Calgary's Guildebook for New Communities

[Bill Bumface]

This kills health, families and economies:

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Bill Bumface

This way of thinking is also crushing low income families. Increased commute times are disproportionately hitting the poor

And you really think in an expensive high density region, that the poor will be lucky enough to live in decent and affordable housing and still be close to their work? Hong Kong commute times would like to speak with you.

causing parents to have significantly less time to raise their kids, leading to a nice poverty cycle trap.

In much of North America, the best way to reduce commute times is to get a car (if you don't already have one). Quotes from an article on the severe decline of bus ridership in LA County.

It will also be difficult to keep current ones. Last year, UCLA researchers found that Southern California families have scrimped and saved to put even modest pay increases toward cars, aided by the rise of low- and zero-interest auto loans. From 2000 to 2015, the share of households that had no access to a car fell 30%. In immigrant households, it fell 42%.

Soon, that will include Maria Sanchez, 52, who rides the Metro Line 16 bus to reach the homes she cleans in Beverly Grove.
When her family lived in Westlake, her commute was easier. Rising rents pushed them to El Monte. Now, she spends more than three hours a day on the bus.
“Every day is long,” Sanchez said, as the bus crawled down 3rd Street in rush-hour traffic. She was recently hired to clean another home, she said, and she and her husband are saving the extra income for a car.

Erick Huerta got around L.A. for three decades on the bus and his bicycle. When he took a job at a nonprofit in South L.A. four years ago, he tried for months to find a reliable, predictable way to get from Boyle Heights without driving — but often wound up waiting for half an hour or more in the sun, or arriving at work sweaty and late.
He and his girlfriend eventually pooled their money and bought a used Saturn SUV from a friend. The purchase, he said, “has been completely worth it.”

Julia Griswold’s worst days used to start with a Metro bus that pulled away from the stop just before she arrived, or blew past without stopping. Once she boarded, sweaty and stressed, she would fret about being fired from temp jobs and think, “I don’t have money, so I don’t matter. No one cares if I get to work on time.”
Last summer, Griswold bought a used Chevy Spark for $9,000. The purchase was worth it, she said, but without a full-time job, she would not have been able to afford it.

And a major factor in this decline has been the transit agency's focus and spending on its expensive new (and failing) rail lines, while ignoring the bus. Sometimes, the poor transit user's worst enemy is the transit agency.

Over a decade, the number of hours that Metro buses spent on the street fell 10%, mostly during the Great Recession. Scheduled service hours fell from nearly 7.78 million in the 2008 fiscal year to 7 million in 2018, according to budget documents.
Rail service hours nearly doubled over the same time period, to 1.25 million hours, as new lines opened to East Los Angeles, Azusa and Santa Monica.
The new Measure M sales tax is expected to raise more than $160 million annually for transit operations. Metro should use those funds to improve frequency and lower fares, as it did during periods of high ridership in the mid-1980s, said Denny Zane, the executive director of the transit advocacy group Move L.A.
“The spending suggests the agency has been captured by the excitement over rail,” Zane said. “But we can’t lose sight of people who need transit service now. Metro can afford to do both.”

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/...627-story.html

[Bill Bumface]

Why do you think Hong Kong is an example of density done right?

Successful neighbourhoods need to be economically diverse. Warehousing the poor isn't good for anyone.

Public transit is falling apart because neighbourhoods are no longer built for it. Try designing efficient bus routes in neighbourhoods with intentionally limited outside access and circuitous and dead end roads designed solely around trying to squeeze out as much revenue per hectare as possible.

Your example of fire stations being efficient because they are near the ring road is short sighted. Induced demand will ensure those roads are one day traffic hell. Look at Atlanta, Houston, greater London etc to see the future of those design principles and what will happen to travel times.

Saying that the solution to the problems is that everyone has a car us doubling down on bad thinking. I love cars and driving, but personal vehicle ownership is incredibly space inefficient.

I do think a world of autonomous self driving cars provides an interesting wrinkle, as the ability for cars to redistribute themselves, maintain high levels of usage and to move traffic with less road space could radically change a lot of design considerations for cities however.

Increasing personal vehicle ownership and the associated city planning practices are just leading to increased commute times that are dramatically outpacing population growth.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Bill Bumface

Why do you think Hong Kong is an example of density done right?

