[Transit Apologist]

With regards to the north line, I wouldn’t neglect the fact that route 3 (Centre Street local bus) is consistently the busiest route in the city, with the 301/MAX Green not far behind. Very few routes come anywhere near the numbers they pull - or the number of buses they use per day. Last I heard the GL alignment on Centre Street is intended to significantly reduce service on the 3 and completely replace the MAX Green, which would free up untold numbers of buses that, in a good world, could be reallocated to other parts of the system. However, with the Nose Creek alignment you lose all of the ridership south of Beddington meaning the 3 stays and you might even need to keep the MAX Green to facilitate any decent crosstown trips along Centre Street.

For the southeast line: I’m not losing a second of sleep over a couple sharp turns, because unless they plan on running 5 KM/H from 7 Ave all the way to Seton, there is quite literally nothing this alignment could do to be slower than the existing bus route. The 302 so-called “BRT” Southeast is a schedule adherence minefield with a collection of every possible bottleneck - congestion, poor stop placements, at-grade freight rail crossings, long traffic light cycles, malfunctioning bus-only gates, you name it.

 

[lemongrab]

Yeah it sure did, although the route isn't bad in two dimensions, its that tricky third one GL struggles with...

Pondering it a little more, and recalling that GL is a pre-Covid/oil crash plan, I'm starting to see some merit in calling the whole thing off, at least as far as LRT goes.

SETway could still be done for the SE without loosing too much value from the work already done.

The problem is you'd almost certainly lose the partner funding, so there's a good chance the city would end up paying about the same out of our pockets for BRT as we would for LRT.

It might have been possible to renegotiate things with those partners if we did it with the 2019-2020 scope changes (abandoning super deep tunnel), but I don't think the city would have ever been keen to intentionally reneg what they promised the SE (even though the end result has been an effective reneg for the north).

 

[badc0ffee]

Sorry the comparison wasn't bus to streetcars but streetcars with ROW vs without. I was trying to remember this article, which basically says the TTC manage to travel slower with a dedicated ROW than pre-ROW because of poor operational decisions.

It's amazing how slow the Spadina streetcars are (which I think someone else mentioned upthread), and that has a dedicated ROW too.

Hopefully the publicity Finch is getting finally forces Toronto/the TTC to actually use these lines to their full potential.

 

[lemongrab]

With regards to the north line, I wouldn’t neglect the fact that route 3 (Centre Street local bus) is consistently the busiest route in the city, with the 301/MAX Green not far behind. Very few routes come anywhere near the numbers they pull - or the number of buses they use per day. Last I heard the GL alignment on Centre Street is intended to significantly reduce service on the 3 and completely replace the MAX Green, which would free up untold numbers of buses that, in a good world, could be reallocated to other parts of the system. However, with the Nose Creek alignment you lose all of the ridership south of Beddington meaning the 3 stays and you might even need to keep the MAX Green to facilitate any decent crosstown trips along Centre Street.

I think the Nose Creek option offers several big opportunities:

1. get 'something/anything' sooner - even if it seems like a crappy compromise, any relief for the bus corridor would be welcome in the near to mid term

2. allows us to 'build it right the first time' (automated) when we eventually build the more urban section of Centre St

3. Banff and airport line actually happen (I'm not sure the city buying in makes much of a difference on how soon these go ahead, but it certainly wouldn't hurt)

4. helps establish the province (or some sort of city-prov agency) as the rapid transit builder. There's a lot to unpack on this point, but it would be a shame if regional transit comes to fruition but the cities continue to spin their wheels trying to build their own LRT

5. more track length to SE sooner - if this lead us to split the lines and we could have a <$400M alignment to get to 8 Ave instead of >$1B and spend the difference on more track length...or just save that final half-Billion as it's 100% city funds unmatched by partners


I'm not sure point 1 is necessarily true, unless the province's rail plans are more developed/imminent than they seem, but it's a question of when those planets align vs. the current GL phases being on-time and on-budget and more funding materializing to go north. It feels like a provincial driven Nose Creek line could be prioritized sooner than GL north extension, but that doesn't necessarily mean it would be built faster.

I wouldn't want to bet on either option - the former is supported by the provincial purse, but it could easily (hopefully!) turn into a repeat of 2015 where a new NDP gov't inherits a fiscal mess and can't write blank cheques for trains...


Hypothetical choice - in 2035 would you rather open:
A) Green line tram from DT to say 64th
B) Automated train from YYC-Aurora-down Centre to 64th-Nose Creek-DT (elevated on 9 Ave to 2nd St SW).

 

[whatchyyc]

I would rather any nose creek rail not be LRT at all but heavy rail that could travel at 130-180kph alongside HSR and the airport trains on a shared set of track

 

[Transit Apologist]

Hypothetical choice - in 2035 would you rather open:
A) Green line tram from DT to say 64th
B) Automated train from YYC-Aurora-down Centre to 64th-Nose Creek-DT (elevated on 9 Ave to 2nd St SW).

