Calgary Public Transit - Discussion

[Cuz]

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...-lrt-1.5361978

Another proposed solution is splitting the line in two and more/less skipping downtown. On one hand that's insanely stupid, but at this point I'd say screw it - forget about LRT for the south side and just make it a BRT. Could probably have it just about up and running before they get shovels in the ground for this, and it would tie into current Max Teal and Purple...and/or a bunch of other bus lines for a lot more flexibility, and immediate service to the deepest south, including hospital.

I'd also look at selling a very limited number of expensive monthly toll passes for each of the fully separated BRT's.

This project feels like it's destined for some sort of hilarious disaster (e.g. Edmonton's recent delays related to at-grade crossing signals, or whatever city it was that ordered trains incompatible with their tracks). An at grade crossing of Macleod Trail would be enough to qualify.

In it's current form, the green line does nothing to help the north-centre of the city for at least 20 years anyways. In my Sim-city I'd be thinking about a regional rail line as their hope (Downtown, maybe Deerfoot City, Airport, another stop or 2 along Stoney Trail north end before following the CPR ROW out to Cochrane and beyond) - at this point it doesn't seem like as much of a pipe dream as the north green line.

There is already a SE BRT route, the 302 that services downtown and turns around at the South Health Campus.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Cuz

There is already a SE BRT route, the 302 that services downtown and turns around at the South Health Campus.

I wonder if they have studied the costs of grade separated BRT vs trains. Because after riding max purple the other day it was just as good quality of service as the train lines.

Where does the Capex vs Opex meet on those two options. I suspect operating trains is significantly cheaper than buses but way more capital intensive.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by Cuz

There is already a SE BRT route, the 302 that services downtown and turns around at the South Health Campus.

I know - it just isn't actually 'rapid'. The green line follows this route immediately parallel for the most part. I'm suggesting instead of building 2 train tracks on their own dedicated ROW you still build a new road on that ROW.

Higher speed, no traffic, no lights, fewer stops.

The problem with the green line train is that the suburban mess of Mckenzie, Douglasdale, Seton, Cranston, etc. all still have to get to the start of the line. This is still true if/when the green line eventually gets down to them. This would eliminate the need for them to transfer at all.

For the south leg, this is preferable to a train in pretty much every single way. It can be built in stages (stage 1: arena to Ogden Rd) and be operational much sooner.


If we pull back and look at this, the bulk of the $5B is going to be used to build a route from 16 Ave N to the new arena, with no timeline on extending further north. 5 stops for people that are already pretty much within walking distance of downtown. It's kind of insane.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by GGG

Where does the Capex vs Opex meet on those two options. I suspect operating trains is significantly cheaper than buses but way more capital intensive.

I suspect that is true also, though I wonder how the prospect of AV's might change that. In the meantime, a good chunk of the OPEX is going continuously to local employees to operate + maintain the buses, instead of writing a big cheque to Bombardier.

A big downside of a train is how sunk all of the costs are - you are totally married to the route, location of stops, and type of train you have. Also, one little failure can shut down the entire system.

Dedicated BRT just gives you so much more flexibility - to open to other forms of transport (bikes, taxis, EVs, HOV, charge tolls), adjust capacities, or add spur lines.

Biggest downside of buses are lower capacity (120 for an articulated bus vs. 600 for a 3 car train) and slower ingress/egress through fewer smaller doors. The capacity difference seems pretty stark at first, but you have to ask how often the train is running anywhere near capacity, and factor how many buses are required to feed the trains.

[GGG]

The other issue I think would exist is that government grant money seems available to fund the capital portion of transit costs but not the operating portion. So a city getting 2/3rds paid for by other jurisdictions is further incentivized to go for low Opex.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by GGG

Where does the Capex vs Opex meet on those two options. I suspect operating trains is significantly cheaper than buses but way more capital intensive.

A 2015 presentation showed that trains costs $394/hour whiles buses were $110/hour, so when well utilized trains are considerably cheaper per passenger.

https://pub-calgary.escribemeetings....ocumentId=9082

But the problem is that the current Stage 1 route goes through areas that don't have much bus service now, so it will also be expensive operating wise.

To run the mammoth project, administration calculated it would take about $40 million in annual funding, which in the current budget would make up 15 per cent of Calgary Transit's operational costs.