Successful neighbourhoods need to be economically diverse. Warehousing the poor isn't good for anyone.

Public transit is falling apart because neighbourhoods are no longer built for it. Try designing efficient bus routes in neighbourhoods with intentionally limited outside access and circuitous and dead end roads designed solely around trying to squeeze out as much revenue per hectare as possible.

Your example of fire stations being efficient because they are near the ring road is short sighted. Induced demand will ensure those roads are one day traffic hell. Look at Atlanta, Houston, greater London etc to see the future of those design principles and what will happen to travel times.

Saying that the solution to the problems is that everyone has a car us doubling down on bad thinking. I love cars and driving, but personal vehicle ownership is incredibly space inefficient.

I do think a world of autonomous self driving cars provides an interesting wrinkle, as the ability for cars to redistribute themselves, maintain high levels of usage and to move traffic with less road space could radically change a lot of design considerations for cities however.

Increasing personal vehicle ownership and the associated city planning practices are just leading to increased commute times that are dramatically outpacing population growth.

To the discussion about autonomous vehicles and personal vehicle ownership though, it seems complicated. I think that projections are for a huge number of vehicles to satisfy demand in those systems and they also project an enormous amount of trips. The vehicle that is otherwise parked at my home for my use is now driving to get me, and then taking me where I need to be.

I think it’s incredibly interesting, and nothing that’s insurmountable, but it’s far from imminent. That’s before we get into the convenience aspect for people, or the safety and sensibility aspect for the system in general.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by accord1999

In much of North America, the best way to reduce commute times is to get a car (if you don't already have one). Quotes from an article on the severe decline of bus ridership in LA County.

Are you seriously using Los Angeles, a city that is the literal poster child for 1950s car-centric design and terrible public transit service, to prove your point that owning a car can get your around town faster? Really?

[Boreal]

Originally Posted by accord1999

Is there a city anywhere in Canada/US, dense or sprawling, high tax or low tax that doesn't claim to have an infrastructure deficit?

New York City is the biggest city, one of the richest, one of the most dense and it too is falling back in maintaining and replacing its infrastructure.


You know what, it would be interesting to see how a completely user pay system would work. I suspect it wouldn't look as good as density advocates think it will.

So you acknowledge the infrastructure deficit and think we should accept it and do nothing about it because every city has an infrastructure deficit? Huh?

A better answer would capital tangible asset management that uses organized and planned lifecycle costing to recover replacement costs over time instead of kicking the can down the road. Ignoring a problem doesn’t solve a problem, it only makes the problem worse with time. Australians and New Zealandera are wonderful at this concept.

This is far from a new concept and an asset management plan is increasingly becoming a requirement for grants funding large capital projects.

New York City is a nice cherry pick of density too. Why stop there? Why not Mumbai?

The challenge in city planning and operation is effectively organizing the complexity of municipal services. Without effective planning and organization density has negative consequences just like sprawl.

There are endless numbers of cities that are better examples of better built and operated density than New York City. Portland, Vancouver, Toronto, for starters in North America. Even cities this size are still challenged by the scale of organizing operations as complexity proliferates with increased population. Calgary has an opportunity to learn from their mistakes.

Another factor lost in your oversimplified “sprawl-a-palooza” is the climate in Canada. Specifically the freeze-thaw effect and how it obliterates infrastructure. Everything from roads to water-mains are impacted by this effect at rates beyond anything experienced in the south. Even rural areas in Western Canada have figured out that physics is undefeated. This is why road bans are implemented every spring to wait out the effects of freezing and thawing roads. I could go on, but I digress.

Again you employ “all or nothing”, polarized, splitting arguments about sprawl being “user pay” no one said that.

If you want sprawl, be prepared for higher taxes to maintains and replace more pipe, wire, and road because you have fewer residential users to split that cost with. This isn’t a difficult concept.

No one is advocating for density to minimize those costs either. The goal and challenge is finding a balance that designs and operates communities that meet the needs and desires of citizens without over-burdening them.

It is also important to define levels of service. Cities are usually terrible at communicating and educating the public on this topic, partially because it can be complex.

But still...

What are the desired levels of service?

