The S.E. gets the short end ...again

[Handsome B. Wonderful]

Originally Posted by Barnes

I am interested to know about improvements to the BRT. The route is really ridiculous at some points and it's hardly "rapid".

I would much rather the bus go straight up 52nd to 114th rather than 52nd, 130th, deerfoot, barlow, 114th.

It should go straight up 24st from DouglasGlen rather than snake it's way through Quarry Park. A stop at Quarry Park Blvd would be enough as most people who work at quarry park can walk easily from there. If you work in Quarry park, you have a parking spot or cycle from the deep se.

That makes sense, since the 302 route is supposed to approximate the future C-Train route.

[Mr_Pilot]

I'm on McKnight Train
Bottoms up
I'm on McKnight Train
Fill my cup
I'm on the McKnight Train
Ready to crash and burn
I never learn
I'm on the McKnight Train

[frinkprof]

Bump for new development.

Fund swap could boost southeast Calgary transit




By Jason Markusoff, Calgary Herald November 14, 2011


CALGARY — Some inventive arithmetic devised by transportation officials will let council plow nearly a half-billion dollars into southeast transit upgrades — something that otherwise would have to wait until mid-decade, at least.


A few hundred million dollars from the west LRT column here, a few more hundred million more from a provincial transit grant there . . . it’s even difficult for an alderman to sort out and comprehend, but if it means his district can finally take steps toward LRT, it’s all good.


Under the current funding plan, southeast Calgary would have had to wait until at least 2015 — or the next financial boom — to unlock the much-discussed Green Trip transit grant dollars, which required matching funds from city hall, which doesn’t have matching funds.


[...]


The city’s proposed money shuffle would devote a wad of Green Trip dollars to the west LRT. Then, the city would swap out west LRT funds from another provincial grant program (the Stelmach-era Municipal Sustainability Initiative) and use those to match to the transit grants the Tory government has already pledged.


The result: in the next few years, Calgary gets to devote $464 million to building up transit infrastructure on the future southeast LRT corridor and 17th Avenue S.E., and west LRT remains fully funded at the same time, without spending a single extra civic dollar.

[...]

This proposal, which council will vote on today, has the added benefit of making up the $35-million overrun that’s been confirmed on the west LRT, which will now open in March 2013 instead of December 2012.

[...]

Calgary has already committed $241 million of that total for replacement vehicles for the existing C-Train system, and a study into interim busways within the downtown-to-south-hospital route of the future southeast LRT.


Should council approve this, building those busways and securing more LRT land can happen sooner than officials much earlier than expected.


Neil McKendrick, the city’s transit planning manager, said that study will help the city determine by next summer what it can build with that $464 million in the next few years.

[...]

Rest of article here

[Slava]

It sounds good, but I have to say I get a little uneasy when money seems to appear out of thin air. Half a billion is a fair amount of money, so when that kind of money is suddenly found it just makes me wonder whats going on behind the scenes?

[Stay Golden]

Did Nenshi not say that expansion of LRT to all areas of the city that have been need of this service was going to be one of his main priority's.
Knowing full well the proposal on the table was 3B and the entire City budget is 3 Billion.

Is that not a false promise.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Stay Golden

Did Nenshi not say that expansion of LRT to all areas of the city that have been need of this service was going to be one of his main priority's.
Knowing full well the proposal on the table was 3B and the entire City budget is 3 Billion.

Is that not a false promise.

This is a pretty good start, IMO. The SE line should have been built before the west line (speaking as a NW resident who won't use either), but getting it started is progress.

I don't think he ever said it would get done in one year, or in his first term even.

[THE SCUD]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

This is a pretty good start, IMO. The SE line should have been built before the west line (speaking as a NW resident who won't use either), but getting it started is progress.

I don't think he ever said it would get done in one year, or in his first term even.

As a SW Resident I disagree. The SW line makes more sense as an insane % of the residents of broadcast hill/signal hill work downtown. The usage will be extraordinary.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by THE SCUD

As a SW Resident I disagree. The SW line makes more sense as an insane % of the residents of broadcast hill/signal hill work downtown. The usage will be extraordinary.