I still feel that A is better for the north-central transit network in the long run, as long as extensions to North Pointe & 160 Ave come soon after. I'm not convinced that a Nose Creek line relieves the bus corridor in any substantial way whatsoever, because it's still so far from all the main destinations en route. Plus, if we sit around waiting to "build it right the first time" in a future decade we'll just end up paying a lot more than we would now for frankly marginal-at-best improvement over the current solution. I also concur with Whatchy that Banff/airport is best suited for heavy rail rather than light, and combining it with the Green Line is a mode mismatch for the southeast end.

 

[Red Star]

With regards to the north line, I wouldn’t neglect the fact that route 3 (Centre Street local bus) is consistently the busiest route in the city, with the 301/MAX Green not far behind. Very few routes come anywhere near the numbers they pull - or the number of buses they use per day. Last I heard the GL alignment on Centre Street is intended to significantly reduce service on the 3 and completely replace the MAX Green, which would free up untold numbers of buses that, in a good world, could be reallocated to other parts of the system. However, with the Nose Creek alignment you lose all of the ridership south of Beddington meaning the 3 stays and you might even need to keep the MAX Green to facilitate any decent crosstown trips along Centre Street.

For the southeast line: I’m not losing a second of sleep over a couple sharp turns, because unless they plan on running 5 KM/H from 7 Ave all the way to Seton, there is quite literally nothing this alignment could do to be slower than the existing bus route. The 302 so-called “BRT” Southeast is a schedule adherence minefield with a collection of every possible bottleneck - congestion, poor stop placements, at-grade freight rail crossings, long traffic light cycles, malfunctioning bus-only gates, you name it.

Fair point.

With transit projects like this, we should try to build it right the first time around. We have one chance to do it right. Even a 15 second delay compounds over time. 15 seconds per direction, multiplied by two directions per day, multiplied by 242 working days per year multiplied by 10 years is 72600 seconds or 1210 minutes.

If I had a time machine, the first thing I'd do is go back to 2010 and buy bitcoin. The second thing I'd do is go back to 1978 and hold a gun to the head of Ross Alger and Oliver Bowen and say "Take out a loan and build the C-train underground in downtown."

 

[InfrastructureEnthusiast]

I would rather any nose creek rail not be LRT at all but heavy rail that could travel at 130-180kph alongside HSR and the airport trains on a shared set of track

I'm not sure if anyone is actually suggesting the nose creek LRT plan be used? But the nose creek corridor *could* be used to provide express transit service to the north half of the centre st corridor via commuter rail instead.

MAX green schedule shows the trip from 96av to 7av taking ~33 minutes.

The distance from 96av to Palliser via heavy rail lines is 15km, 10 fairly straight before the curve into Inglewood.

A 200kph commuter train couldn't run at max speed for all that, but should be able to do the journey with no other stops in less than 10 minutes.

I think that's something that could prove popular with commuters!

 

[InfrastructureEnthusiast]

The problem is you'd almost certainly lose the partner funding, so there's a good chance the city would end up paying about the same out of our pockets for BRT as we would for LRT.

It might have been possible to renegotiate things with those partners if we did it with the 2019-2020 scope changes (abandoning super deep tunnel), but I don't think the city would have ever been keen to intentionally reneg what they promised the SE (even though the end result has been an effective reneg for the north).

Governments these days don't seem too big on the whole accountability thing.. I think as longs as the funds were still used for transit projects and not flights to Tahiti it could be worked out.

Dialing the SE back to the setway BRT would mean the entire new transitway to Seton could be completed instead of just taking it to Shepherd.

That dedicated ROW is where the speed improvements will come from, not from the rails..

 

[CalgaryTiger]

I think once Calgary commits to 10-15 minute service on the MAX, they should be shown on transit maps, Google Maps/Apple Maps transit layer, so people know those are rapid (relatively speaking) transit options.

If you ride transit in this city and are not using the Transit App, I don't know what you're doing.

 

[Mr.Wonderful]

I feel like the C-Train as an LRT has historically been tasked with being everything to everyone and that has been okay up to this point, but for a city getting to be 2MM metro pop, it has to stop here. No LRT to Okotoks, none to Airdrie, and realistically our all stop "metro" LRT should be supported by connections to "express" commuter lines to proverbially shrink the city. Perhaps instead of taking a low floor LRT down the entire center street route, a commuter from Beddington could travel north, connect onto the commuter train at the airport interchange, and enjoy a much shorter and much more comfortable journey. Same for someone starting their commute at Somerset, a commuter rail connection could cut travel times down to ~15 mins there too.

Most large cities around the world, especially those with transit systems to be sought after, have different modes performing different work for the network. A tram has its limitations on what it can do, and being a commuter rail system is certainly outside its scope.

A C-Train LRT should not be running up nose creek, as an LRT is not a commuter train. A low floor LRT should be running down an urban corridor with frequent-ish stops where it can be most effective. Leave commuter rail to commuter trains when the time comes from the province, and gain those scenarios where a 45 min driving commute becomes a 15 min train ride from north of the ring road. LRT down nose creek is not going to be anywhere near as useful as a well implemented multi modal system.

