Calgary transhit

[frinkprof]

Originally posted by D911


Problem with this is for most people you have to take 2 or 3 buses before even making it to the train station

This is incorrect. All buses terminate at one of three places: a train station, downtown, or a BRT route. All but the very newest, furthest out, and sparsely populated communities have a "feeder" route that ends at a train station or at a BRT stop. Once those communities are built out, they will be served with such a route as well. So no, most people, and actually virtually no one has to "take 2 or 3 buses to make it to the train station."

Originally posted by D911
They love to show up at retardedly off times like 8:12 and the next one being 8:49 .

A bus route can not be designed to stop at each of dozens of stops at even times like 8:10 and 8:50. Stops are not 5 minutes apart, but times like 33 seconds or 62 seconds away from each other. In order to have reasonably spaced stops on a 30-minute loop route, it is necessary to have it stop at times that might seem odd if you are only looking at an individual stop. I'm not sure if this is what you're getting at, so if not, I didn't mean to misinterpret you.

[kaput]

.

[frinkprof]

Originally posted by 85FltWd
I used to live in Nepean, which is now part of Ottawa. I worked in Kanata. I live near McKnight & 4th Street NW. My first job was in Airdrie, about the same distance away as my old Nepean-Kanata commute. No transit service. So I drove my car every day.

Nepean, even when it was its own municipality, exists in a continuous built area that is the Ottawa region. Between Calgary and Airdrie, there is a sizeable gap in built area, which makes transit service difficult to provide. Since Airdrie is partially a bedroom community of Calgary, there are private coach lines which travel from Airdrie to Calgary in the morning, and the reverse in the evening. The exact opposite relationship exists between Nepean and Ottawa, so the natural and most frequent commuting pattern is reversed between your two scenarios. That is why you had no choice but to drive to your job in Airdrie.

I can somewhat agree with your point on better east-west transit connections on roads like McKnight Blvd. though.

[frinkprof]

Originally posted by kaput
frink, I'm curious to know what you are studying in university and what motivated you to learn so much about mass transit planning? Its certainly an odd thing to know so much about especially if you aren't a professional in that area.

Engineering (not Civil or any transportation concentration). It is one of my interests. It partly stems from when I did a report on improving transit systems as part of a communications course a few years ago, and I've continued research in my own time since. I don't think it's any more odd than people knowing a lot about cars around here, even though many haven't formally studied them or work in the industry (not to insult the interest these people have of course).

[D911]

Originally posted by frinkprof

This is incorrect. All buses terminate at one of three places: a train station, downtown, or a BRT route. All but the very newest, furthest out, and sparsely populated communities have a "feeder" route that ends at a train station or at a BRT stop. Once those communities are built out, they will be served with such a route as well. So no, most people, and actually virtually no one has to "take 2 or 3 buses to make it to the train station."

Well for example for myself, I need to take the bus route to a bus terminal(it loops between the terminal and the community), and take an additional bus that gets me from the terminal to the train, and then i take the train to my school.

so if i wanted to get from my house to SAIT at a normal class time, according to the trip planner on the CT website I'll be taking 2 buses and a train, or 3 buses, and ~1hr of travel time, thats assuming they all come on time, and none leave early, which i've had happen many times, one bus comes late, which inadvertantly makes me miss the bus i need to take after it.

Any of the communities in and around me, will have a similar fate, From panorama hills, harvest hills, country hills and coventry hills, you'll be take 2 buses minimum to get to the train station.

A bus route can not be designed to stop at each of dozens of stops at even times like 8:10 and 8:50. Stops are not 5 minutes apart, but times like 33 seconds or 62 seconds away from each other. In order to have reasonably spaced stops on a 30-minute loop route, it is necessary to have it stop at times that might seem odd if you are only looking at an individual stop. I'm not sure if this is what you're getting at, so if not, I didn't mean to misinterpret you.