You think? I have relatives in Aspen, who will be easily walking distance to the train. We were discussing the traffic back up on Bow Trail due to the construction, and I asked if they would be taking the train when it started. (Both work downtown)

She looked at me with a deer in the head lights type look, and said no. It was obvious that they hadn't even considered taking the train that'll be an easy walk from their house to their jobs <2 blocks from the train.

A large percentage of residents in the west work downtown, but there are less total residents than either of the SE or north central lines, and less of the people who could use it will. (lower uptake)

I have another relative who currently takes a bus downtown from the west hill (and walks <50m on each end of the bus ride) who is planning to drive downtown after the train opens, instead of taking the bus and switching to the train.

That's anecdotal evidence, obviously, but its symptomatic of the people who live in that area and work downtown.

Edited to add: Obviously, I can't disagree with your preference for a line that benefits you personally, but as an outside observer, (who in fairness already has train service) I would have done the other lines first. Water under the bridge now.

[Barnes]

Originally Posted by THE SCUD

As a SW Resident I disagree. The SW line makes more sense as an insane % of the residents of broadcast hill/signal hill work downtown. The usage will be extraordinary.

There's almost 50,000 people living between Douglasdale and 22x along the Deerfoot corridor alone in the deep SE. Add in all of the people that live all over the city that work in and around the Ogden/Ramsey industrial area, Quarry Park, and soon Seton and the South Calgary Hospital. Access to Inglewood, East Village, Stampede and the Saddledome too.

While the West Line is needed and important for commuters, it is hardly needed more than the SELRT. It gone done first as it was low hanging fruit compared to the SELRT.

[mykalberta]

nm

[THE SCUD]

Originally Posted by Barnes

There's almost 50,000 people living between Douglasdale and 22x along the Deerfoot corridor alone in the deep SE. Add in all of the people that live all over the city that work in and around the Ogden/Ramsey industrial area, Quarry Park, and soon Seton and the South Calgary Hospital. Access to Inglewood, East Village, Stampede and the Saddledome too.

While the West Line is needed and important for commuters, it is hardly needed more than the SELRT. It gone done first as it was low hanging fruit compared to the SELRT.

Fair enough. I guess I am just biased as it is a boon to my community so I am happy to have it.

[Barnes]

Originally Posted by THE SCUD

Fair enough. I guess I am just biased as it is a boon to my community so I am happy to have it.

Word. I would be as well.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by Barnes

While the West Line is needed and important for commuters, it is hardly needed more than the SELRT. It gone done first as it was low hanging fruit compared to the SELRT.

Just eyeballing the city I personally think the N line would be more critical than the SE line (with a C St alignment), even though that makes three lines in the north and one in the south (downtown subway would solve the capacity problems). Of course, C St would also be way more expensive. What's not helping a lot of people is building at the end of lines (I'm looking at you, Martindale and Saddleridge).

[Bigtime]

I bet a north-central line would cost even more than the SELRT.

[ken0042]

I can also see the North line taking a lot more red tape. For the SE line, most of the land has already been secured. The N line would likely require buldozing of houses and businesses; similar to what the 16th ave project had to do.

The big part of this as mentioned before; one proposal was to build a lot of the bridges, tunnels, etc required to give a dedicated SE BRT route. Then when the time comes to build the LRT; it's easy to put the tracks right over the roadway the bus uses.

[frinkprof]

Originally Posted by Stay Golden

Did Nenshi not say that expansion of LRT to all areas of the city that have been need of this service was going to be one of his main priority's.
Knowing full well the proposal on the table was 3B and the entire City budget is 3 Billion.

Is that not a false promise.

Originally Posted by bizaro86

I don't think he ever said it would get done in one year, or in his first term even.

He said he would work to find funding for the project, not necessarily on any timeline, let alone building it, although I suppose the single term timeline for securing funding could be implied. 13 months of a 3 year term later, seems like there is some progress on that front.

[frinkprof]

Originally Posted by Barnes

There's almost 50,000 people living between Douglasdale and 22x along the Deerfoot corridor alone in the deep SE. Add in all of the people that live all over the city that work in and around the Ogden/Ramsey industrial area, Quarry Park, and soon Seton and the South Calgary Hospital. Access to Inglewood, East Village, Stampede and the Saddledome too.