This is important because like the previous Venn Diagram I posted, several priorities in a level of service are mutually exclusive.

NSFW!

https://twitter.com/user/status/904191237518893056

Say.. for example we take potable water service. Do you want your level of service to focus on costs, price/affordability, efficiently, capacity for fire suppression, responsiveness, consistently in pressure, consistency in quality, sustainability etc etc etc. you can’t have them all.

Roads are no different.

You get what you prioritize and high quality rarely comes at low prices. .

[Boreal]

Originally Posted by Bill Bumface

Why do you think Hong Kong is an example of density done right?

Successful neighbourhoods need to be economically diverse. Warehousing the poor isn't good for anyone.

Public transit is falling apart because neighbourhoods are no longer built for it. Try designing efficient bus routes in neighbourhoods with intentionally limited outside access and circuitous and dead end roads designed solely around trying to squeeze out as much revenue per hectare as possible.

Your example of fire stations being efficient because they are near the ring road is short sighted. Induced demand will ensure those roads are one day traffic hell. Look at Atlanta, Houston, greater London etc to see the future of those design principles and what will happen to travel times.

Saying that the solution to the problems is that everyone has a car us doubling down on bad thinking. I love cars and driving, but personal vehicle ownership is incredibly space inefficient.

I do think a world of autonomous self driving cars provides an interesting wrinkle, as the ability for cars to redistribute themselves, maintain high levels of usage and to move traffic with less road space could radically change a lot of design considerations for cities however.

Increasing personal vehicle ownership and the associated city planning practices are just leading to increased commute times that are dramatically outpacing population growth.

This is completely correct. Suburban neighbourhoods have been frequently been constructed the last 50 years with designs that limit both access points and redundant connections (one way in one way out). Cul-de-sacs are great for safe street play but horrible for transit. It’s an unintended consequence.

Jarrett Walker has thoroughly explored this topic.

Transit is not as simple as a typical business because it has service requirements that are beyond simply turning a profit.

Officials listen to their constituents, and sometimes decide that to some degree, low-ridership services are necessary and important. This is usually because either (a) someone feels entitled to service (“We pay taxes too!”) or (b) someone needs the service really badly (“If you cut this bus, we’ll be trapped.”). Those can both be valid government purposes, but they lead to the creation of services where ridership is not the objective. The objective, instead, is to satisfy (a) and/or (b) above.

Services whose purpose is not ridership are called coverage services – or at least I’ve been calling them that for over a decade and the term is catching on. Coverage is an apt term because the result is usually to spread out service over a vast area so that everyone gets a little bit, no matter where they live.

Spreading it out sounds great, but it also means spreading it thin. Any fixed service budget, divided over such a huge number of routes, yields low frequency, maybe a bus once an hour, and not many people find that useful for reasons we’ll explore below.

Frequency Matters

First, you really must understand transit frequency. It’s the elapsed time between consecutive buses (or trains, or ferries) on a line, which determines the maximum waiting time. People who are used to getting around by a private vehicle (car or bike) often underestimate the importance of frequency, because there isn’t an equivalent to it in their experience. A private vehicle is ready to go when you are, but transit is not going until it comes. High frequency means transit is coming soon, which means that it approximates the feeling of liberty you have with your private vehicle – that you can go anytime. Frequency is freedom!

I think you are correct. How autonomous vehicle rideshare service can meet the frequency demand will be interesting. As you mentioned, no one talks about how devastating bus equivalent standard axel loads (ESALs) are on suburban roads not constructed to meet their demands. Some cities have attempted variable tire pressure busses to reduce road damages in under constructed roads, with mixed results.

If these services can deploy autonomous vehicles that quickly adjust vehicle occupant capacity to meet ridership needs they can offset some road damages as the meet ridership needs.

I can imagine these services will also have variable pricing based on single/multi person occupancy and vehicle capability (car vs. van vs. truck etc.).

With these developments suburban ride frequency and in turn ridership could be improved drastically.

[Cappy]

Originally Posted by accord1999

And you really think in an expensive high density region, that the poor will be lucky enough to live in decent and affordable housing and still be close to their work? Hong Kong commute times would like to speak with you.

In much of North America, the best way to reduce commute times is to get a car (if you don't already have one). Quotes from an article on the severe decline of bus ridership in LA County.