Nenshi said the city's investing in transit service to places in Calgary that don't currently have good service, or they have no service at all, which means the city will have to come up with new cash to pad the line – especially in the southeast.

"When we built the West LRT, it actually had very little impact on our operating budget because we replaced buses that were more expensive on a per-rider basis," said Nenshi. "The BRTs, we'll be able to absorb, it's not a problem ... council is going to have to find significant money between now and 2026 to operate the Green Line."

https://web.archive.org/web/20180313...sh-nenshi.html

[Fuzz]

^


Well that's an easy one. You take it from the roads budget.


Sorry Deerfoot, no money for you.

[bizaro86]

It's almost as if going north first through the part of the city with bursting at the seems bus service would have been the right choice...

Replacing 5 packed full buses on centre street with 1 train would save opex money.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

It's almost as if going north first through the part of the city with bursting at the seems bus service would have been the right choice...

Replacing 5 packed full buses on centre street with 1 train would save opex money.

Depends on what your goal is

Increase total transit ridership
Or
Decrease Opex per rider.

In my opinion large sums of capital should be used to increase ridership rather than decrease op cost unless that op cost reduction has a good payout period.

In my opinion the goal of transit and road investment should be to increase the total carrying capacity of the system to facilitate commerce.

I don’t think their decision making is done through those parameters and I don’t know which option that type of decision making would favour.

Doing some rough math

Based on the costs posts above you save about $150 an hour on full trains vs 5 full buses to recover 1 billion in capital neglecting time value of money would need 6.6 million train hours. Or if you express it on cost per rider it would be 25 cents per trip meaning 4 billion trips are required to pay for it on an Opex basis.

I think train investment has to increase transit use or it doesn’t make sense

[timun]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

It's almost as if going north first through the part of the city with bursting at the seems bus service would have been the right choice...

Where would you put the maintenance and storage facility for the LRVs? Doing the north-central line first was never under serious consideration because the MSF was always planned to be built at Shepard.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by GGG

Depends on what your goal is

Increase total transit ridership
Or
Decrease Opex per rider.

In my opinion large sums of capital should be used to increase ridership rather than decrease op cost unless that op cost reduction has a good payout period.

In my opinion the goal of transit and road investment should be to increase the total carrying capacity of the system to facilitate commerce.

I don’t think their decision making is done through those parameters and I don’t know which option that type of decision making would favour.

Doing some rough math

Based on the costs posts above you save about $150 an hour on full trains vs 5 full buses to recover 1 billion in capital neglecting time value of money would need 6.6 million train hours. Or if you express it on cost per rider it would be 25 cents per trip meaning 4 billion trips are required to pay for it on an Opex basis.

I think train investment has to increase transit use or it doesn’t make sense

The north corridor is pretty saturated with full buses. So this either tells you that ridership demand is exactly equal with service, or service is capped by other factors and you could increase ridership by providing more service(LRT).



The goal with LRT should be to serve as many riders as possible, because that's what it is good at. Building something like the west LRT, or in this case, the south leg didn't make sense then, and it doesn't make sense now. You build where the highest total potential is. As far as I know, that's the north. This provides opex savings and increased ridership, unless it is the unlikely case that current bus service is exactly matching demand.

[GGG]

^^ I agree dollars per new rider should be the metric which ever investment that favours

[powderjunkie]

Absolute must read article, sums up my concerns perfectly.

https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/co...instead-of-lrt
Authored by Richard Parker is the former general manager of transportation and planning at the City of Calgary; Neil McKendrick and Dave Colquhoun are previous managers of transit planning at the City of Calgary.

A southeast line built only to 126th Avenue S.E. would place the line’s terminal station on the northern fringe of much of the population to be served by this line. The travel time benefit compared to existing bus services and the added inconvenience of making an additional transfer are not likely to attract sufficient new customers to justify the cost.

In the north, terminating the line at 16th Avenue N will provide very little benefit to current transit customers and will have a limited ability to attract new ridership. This first section of the line will not enable the current, popular north bus routes to be shortened or eliminated.

If a partial Green Line provides little benefit for either corridor at significant cost,($4.5 billion, with hopefully no cost overruns), the chance of attracting further investment for an extension of either line will be very difficult.

