than the costs of using the older forms of transport, which is much slower travel, resulting in much less range of possible trips, less choice of jobs and housing.
The car dominates all over the Western World because it simply is a better form of transport for the vast majority of people.
Ok, this doesn't really answer my question though, only side steps it.
I don't disagree with everything you wrote however, and actually think part of it follows the spirit of my original comment.
The roads themselves are the cheapest part of sprawl, but that's part of the problem. It hides the associated costs. Makes every other service more expensive. Now the easy step would be to eliminate the metrics services are tied to so sprawl neighborhoods don't need to be serviced until they can properly fund themselves, but that seems unpalatable. Instead the extra buses need to be cost to maintain service on the most inefficient routes. More pipe, more asphalt, more streetlights, more drains, another school, fire department, police department, bigger fleet etc. Roads are the enabler of inefficient operations and unsustainable growth, even if they aren't the line item alone that costs money. With less road capacity that fuel tax and license money could go a lot farther: think of that snow 'removal' budget.
The traffic issue also raises its head. Mass transit it expensive, but it's also the only way to put a noticeable dent into reducing traffic. There's a reason its subsidized; it's more space efficient at moving lots of people. If you offered drivers the option of continuing to subsidize transit riders or have them all switch to driving for their commute, we'd probably quickly decide to subsidize it more after a month of traffic and increased parking costs. Yes the Green Line cost keeps rising, but the high cost is in large part because it has to go through developed areas. It can't be compared to the cost of new roads in undeveloped areas. The comparable cost of a road would be to try and build one with LRT capacity 16th Ave N through downtown and Inglewood and down to Quarry Park. There's a reason that's not on the table.
Cars are nice, but it doesn't do anybody any good with design focus that makes other options more inefficient, expensive, and therefore undesirable. Making it as easy as possible for a couple to feel they can give up that $5-10K/car/year cost by going from 2 cars to 1 would benefit everyone.
The Following User Says Thank You to Roughneck For This Useful Post:
The roads themselves are the cheapest part of sprawl, but that's part of the problem. It hides the associated costs. Makes every other service more expensive. Now the easy step would be to eliminate the metrics services are tied to so sprawl neighborhoods don't need to be serviced until they can properly fund themselves, but that seems unpalatable.
Especially when there isn't that requirement for the inner city as well. How long do you think it'll take for the East Village and its maximum 11K residents to pay back the $400M+ in taxpayer money that has already been lavished upon it. Opponents of sprawl complain about the costs of new communities at the edge but are usually silent about the cost of the new community at the core.
Quote:
Instead the extra buses need to be cost to maintain service on the most inefficient routes. More pipe, more asphalt, more streetlights, more drains, another school, fire department, police department, bigger fleet etc.
Police and fire needs also scale with population, especially given that their range is less in slower more built-up areas. Which is why there is a greater concentration nearer the core, and incidents requiring police and fire resources are also higher in the core. A new community has much fewer incidents and are almost never need (or get) new fire or police stations, they are serviced by stations in older communities.
Servicing these edge communities with transit is a cost-benefit decision made by the City and potential residents. That analysis means that many of these communities have little to no scheduled transit, and people moving to these communities have decided that they want transit less than they want a newer, cheaper house.
Quote:
The traffic issue also raises its head. Mass transit it expensive, but it's also the only way to put a noticeable dent into reducing traffic. There's a reason its subsidized; it's more space efficient at moving lots of people. If you offered drivers the option of continuing to subsidize transit riders or have them all switch to driving for their commute, we'd probably quickly decide to subsidize it more after a month of traffic and increased parking costs.
In Calgary that's the results of its economic development creating a large and high employment central business district, which lends well to a hub-and-spoke transit system, as well as decisions to try to reduce car travel into the core. But there are much larger American metros whose transit system carry far less ridership (Dallas, Houston, Phoenix) but are still able to move people around.
Quote:
Yes the Green Line cost keeps rising, but the high cost is in large part because it has to go through developed areas.
Well, that's the thing. It costs money to build new communities to house and service new residents, but it'll also cost money if those new people are to be housed and serviced in developed areas. Made even more challenging by all the unknowns, such as utilities upgrades, acquiring land, etc.