And a major factor in this decline has been the transit agency's focus and spending on its expensive new (and failing) rail lines, while ignoring the bus. Sometimes, the poor transit user's worst enemy is the transit agency.




https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/...627-story.html

Ugh, LA is the absolute worst city to drive in period. That's not a great example to rely on.

EDIT:I Don't mean to pile on, as you have too many battles to fight as it is. plus i didnt see march hare's post before commenting so you can ignore

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Bill Bumface

Why do you think Hong Kong is an example of density done right?

Hong Kong is an extremely dense, compact (other than for the harbour) city with dominant transit share, excellent transit infrastructure and extremely high cost for cars. But even there commute times are long. Commute times probably have less to do with transport methods (though cars are usually the fastest) than with population and concentrated job centers.

Successful neighbourhoods need to be economically diverse. Warehousing the poor isn't good for anyone.

Sure, but warehousing the poor in less desirable areas are all too often what happens, especially if the poor's mobility is low like in the great industrial cities of the early 20th Century. It's pretty easy to see where the tenements of Manhattan were 100 years ago, when most of the recent immigrants had to live in the Lower East Side because cars were not yet available, or even transit. Working near where you live may be good if your house and job are ideal, but it ends up being a trap if you're poor.

Public transit is falling apart because neighbourhoods are no longer built for it. Try designing efficient bus routes in neighbourhoods with intentionally limited outside access and circuitous and dead end roads designed solely around trying to squeeze out as much revenue per hectare as possible.

But some of the reason that US public transit is in trouble been the decisions of the transit agencies in spending vast amounts of capital on rail that few people use, forcing them to starve the bus routes in order to pay for rail.

Your example of fire stations being efficient because they are near the ring road is short sighted. Induced demand will ensure those roads are one day traffic hell. Look at Atlanta, Houston, greater London etc to see the future of those design principles and what will happen to travel times.

Ultimately that comes from population growth. Whether you sprawl or build up, you'll need more stations if population grows. But in the built-out suburban areas of Calgary (like the Northern Hills), a typical station can still cover about 9-10 km^2. The most urbanized area of Calgary, the DT and Beltline has three fire stations (#1, #2 and #6) within a few km^2 area.

Saying that the solution to the problems is that everyone has a car us doubling down on bad thinking. I love cars and driving, but personal vehicle ownership is incredibly space inefficient.

It is space inefficient but it is time efficient and has the most range. The range allows the most options for finding jobs and housing.

Increasing personal vehicle ownership and the associated city planning practices are just leading to increased commute times that are dramatically outpacing population growth.

IMO, if commute times are to be fixed, prevent metro areas from growing beyond a certain population and decentralize employment centers.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

Are you seriously using Los Angeles, a city that is the literal poster child for 1950s car-centric design and terrible public transit service, to prove your point that owning a car can get your around town faster? Really?

And still LA County has the second highest bus ridership service in the US. The people quoted were ok with bus service until their commute times or lack of reliability increased due to:

1) Increased housing cost forcing them to move to a new area where the service isn't as good in getting them to/from their job
2) Change in job where the service isn't as good in getting them to/from their home.
3) Cuts in services forced by poor decisions made by transit

Things that are all possible in any city but made much less painful by car because its better speed and flexibility.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by accord1999

And still LA County has the second highest bus ridership service in the US. The people quoted were ok with bus service until their commute times or lack of reliability increased due to:

1) Increased housing cost forcing them to move to a new area where the service isn't as good in getting them to/from their job
2) Change in job where the service isn't as good in getting them to/from their home.
3) Cuts in services forced by poor decisions made by transit

Things that are all possible in any city but made much less painful by car because its better speed and flexibility.

Or, and hear me out on this CRAZY idea, we could design our cities with active mobility and transit orientation in mind instead of clinging to the 1950s suburban car-centric model. We spent the last 70+ years building every city in North America around the private automobile, so why is anyone surprised that this has become the preferred method of transportation for most people? People talk about a fictitious "war on cars" and "social engineering" when anyone proposes any other urban planning model where the car isn't king, but nobody ever points out that there has already been a war on pedestrians, cyclists, and transit riders and North Americans have been socially-engineered into either switching to a car-centered lifestyle or paying a huge premium in housing costs to live in a community where owning a car isn't necessary.