While the West Line is needed and important for commuters, it is hardly needed more than the SELRT. It gone done first as it was low hanging fruit compared to the SELRT.

Pretty much. The WestLRT will actually be a relatively low ridership line, but a solid ridership corridor nonetheless due to, as SCUD mentions, the high concentration of downtown employees. To be fair, bizaro's argument regarding the demographics does have some merit, but it hasn't stopped the bus ridership in that area from being very strong for many years. The 101, 104 buses in particular are some of the busiest in the city, and it took the 301 BRT service only a few years to go from a starter project to extremely busy.

The southeast line will have a sizeable ridership in the short term and a very high ridership in the long term (perhaps second only the south line). A lot of employment areas will be served, but quite honestly a lot of the industrial areas will still struggle to attract riders. Serving industrial areas with any transit is a tremendous challenge in the first place. The density is low, the pedestrian realm is poor, the built-form isn't conducive (low-rise buildings in odd configurations, uneven concentrations of people) and inherently low demand (lots of need-to-drive jobs).

As far as whether the west or southeast line should have gone ahead first, there were a few differences aside from short to medium term ridership that factored in. The west line required no new downtown infrastructure (very costly for the southeast line, it remains one of the biggest challenges), no new vehicle technology, no adding of traffic to the existing system chokepoint (downtown). The cost for the complete line almost to the edge of the current built area (minus the future Aspen Woods station) was less than half of the same thing for the southeast corridor, and the City didn't, and still doesn't have the funds to pay for the southeast line. The west line was also more ready to go ahead. The general routing had been in place for decades (it is for the southeast as well, just not as long) and much of the land use studies and consultation had been done.

The north central line will be a longer term need. The area south Beddington already has decent enough transit or is proximate enough to the existing northwest and northeast lines. As intensification in this area occurs, the demand could start to outstrip the achievable capacity. The demand for the line will be driven primarily by the growth in the areas north of Beddington. There are a lot of people in that area currently, but they are also not as far away from downtown as McDouglasdaletowne. In terms of planning and preparation, this one isn't nearly at the stage that the west and southeast lines are at, but that is starting to happen.

[kermitology]

The west LRT is something that was promised to residents in west Calgary for 20 years before it started construction. The communities in that part of the city haven't seen the explosive growth of the SE, so naturally it now seems like the SE should get the LRT.

I'm personally of the opinion that the growth and infrastructure dollars going to the SE needs to stop. It's grown too much, too fast, and this is the price you pay for ultra cheap housing. Of course half the freaking city population is living in that quadrant of the city now, choking north south corridors, but can't possibly pay for their own infrastructure, ever.

City council has always approved the expansion to the deep south with the idea that the communities will become self sufficient with the expanded tax base, but the level of subsidy they've given developers has made it impossible to recover costs, and the rest of the city is going to pay for it.

A better solution would probably be to create an urban satellite somewhere around that bow bottom deerfoot split. It just goes nuts with development south and east of there.

[Bigtime]

One could argue that those "urban satellites" are already being established in the SE with places like Quarry Park and the upcoming Seton developments around the new hospital.

[THE SCUD]

Originally Posted by kermitology

The west LRT is something that was promised to residents in west Calgary for 20 years before it started construction. The communities in that part of the city haven't seen the explosive growth of the SE, so naturally it now seems like the SE should get the LRT.

I'm personally of the opinion that the growth and infrastructure dollars going to the SE needs to stop. It's grown too much, too fast, and this is the price you pay for ultra cheap housing. Of course half the freaking city population is living in that quadrant of the city now, choking north south corridors, but can't possibly pay for their own infrastructure, ever.

City council has always approved the expansion to the deep south with the idea that the communities will become self sufficient with the expanded tax base, but the level of subsidy they've given developers has made it impossible to recover costs, and the rest of the city is going to pay for it.

A better solution would probably be to create an urban satellite somewhere around that bow bottom deerfoot split. It just goes nuts with development south and east of there.

Agreed . You wanted you $2.99 Big Mac special of a house in the deep SE? Pay for the services.