Much attention has been focused on the cost of the downtown section of the Green Line but the NC part has seen an even greater increase. Reports prior to 2015 estimated around <$500M to go from 16th Ave to Panorama Hills at grade. Now it's well over $2B. Estimate of how much it'll cost to densify and house tens of thousands of new residents will probably be inaccurate until you start digging.
Quote:
Cars are nice, but it doesn't do anybody any good with design focus that makes other options more inefficient, expensive, and therefore undesirable.
Cars are so nice that even without focus, except for extremely dense areas, that they will naturally come to dominate modal share as people get rich. Even in Europe, cars have more than 80% modal share of passenger-km, despite older cities, higher densities and much higher taxes.
Quote:
Making it as easy as possible for a couple to feel they can give up that $5-10K/car/year cost by going from 2 cars to 1 would benefit everyone.
That kind of cost for a car is for a newer higher end vehicle. If people were concerned about the cost, they could easily cut it down by 50% with an older vehicle. And perhaps it wouldn't benefit everybody if the result of only needing one car is Toronto and Vancouver housing costs.
If you just simply took combined provincial and Federal excise taxes plus licenses and compared it with spending on roads, it's close to 100%.
Total revenue is about $2.46B in 2019.
Government of Alberta maintenance and capital spending on bridges and roads appears to average about $1.3B/year.
The City of Calgary's net operating budget for streets is about $140M-$150M/year.
Calgary's capital sending for streets for the next several years averages to about $175.2M/year.
If we scale Calgary's spending per capita to the rest of the province, we end up with total spending of around $2.4-2.5B.
People tend to over-estimate the costs of roads, which given how much people and goods they carry are remarkably cheap (for the taxpayer).
If you're looking for a subsidized mode of transport, then that would be transit, especially in recent years as most of North America have lost the ability to build rail affordably.
I am a little confused, do these cost vs income from fees include the capital cost of bridges and roads, or only maintenance?
I THINK you are disregarding capital cost because of the net benefit to society statement you quoted.
If so, you are saying the pubic doesn't quite understand that road maintenance and 'small' upgrades (such as mainstreet projects) are indeed paid for by user fees on cars, but capital cost of large projects are not, but are justified for the reasons you listed.
Again, not to completely re-hash but I would argue there is more to the equation, such as emergency services and air pollution costs, but to be fair, you responded with your thoughts on that
By the way, thank you for the well-thought out responses and data, its helpful and nice to see
Police and fire needs also scale with population, especially given that their range is less in slower more built-up areas. Which is why there is a greater concentration nearer the core, and incidents requiring police and fire resources are also higher in the core. A new community has much fewer incidents and are almost never need (or get) new fire or police stations, they are serviced by stations in older communities.
This is a very odd statement to me to make in this discussion.
More population density means more services, yes, but you use it as it is a shot at the higher density core.
The general underline assumption of density is - less services per person is required, which you don't address at all?
You then posted a crime map which doesn't show anything other than more people equals more crime. The crime map is not crime per person, its total crime in an area.
Each "area" varies in density, total population and size- the crime map is NOT a useful tool in comparing sections of the city unless you normalize it by something beyond absolute totals.
Edit: and nevermind wealth inequality normalizations...
Last edited by Mull; 03-27-2021 at 12:08 PM.
The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to Mull For This Useful Post:
Cars are so nice that even without focus, except for extremely dense areas, that they will naturally come to dominate modal share as people get rich. Even in Europe, cars have more than 80% modal share of passenger-km, despite older cities, higher densities and much higher taxes.
That kind of cost for a car is for a newer higher end vehicle. If people were concerned about the cost, they could easily cut it down by 50% with an older vehicle. And perhaps it wouldn't benefit everybody if the result of only needing one car is Toronto and Vancouver housing costs.
Wow!
So how many car dealerships do you own or work for?
Hopefully you’re prepared for the next 15 years as baby boomers have their licenses taken away with age/health and transportation as a service (TAAS) comes online and knocks the teeth out of personal car ownerships.
I’m sure you don’t believe any of this will happen.
However, the questions remain.
How many people are forced to pay thousands of dollars and store a vehicle that sits unused 99% of the time simply because it is a necessity of our living arrangement?
When the option arises to pay for an on-demand cheap, safe, consistent, reliable, automated service to move people from point A to B without all the overhead people will take it and add square footage to their house by converting their garage.