[Boreal]

Wow.

Hong Kong has 7.5 million people in 1.1 square kilometers on an island in the south of the Tropic of Cancer.

Just like Calgary.

Since we are pontificating on things that won’t happen.

If reducing commute times is what you’re after, treat every city bus like an ambulance.

Prioritize light changes for the bus and give them the right of way with every vehicle that isn’t an ambulance or a first responder, every time it is on the road. Ticket anyone who doesn’t get out of the way with onboard cameras. Then... as people learn to follow the rules and get on the bus to go to work....

Congestion impediments to commuting time will be reduced to waiting time at a bus stop, conflicts between buses on the road, and... the friction of distance.

This won’t happen, but it would improve commuting times.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Boreal

So you acknowledge the infrastructure deficit and think we should accept it and do nothing about it because every city has an infrastructure deficit? Huh?

I'm saying that the deficit has more to do with the cost of growth (in any form), government mismanagement (like as you say kicking the can down the road on unsexy maintenance) and poor infrastructure investments with low ROI or massive cost overruns.

New York City is a nice cherry pick of density too. Why stop there? Why not Mumbai?

I already said why, it's the biggest, densest city in the US or Canada and where sprawl is partially limited by geography.

There are endless numbers of cities that are better examples of better built and operated density than New York City. Portland, Vancouver, Toronto, for starters in North America. Even cities this size are still challenged by the scale of organizing operations as complexity proliferates with increased population. Calgary has an opportunity to learn from their mistakes.

I would say Calgary has done a better job than all three. Vancouver and Toronto have their own deficits and all of their problems are dwarfed by housing costs. Portland has tried its to curb sprawl with a growth boundary but that just has increased development somewhat outside of it. Its transit system's operating cost is 40% more expensive than Calgary's but carry only 60% of the riders. Calgary has (especially given its population) one of the better balanced transportation systems along with reasonable growth and sprawl to curb housing costs (even in the boom years).

If you want sprawl, be prepared for higher taxes to maintains and replace more pipe, wire, and road because you have fewer residential users to split that cost with. This isn’t a difficult concept.

No one is advocating for density to minimize those costs either. The goal and challenge is finding a balance that designs and operates communities that meet the needs and desires of citizens without over-burdening them.

It is also important to define levels of service. Cities are usually terrible at communicating and educating the public on this topic, partially because it can be complex.

But still...

What are the desired levels of service?

This is important because like the previous Venn Diagram I posted, several priorities in a level of service are mutually exclusive.

NSFW!

https://twitter.com/user/status/904191237518893056

Say.. for example we take potable water service. Do you want your level of service to focus on costs, price/affordability, efficiently, capacity for fire suppression, responsiveness, consistently in pressure, consistency in quality, sustainability etc etc etc. you can’t have them all.

Roads are no different.

You get what you prioritize and high quality rarely comes at low prices. .

I agree with your points here.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

Or, and hear me out on this CRAZY idea, we could design our cities with active mobility and transit orientation in mind instead of clinging to the 1950s suburban car-centric model.

That's how cities were in the 1900-1950 era, where the average person moved around 2/3 to 3/4 less than they do today and roughly 10% of travel was by bicycle.

We spent the last 70+ years building every city in North America around the private automobile, so why is anyone surprised that this has become the preferred method of transportation for most people?

Even in relatively austere post-WW2 UK, by about 1960 cars already accounted for 50% of passenger-km. We built cities for cars because they were the preferred method of transportation.

paying a huge premium in housing costs to live in a community where owning a car isn't necessary.

There's always been a cost for living near where you work. In the early 20th century, when there wasn't yet any major motorized way to move large numbers of people, that meant extremely crowded slums. With transit, the premium was with living near stations. The car's virtue was that it was faster and point-to-point, giving greater flexibility on where you lived and where you worked.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Boreal

Wow.

Hong Kong has 7.5 million people in 1.1 square kilometers on an island in the south of the Tropic of Cancer.

I used Hong Kong for a discussion of extreme commutes, which fortunately within Calgary's border is extremely rare.

If reducing commute times is what you’re after, treat every city bus like an ambulance.