 

[CalgaryTiger]

I feel like the C-Train as an LRT has historically been tasked with being everything to everyone and that has been okay up to this point, but for a city getting to be 2MM metro pop, it has to stop here. No LRT to Okotoks, none to Airdrie, and realistically our all stop "metro" LRT should be supported by connections to "express" commuter lines to proverbially shrink the city. Perhaps instead of taking a low floor LRT down the entire center street route, a commuter from Beddington could travel north, connect onto the commuter train at the airport interchange, and enjoy a much shorter and much more comfortable journey. Same for someone starting their commute at Somerset, a commuter rail connection could cut travel times down to ~15 mins there too.

Most large cities around the world, especially those with transit systems to be sought after, have different modes performing different work for the network. A tram has its limitations on what it can do, and being a commuter rail system is certainly outside its scope.

A C-Train LRT should not be running up nose creek, as an LRT is not a commuter train. A low floor LRT should be running down an urban corridor with frequent-ish stops where it can be most effective. Leave commuter rail to commuter trains when the time comes from the province, and gain those scenarios where a 45 min driving commute becomes a 15 min train ride from north of the ring road. LRT down nose creek is not going to be anywhere near as useful as a well implemented multi modal system.

Definitely time to create a Transit System. Right now, we have different modes of Transit that Calgary Transit operates, I'm not sure how well they actually work together.

 

[Mr.Wonderful]

Definitely time to create a Transit System. Right now, we have different modes of Transit that Calgary Transit operates, I'm not sure how well they actually work together.

That's very true, I'm taking for granted that the commuter rail system would even be part of an integrated transit system. I wonder if it would be more effective to build out that system now with Airdrie ICE, Cochrane COLT, On-It, etc., or wait until commuter rail becomes a reality to start trying.

It would be really cool to have a Japan or Germany style system that works across all operators in the province to really make inter-city rail seamless for users. One argument I see over and over on forums populated by non transit enthusiasts/urbanists, is "well you'll need a car when you get to Edmonton/Red Deer/Lethbridge/Banff anyway, so people will just drive". Having a single province wide smart card or ticketing system would present users with one fewer barrier to entry.

Anyway, that might be drifting a little off topic from the Green Line lol.

 

[lemongrab]

I still feel that A is better for the north-central transit network in the long run, as long as extensions to North Pointe & 160 Ave come soon after. I'm not convinced that a Nose Creek line relieves the bus corridor in any substantial way whatsoever, because it's still so far from all the main destinations en route. Plus, if we sit around waiting to "build it right the first time" in a future decade we'll just end up paying a lot more than we would now for frankly marginal-at-best improvement over the current solution. I also concur with Whatchy that Banff/airport is best suited for heavy rail rather than light, and combining it with the Green Line is a mode mismatch for the southeast end.

The ultimate buildout would end up with both:

Phase 1: YYC-Aurora-down Centre to 64th-Nose Creek-DT (elevated on 9 Ave to 2nd St SW).

2: Spur line further north on Centre St

3: 64th to DT. Regional rail fills in the Nose Creek gap if it hasn't already.

Ultimately ALRT runs Centre St and spurs to YYC/160th. Regional/HSR stays exclusively on Nose Creek.

I can't really reason it out, but my gut says starting with a weird frankenstein thing could lead to the better final product (with the right vision). If they build CADE stand alone, does it actually get fully automated and does it push beyond GCS into the core? Or will it just be a really fast trip from the airport to Vic Park every 20-30 mins b/c ridership doesn't justify any higher frequency? What are GL frequencies going to look like? There is opportunity cost to every train+operator you run there that might be better spent on a different line.

But I think there is broader opportunity cost to consider, too; the city plodding along to build out all 46 kms of the GL will use resources that may be better directed elsewhere. RouteAhead, actual proper BRT projects, blue/red line extensions, etc will all suffer if the main focus remains on GL for another two decades or more. And it just seems like municipalities aren't the best governance bodies for these projects any more (if they ever were?). Everything Calgary has built to date is generally very good, but there is no shortage of screwups (failed MRU spur option from Westbrook) and unfortunate compromises (7 Ave and Macleod Tr surface lines and a whole bunch of level crossings that may have been avoidable).

I don't know that I really trust the province to be much better, but there are a lot of reasons it could be. Building highways is a much simpler beast, but it seems like the province has a pretty good track record (or maybe road projects just get rose-tinted lens)

 

[UrbanWarrior]

Sounds promising. I want to believe that Calgary can at least perform a better execution of a bad idea than TO, Ottawa and Edmonton can..

Don't hear much about the KW low floor line, wonder what they did differently? Or do their issues just not get the same media attention as the bigger cities?

The Flexity Freedom trains seem to perform well in Canadian climate. Toronto’s streetcar and Kitchener’s ION both use them. I was reading how Toronto’s old streetcars were breaking down during extreme cold, snow, and ice, while ever since they retired them all for Flexity Freedom completed in 2020 there haven’t been any weather related incidents.