Oddball
Senior Member
When I was younger, the city of Calgary felt like an island of development unto itself. It didn't really have a metropolitan region like most major cities. There are now hundreds of thousands of people who live in Calgary's satellites. Airdrie, the largest of them has nearly sextupled in size since I was born, with just shy of 60,000 residents according to 2015 estimates.
This recent article about reviving train service between Banff and Calgary fed my interest in a regional train network for the Calgary Region:
http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/banff-seeks-revival-of-passenger-rail-service-to-calgary
The train network I have in mind would have three purposes.
Firstly, moving people within the greater Calgary area. It would help relieve congestion on our road ways and hopefully give some of our least lovely suburbs a node from which to develop their own cores. I think mostly of Airdrie when I think of this. It has no personality of it's own. It may as well be a chunk of NE Calgary lifted up and separated from the rest of the city by tectonic action. I'm sure there are lots of people who will say this promotes sprawl, but I say it's happening anyway. Why should only those who live close to the LRT lines be the ones presented with options?
Secondly, it would be about tourism and recreation. It would be a nice selling point to say look, you can come to Calgary and hop on a train and see the area without having to worry about car rentals and things like that. It would also help reconnect Calgary with it's train oriented past. The city owes a lot of it's initial growth to the CPR mainline. The target wouldn't just be out-of-towners though. As a skier and scrambler, I'm in the mountains year round. Dropping the drive would be a massive stress reviler, especially in the winter.
Lastly, wouldn't it be awesome to do away this those awful surface lots along 9th and 10th aves? Instead we could have a gorgeous building along the lines of Toronto's Union Station.
Below are a couple of rough maps I drew up for concepts. What do you folks think?
This recent article about reviving train service between Banff and Calgary fed my interest in a regional train network for the Calgary Region:
http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/banff-seeks-revival-of-passenger-rail-service-to-calgary
The train network I have in mind would have three purposes.
Firstly, moving people within the greater Calgary area. It would help relieve congestion on our road ways and hopefully give some of our least lovely suburbs a node from which to develop their own cores. I think mostly of Airdrie when I think of this. It has no personality of it's own. It may as well be a chunk of NE Calgary lifted up and separated from the rest of the city by tectonic action. I'm sure there are lots of people who will say this promotes sprawl, but I say it's happening anyway. Why should only those who live close to the LRT lines be the ones presented with options?
Secondly, it would be about tourism and recreation. It would be a nice selling point to say look, you can come to Calgary and hop on a train and see the area without having to worry about car rentals and things like that. It would also help reconnect Calgary with it's train oriented past. The city owes a lot of it's initial growth to the CPR mainline. The target wouldn't just be out-of-towners though. As a skier and scrambler, I'm in the mountains year round. Dropping the drive would be a massive stress reviler, especially in the winter.
Lastly, wouldn't it be awesome to do away this those awful surface lots along 9th and 10th aves? Instead we could have a gorgeous building along the lines of Toronto's Union Station.
Below are a couple of rough maps I drew up for concepts. What do you folks think?