I don't have problems with prioritization for key routes, some which already happens for the Centre Street N bus corridor with light synchronization, queue jumps, bus/HOV lanes.

[Cappy]

Originally Posted by accord1999

Sure, but warehousing the poor in less desirable areas are all too often what happens, especially if the poor's mobility is low like in the great industrial cities of the early 20th Century. It's pretty easy to see where the tenements of Manhattan were 100 years ago, when most of the recent immigrants had to live in the Lower East Side because cars were not yet available, or even transit. Working near where you live may be good if your house and job are ideal, but it ends up being a trap if you're poor.

I think using the US as an example isnt a great pitch. No system operates in a vaccuum. 100 years ago (even 50) the idea of mixed income developments didnt exist. We were still dealing with housing blocks that we now know result in the ghettoization of neighbourhoods.

What we see today with the opposition to the guidebook is an attempt by many to re-ghetto-ize neighborhoods, or at least attempt to limit the idea of mixed use developments. This is backward thinking and you are relying on 100 year old data to make your point

I am not going to argue that you are completely wrong. This is a murky issue. But you are certainly trying your best to prove your point so ill let you do you

[Boreal]

Originally Posted by accord1999

I'm saying that the deficit has more to do with the cost of growth (in any form), government mismanagement (like as you say kicking the can down the road on unsexy maintenance) and poor infrastructure investments with low ROI or massive cost overruns..

If the infrastructure deficit has more to do with as you state:

“the cost of growth” -> What covers the cost of growth better? Low density lazy sprawl or higher density appropriately designed complete streets / mixed use / new urbanism?

“government mismanagement”-> Was suburban sprawl and happy motoring the default strategy since WWII that enabled the infrastructure deficit?

“poor infrastructure investments with low ROI or massive cost overruns“ -> Return on investment for whom? Municipalities or developers? What kind of return? Social? Culture? Community? A Municipality isn’t a run like a business because it has way more mandates, responsibilities, and objectives than simple profit.

I already said why, it's the biggest, densest city in the US or Canada and where sprawl is partially limited by geography.

Great. You lost me. What or how does biggest, densest city in North America next to the Atlantic Ocean have anything to do with a land locked prairie city next to the Rocky Mountains in Western Canada?

I would say Calgary has done a better job than all three.

Calgary has (especially given its population) one of the better balanced transportation systems along with reasonable growth and sprawl to curb housing costs (even in the boom years).

Why?

Hmm... maybe perhaps it’s because they’ve enacted strategies to limit the exact passenger vehicle commuting you rave about.

https://www.semanticscholar.org/pape...01cc52212a7b4b

A policy goal to have transit carry 50 percent of all work trips to and from the downtown was adopted to limit the number and scale of roadways required to serve this high density area. This policy was reinforced by the downtown parking policy discussed previously. These policies have resulted in a concentrated, high density employment centre that is arguably the economic centre of Western Canada. Control and limitation of parking has lead to high parking prices that discourages auto trips and encourages transit use by downtown workers.

So the success of Calgary Transit, (which you acknowledge is doing a great job with respect to ridership) is a direct result of limiting the happy motoring you believe is the optimal solution for commuting to work.

Weird.

[Mull]

https://www.calgary.ca/pda/pd/curren...mendments.html

[kevman]

Originally Posted by Boreal

So you must be a fan of high taxation and the infrastructure deficit.

https://twitter.com/user/status/904191237518893056

I thought the centre of that Ven diagram was "cut red tape".

[Cappy]

A bit off topic, but there was some talk of LA traffic.

I subscribe to this guy's youtube channel and he had a recent video on LA traffic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbiI9ainetY

He goes through the adverse effects but what really caught my attention was when discussing the development of interstate highways in the 50s and the fact that the State and Federal governments did not need to abide by local planning or development laws when laying out their "rural" freeway designs.

I suppose this might have been a given with the demolition of poor neighborhoods in inner-cities but it's crazy to think they were given that much leeway.

Interesting graphics of how they cut off cities:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/vis...erican-cities/

I also thought it was interesting the the 1956 interstate legislation promised that for every dollar a state spent on freeways, the US government would supply NINE dollars in funding!

Could you imagine if a similar deal was made for infrastructure today?