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occidentalcapital said:
Turnstiles/fare gates. Now. That is all.
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Councillor Paquette talked about this on Reddit yesterday. He said the estimates to install fare gates are about $400 million for Edmonton, $600 million for Calgary....

This is pretty ridiculous. Even if they have to build walls around the gates, I can't understand how it even comes close to that price tag.
 
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That price tag is a tad ridiculous imho. I have a suspicion people really inflate a number to scare off the idea when it's something they don't like. There are examples to compare to. St. Louis is in the process of moving to fare gates for 38 stations at a cost of 52 Million USD. So with our construction and exchange call it 100 Mil which is a long ways from that quote.

Moreover I like the idea of trialing a couple stations and see how it works. I like the idea of implementing it into station renovations as they come up, it doesn't have to be all or nothing.

Fare gates are 1 tool of many that should be considered/deployed and it's time to start thinking a little outside the box as a couple more officers here or there isn't going to do it on it's own either.
 
BASE said:
That price tag is a tad ridiculous imho. I have a suspicion people really inflate a number to scare off the idea when it's something they don't like. There are examples to compare to. St. Louis is in the process of moving to fare gates for 38 stations at a cost of 52 Million USD. So with our construction and exchange call it 100 Mil which is a long ways from that quote.

Moreover I like the idea of trialing a couple stations and see how it works. I like the idea of implementing it into station renovations as they come up, it doesn't have to be all or nothing.

Fare gates are 1 tool of many that should be considered/deployed and it's time to start thinking a little outside the box as a couple more officers here or there isn't going to do it on it's own either.
Click to expand...

Some context goes a long way here, the St Louis project is almost definitely a lowball figure and will go into the 100+ million mark. They want to add turnstiles and reconfigure all their stations PLUS a new fare payment system.

Honestly, I'd say project costs are lowballed to get it approved in the first place, and then there's sticker shock when the invoices come in.

Here the Arc system alone cost $50 million, and that was before the post-pandemic price escalations. Even if most of our existing high floor LRT stations are set up for fare gates, it shouldn't be a surprise that the cost of putting them in would run into the hundreds of millions. People don't really have a sense of what they get for their money nowadays.
 
_urbanite said:
Councillor Paquette talked about this on Reddit yesterday. He said the estimates to install fare gates are about $400 million for Edmonton, $600 million for Calgary....

This is pretty ridiculous. Even if they have to build walls around the gates, I can't understand how it even comes close to that price tag.
Click to expand...
Governments have an amazing ability these days to make relatively simple things very complicated and expensive, particularly when administration is not eager to do it..

The companies that get these contracts must love these total suckers and there is little scrutiny by council of what administration does.
 
The reality is the city doesn't want turn styles because it distracts from their vision of the utopia they're building in their mind, where life is perfect and everyone sips latte's all day long, working 7 hours a day.

Paquette is a part of that, hence the figure he throws out. It's all just an exercise to scare-monger. It's not just the UCP who does it.

Why is it that major transit systems all over the world have fare gates, but Edmonton is so uniquely special that it's too expensive/ cost prohibitive/ not needed/ insert any other excuse.

Ottawa ensured far gates were in place for their O-train.

Paquette wants transit to be free. And he knows a move towards fare gates will mean that 'dream' will forever be off the table.
 
_urbanite said:
Councillor Paquette talked about this on Reddit yesterday. He said the estimates to install fare gates are about $400 million for Edmonton, $600 million for Calgary....

This is pretty ridiculous. Even if they have to build walls around the gates, I can't understand how it even comes close to that price tag.
Click to expand...
That number is disingenuous. It's taken from Calgary, where all of their stations are above ground and would need huge renovations to add fare gates.
 
I'm on team fare gates but it's not a panacea and don't help if a bad actor buys a fare, hops on at another station, or camps out in front of the fare zone.

Actually solving this problem is going to take orders of magnitude more than 100 million or whatever it costs to install them. It requires more resources for the court system, drug addiction, mental health, enforcement, shelter space, and monitoring.

Balking at the cost of fare gates is really underselling how much it's going to cost because LRT safety is probably a billion+ dollar problem at this point, and mostly on the province.
 
_urbanite said:
Councillor Paquette talked about this on Reddit yesterday. He said the estimates to install fare gates are about $400 million for Edmonton, $600 million for Calgary....

This is pretty ridiculous. Even if they have to build walls around the gates, I can't understand how it even comes close to that price tag.
Click to expand...
Councillor Cartmell talked in the Global story above about trying to do a 2 year pilot for 2 stations, one above ground and one below ground. Not sure what the cost would be.
 
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