Alternative transit options
We believe that significant improvements to transit service along the entire length of the Green Line corridor could be achieved at a much lower cost and risk by constructing facilities similar to the recently opened 17th Avenue S.E. Bus Rapid Transit busway. BRT operating in dedicated busways has proven highly successful in other major cities throughout the world, including Winnipeg. Busways can be built in sections, at considerably lower cost and offer greater service flexibility than LRT. With the available funds, such a system could be constructed to enable long-term conversion to LRT in both corridors. This would enable improved transit service to be provided along the entire S.E. corridor, including the South Health Campus, within the same time frame being considered for the first phase of LRT.

The idea of BRT first, with possible future conversion to LRT makes all the sense in the world to me. With the rate of technological development, I think there is a good chance that 'trackless trains' will be a proven solution well before this escalator to nowhere is built out.

Trackless train:

Spoiler!

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/11/can-we-just-call-this-a-bus/545189/

http://theconversation.com/why-track...ht-rail-103690

https://www.fastcompany.com/1781646/...id-coming-soon

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by timun

Where would you put the maintenance and storage facility for the LRVs? Doing the north-central line first was never under serious consideration because the MSF was always planned to be built at Shepard.

It would be at Aurora Business Park by 96th Avenue.

From the May 2017 meeting, starting at 8:46:22 Fabiola Macintyre confirms to the Mayor that it could fit at Aurora. And for the follow-up question from the Mayor about looking at sites in the Keystone area, she said they didn't bother because of Aurora.

https://pub-calgary.escribemeetings....a&lang=English

It probably would have affected the desirability of Aurora as a business park, but there hasn't been much progress in many years, probably because businesses are waiting for LRT service first. And it was also planned to have a storage yard, because Shepard is incredibly far way and the dead-heading costs of running empty trains in the morning and at night would be painful.

[Joborule]

With the financial constraints that have spurred on, and the uncertainty for funding for the SE leg to Shepard now, it feels like it makes more sense to do the NC leg first now, since it'll actually get to a fair segment of riders right off the bat. The NC portion is needed more than the SE portion is.

In fact, the NC portion has been needed before the West LRT was even built. If things are going to be revalued, build from Crossroad Market, and up to Aurora for the first build. Likely would cost more than the original price tag to SE, but it makes much more sense, and has more value.

[Traditional_Ale]

My biggest beef with the Green Line is they tore down a freshly renovated Shamrock Hotel years before they had to. That place was an awesome blues bar and I really miss it.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

The goal with LRT should be to serve as many riders as possible, because that's what it is good at. Building something like the west LRT, or in this case, the south leg didn't make sense then, and it doesn't make sense now. You build where the highest total potential is. As far as I know, that's the north. This provides opex savings and increased ridership, unless it is the unlikely case that current bus service is exactly matching demand.

Going back to the December 2015 Green Line pitch to council, it was argued that they should skip BRT to go directly to LRT precisely because that Centre Street N ridership would pretty quickly exceed the capacity of BRT.





https://pub-calgary.escribemeetings....=English#38103


Reading through the material, it should have been an easy choice to go North first, when it became clear there wasn't enough money to do both directions. Yet, the fact they chose the SE first, and not even making 16th-Beddington as Stage 2 (even after 2.5 years) suggests that the City planners have little interest in the NC, unless Council forces them to.

[powderjunkie]

It's never been clear to me what the plan is for north of 16 Ave, is it at-grade down the middle of Centre St (one road lane on each side)? Past 64 Ave there is a median, but I'm always curious how the costs of disruption (both short and long term) are factored into these big projects.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by timun

Where would you put the maintenance and storage facility for the LRVs? Doing the north-central line first was never under serious consideration because the MSF was always planned to be built at Shepard.

This is circular reasoning. They put the maintenance facility in the south because politicians wanted to do the south first. There are a number of choices in the North. Aurora, somewhere in Keystone, you could even do the highland park golf course...

I don't live near either line, but the North central is saturated bus lines that can't be expanded because of road capacity. That is exactly when lrt has the best benefit.

Given budget constraints, they almost certainly should have built the north as lrt and built the south section as brt to grow ridership and then upgrade when justified/funds available.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

It's never been clear to me what the plan is for north of 16 Ave, is it at-grade down the middle of Centre St (one road lane on each side)?

Pretty much. The hope is probably that the LRT removes enough buses and cars that Centre Street N is ok with two lanes from McKnight to 16th.