No, i wasnt saying that the times are inappropriate, i do realize that with the bus routes its impossible to make a bus stop at a convinient time for everyone, but im just saying for a person who wants to take transit everywhere they go, that they need to also factor in the odd timing of the buses that will always happen no matter where you're going to and from.

Often times you'll end up at your destination 30-40minutes earlier or later than anticipated...but thats from my experience with the buses at least.

[frinkprof]

Originally posted by D911


Well for example for myself, I need to take the bus route to a bus terminal(it loops between the terminal and the community), and take an additional bus that gets me from the terminal to the train, and then i take the train to my school.

so if i wanted to get from my house to SAIT at a normal class time, according to the trip planner on the CT website I'll be taking 2 buses and a train, or 3 buses, and ~1hr of travel time, thats assuming they all come on time, and none leave early, which i've had happen many times, one bus comes late, which inadvertantly makes me miss the bus i need to take after it.

Any of the communities in and around me, will have a similar fate, From panorama hills, harvest hills, country hills and coventry hills, you'll be take 2 buses minimum to get to the train station.

Yeah I figured you might live in either the far north or the far west, i.e. either end of the 301 BRT route. I presume you must take either the route 8 (which is relatively new) or the 301 then. This is cross-town commuting and I agree it does make things more difficult since the weakness is in the transferring. I used to do it too, except from the SE to the NE, so it involved 2 buses and 2 trains.

I agree that cross-town connections (such as the McKnight Blvd. situation discussed above) should be improved. Thing is that transit is best serving nodes, which is usually where crosstown commuters transfer, like yourself at Northpointe. Many people going to SAIT either live on campus, or very close to campus. The rest trickle in in small numbers from the dozens of communities just like yours.

In order to have a one-seat trip from your suburban community to SAIT, there would have to be a bus, carrying the handful of people that go to SAIT from your community, going directly from your community to SAIT, which means dozens of buses from all the other communities would be converging on SAIT every morning, in addition to the LRT, each carrying a handful of people, which is unrealistic. Ditto Mount Royal College, ditto the University. The reason it works for downtown is the critical mass of people going there, and it is a natural central transfer point.

On a grander scale, it is somewhat like a road hierarchy. Motorists coming from residential streets converge on collector streets, which converge on arterials, which converge on expressways. Each person can't have a single road going directly from your house to their workplace.

Now, I'm not saying you don't have reason to gripe, and I'm not saying you're asking for the unreasonable extremes like a one-seat trip or a single road. I'm just trying to provide some reason.

Originally posted by D911
No, i wasnt saying that the times are inappropriate, i do realize that with the bus routes its impossible to make a bus stop at a convinient time for everyone, but im just saying for a person who wants to take transit everywhere they go, that they need to also factor in the odd timing of the buses that will always happen no matter where you're going to and from.

Often times you'll end up at your destination 30-40minutes earlier or later than anticipated...but thats from my experience with the buses at least.

Alright sorry for misinterpreting you then. Again, the weakness is in transferring and any one route can't be wholly compatable with potentially several others where people might be transferring from. The simplest solution is to increase frequency across the board which both increases usability, convenience, and reduces waiting time for transfers. However, it also increases costs which is always the limiting factor.

You may be interested to know that LRT service will eventually reach Northpointe via a north-central route. However, I assume you'll be long since done at SAIT by then.

[85FltWd]

It looks like everything is focused on getting into, or out of, the downtown area.

I think if a route was set up to run the length of John Laurie and Mcknight, with buses at any given stop in 15 minute intervals during peak hours, that would render a lot of private vehicles unecessary.

If such a route had busses every half hour for the rest of the day/night, I wouldn't need my car for the evening shift either.

With all the business parks, there must be other transportation corridors that would be similarly suited to having dedicated bus routes, that intersect the LRT lines. Which points up the lack of planning. The NE LRT station should have been combined with the 36th Street/Metis Trail/ McKnight interchange, instead of being over at the Westwinds location.

'Planning' seems to be a lost art in this town.