Maybe a family will still purchase a personal vehicle... but they can avoid purchasing two.
Affluent baby boomers will not quietly lose their independence and they will drive the change into TAAS.
As this happens transportation networks can be optimized for improved lifecycle costs.
One 18 wheeler rolling down the Highway has the ESALs of something like 40,000 Toyota echos. Every road doesn’t need to facilitate an 18 wheeler and all multi-modal freight can make better considerations based on equivalent standard axel loads, road weight capacity, and road damage.
I basically only stated that it has peaked as transportation becomes optimized in the future..
I tend to think it will be slow as well, but baby boomers have consistently shifted markets throughout their life. Taking away their independence will infuriate them and/or scare/drive them into new forms of transportation.
The move away from personal vehicle ownership will be a disruption. The interconnection between machine learning, computational storage capacity, and battery technology will be driving the disruption.
I think sales of electric vehicles and hybrids in the next 5 years will be a great predictor.
This is anecdotal, but my uncle has worked at a car dealership for 30+ years (he's currently the finance manager). According to him, new car sales to adults in their 20s and 30s is way WAY down compared to where it was ~15 years ago. Young people simply aren't buying cars in anywhere close to the same numbers they used to. There's been a growing trend amongst millennials and Gen Z to adopt a car-free lifestyle. With COVID accelerating the move for white collar professional to work from home full-time, this trend will only increase faster. Urban planners would be wise to take the lifestyle preferences of younger generations into account and start designing communities around active transportation like walking and cycling instead of the old way where the car was assumed to be king.
I basically only stated that it has peaked as transportation becomes optimized in the future..
I tend to think it will be slow as well, but baby boomers have consistently shifted markets throughout their life. Taking away their independence will infuriate them and/or scare/drive them into new forms of transportation.
The move away from personal vehicle ownership will be a disruption. The interconnection between machine learning, computational storage capacity, and battery technology will be driving the disruption.
I think sales of electric vehicles and hybrids in the next 5 years will be a great predictor.
I would love to only own 1 car and use something like car2go for the remainder of our needs. I dont think there is any chance of that becoming pervasive without level 5 self driving. Tesla is at level 2 and has been selling full self driving packages for years. Cars without drivers is at least 20+ years away, imo. Cars are really expensive both to own and operate, so owning less of them is a big savings.
I also don't get why people think electric cars have anything to do with self driving. The software that runs a car is completely separate from what energy source propels it.
Its like saying you expect big computing advances as the power grid in Alberta switches from coal to gas - one doesn't affect the other.
Maybe because Tesla is currently a leader in both electrics and self driving?
I basically only stated that it has peaked as transportation becomes optimized in the future..
I tend to think it will be slow as well, but baby boomers have consistently shifted markets throughout their life. Taking away their independence will infuriate them and/or scare/drive them into new forms of transportation.
The move away from personal vehicle ownership will be a disruption. The interconnection between machine learning, computational storage capacity, and battery technology will be driving the disruption.
I think sales of electric vehicles and hybrids in the next 5 years will be a great predictor.
Those people aren’t carless they just aren’t car owners. In your scenario the number of kms driven actually increases because cars now have empty Kms in addition to passenger kms. And these auto driving cars already exist. They are called taxis.
Disrupting personal vehicle ownership doesn’t really change anything while demand for kms is constant.
Those people aren’t carless they just aren’t car owners. In your scenario the number of kms driven actually increases because cars now have empty Kms in addition to passenger kms. And these auto driving cars already exist. They are called taxis.
Disrupting personal vehicle ownership doesn’t really change anything while demand for kms is constant.
Did you even watch the video?
Every trip with a ride service calculates data in real time, and adjusts all factors involved as it accumulates more data to make better decisions.
This isn’t a bus route or a taxi service. Having a set amount of vehicles in a defined area at a defined time based on defined demand.
Every trip with a ride service calculates data in real time, and adjusts all factors involved as it accumulates more data to make better decisions.
This isn’t a bus route or a taxi service. Having a set amount of vehicles in a defined area at a defined time based on defined demand.
That only increases the number of kms single passenger vehicles will drive increasing overall car demand. Sure you can pack them closer together but your actually increasing road and vehicle demand by making it cheaper and better.
Maybe I am missing your thesis but demand for road space increases with these changes.