[85FltWd]

Originally posted by frinkprof
Nepean, even when it was its own municipality, exists in a continuous built area that is the Ottawa region. Between Calgary and Airdrie, there is a sizeable gap in built area, which makes transit service difficult to provide. Since Airdrie is partially a bedroom community of Calgary, there are private coach lines which travel from Airdrie to Calgary in the morning, and the reverse in the evening. The exact opposite relationship exists between Nepean and Ottawa, so the natural and most frequent commuting pattern is reversed between your two scenarios. That is why you had no choice but to drive to your job in Airdrie.

I can somewhat agree with your point on better east-west transit connections on roads like McKnight Blvd. though.

Actually, most Nepean commuters were headed into Ottawa in the morning, as were most Kanata workers. I was travelling 'against the flow' both ways. But it still worked well. I caught a northbound express bus on Woodroffe through Baseline Station. Baseline Station was where a decicated bus-only road started, running north through a greenspace parallel to Woodroffe. I caught a feeder route from Lincoln Fields Station on Carling Avenue to the Kanata industrial area. The express buses continued north, to the east-west Transitway, another dedicated bus-only road that runs parallel to the River Parkway. Lots of buses on Woodroffe at peak times - like every 5 minutes. Baseline Station was a place to transfer to east-west feeder routes, or continue on to the Transitway. The Transitway went from Lincoln Fields directly downtown, with stops along the way to make connections to local feeder routes.

This was made possible by the fact that the right-of-way set aside for the Parkways were made big enough to accomodate either a bus route or Light Rail Transit. Calgary doesn't do that kind of planning. Any extension of the LRT is going to involve carving a path through established neighborhoods, and in some cases running the tracks where people don't much want to go. Mount Royal College is one place that won't get any benefit from the western LRT extension, yet there will be an LRT line run into neighborhoods that were strongly opposed to hosting them.

[frinkprof]

I'll try to address your 2 posts with one. I apologize in advance for the length.

Originally posted by 85FltWd
It looks like everything is focused on getting into, or out of, the downtown area.

I think if a route was set up to run the length of John Laurie and Mcknight, with buses at any given stop in 15 minute intervals during peak hours, that would render a lot of private vehicles unecessary.

If such a route had busses every half hour for the rest of the day/night, I wouldn't need my car for the evening shift either.

With all the business parks, there must be other transportation corridors that would be similarly suited to having dedicated bus routes, that intersect the LRT lines. Which points up the lack of planning.

Yes crosstown service should be improved. And Calgary has started to do that over the past couple of years. For instance, the route 8 and 430 (North Crosstown) have been created. However, unfortunately McKnight/John Laurie is one of the routes that has been left out so far, so you kind of live in a black hole of service. North Central Calgary is in one of the best north/south service corridors in the city though (of areas not served by LRT that is).

That highlights something though. Calgary has a highly centralized downtown workforce. Business parks and light industrial such as those in the NE and SE are difficult to efficiently serve with transit due to low density and lack of pedestrian and transit orientation.

At any rate, I would write your alderman about bus service along McKnight.

Originally posted by 85FltWd
The NE LRT station should have been combined with the 36th Street/Metis Trail/ McKnight interchange, instead of being over at the Westwinds location.

I'm not sure of your reasoning here, although your scenario may have indeed worked. I believe it is located where it is to better serve both the Castleridge community, in addition to be business park. Also, I believe it better integrated the station site with the new Oliver Bowen Maintenance Facility that is finishing up construction. The City owned the land on which the station sits too. The site choice also allowed for a large Park N' Ride facility.

I'm not entirely impressed with some of the planning of sites around the station though. For instance, the new Superstore completely turns its back on the station, discouraging people to shop before or after using the station. The site choice also allowed for a large Park N' Ride facility.

This station will no longer be the terminus in a couple years, since the second phase of the NE extension will take this line up to Saddleridge.

Originally posted by 85FltWd
Ottawa talk

I don't have a working knowledge of specific Ottawa communities and roads so for me to comment on that would be a disservice. I do know that Ottawa does indeed have a respectable overall transit system despite not having any sizeable rail transit (aside from the pilot project O-Train), and yes this is due to one of the best bus transitway networks in North America. An LRT system in Ottawa has been in the works for quite some time but has been mired in some political difficulty involving the City being sued after some contracts were cancelled. Anyway, it will be built eventually.

I did get the gist that you were reverse commuting to Kanata in the mornings though. So I'll address the comparison between Ottawa and Kanata (or Nepean), vs. Calgary and Airdrie. As I gather, the built area of Kanata is closer to the built area of Ottawa (about half the distance) compared to Airdrie (about 10 km separation between built Calgary and built Airdrie). This is closing fast however, and as such the Calgary Regional Partnership has been having serious discussions over the past couple years of public transit (as opposed to private coaches) between Calgary and its surrounding communities, followed later by commuter rail such as GO in the GTA, West Coast Express in the GVRD, and commuter rail in the Montreal region. This has been set back a bit by cuts to promised Green TRIP funding from the province this year though.

Originally posted by 85FltWd
This was made possible by the fact that the right-of-way set aside for the Parkways were made big enough to accomodate either a bus route or Light Rail Transit. Calgary doesn't do that kind of planning.

Actually Calgary does do this planning. In fact, if there's only one thing Calgary does best in rapid transit planning, it may be this. The following corridors have reserved right-of-way for future LRT:

-The part of the WestLRT route west of 42nd Street, minus a few houses near 47th Street. Reserved from 1983 onward when the WestLRT functional study was done.

-The part of the North Central LRT route north and west of Beddington/Deerfoot.

-All future NELRT expansion north of Whitehorn Station. I know that at least the Martindale/Saddleridge part was reserved as far back as a 1984 Area Structure Plan.

-All future NWLRT expansion (which will be largely completed with Rocky Ridge/Tuscany Station in a couple of years).

-All future SouthLRT expansion. Basically everything south of Fish Creek Park has had station sites reserved and continues to piggyback on the CP ROW.

-The SELRT route south of 114th Avenue along 52nd Street and south of 22X in the vicinity of the new SE hospital. Actually if you go along 52nd Street in this area, you will see signs that say "Future LRT Station," "Future LRT corridor," etc.

Any other existing communities affected by planned LRT were built before LRT planning began in the 70s, or even before Calgary phased out streetcars in 1950.

Originally posted by 85FltWd
Any extension of the LRT is going to involve carving a path through established neighborhoods, and in some cases running the tracks where people don't much want to go. Mount Royal College is one place that won't get any benefit from the western LRT extension, yet there will be an LRT line run into neighborhoods that were strongly opposed to hosting them.

There was a study conducted to examine other routings of WestLRT, including ones to Mount Royal College, and the chosen one was found to be the best. I used to attend MRC, so I am a proponent of rapid transit service there. However, I agree the route chosen for WLRT is the best. Part of the advantage of LRT is that it is scalable and expandable. Any routing to MRC is difficult to extend to follow growth because it invariably runs into either the reservoir or the Tsuu T'ina Reserve. The route chosen will follow where growth will occur, will serve the area with the highest proportion of downtown workers (natural ridership), and had the advantage of reserved right of way. MRC will not be neglected, and served by increased service including 2 new BRT routes.

As for NIMBYism in communities, this is unavoidable and you can't make everyone happy. That isn't to say there aren't valid concerns, but the truth is that the vast majority of residents want to see LRT serve their community. I personally found the BestWestLRT community group, while decently organized, represented a vocal minority of Sunalta residents, and were just a tad off base. Check out the artistic licence taken with the renderings on their website.

http://www.bestwestlrt.com/Default.aspx?pageId=131433

http://www.bestwestlrt.com/Default.aspx?pageId=136942

http://www.bestwestlrt.com/Default.aspx?pageId=130452

Not sure why the hypothetical graffiti artists chose to ignore the already existing concrete structures in the area. Not to mention of course that an elevated LRT structure already exists in Calgary in Hillhurst/Sunnyside, except with very little graffiti.