Calgary Election - Public Transit Problems
OK, so in a couple of weeks less than 20% of Calgary residents will trudge to a polling centre and vote in municipal elections. In all likelihood His Worship Dave Bronconnier will be re-elected mayor, along with the rest of the socialists currently sitting on city council (hopefully Rick McIver will be re-elected - he's the only sane one there).
Calgary has a mass transit system like many other cities - our's is a Light Rail Transit system called the C-Train. It has it's problems but it does move a fair number of people. Currently there are three legs of the system running out from the downtown core, as can be seen here.
Dave wants to extend the NW and NE legs out to the essentially the very edge of the city, much like he did with the South leg. This doesn't make a lot of sense as the trains are already very full. He also wants to build the West leg of the C-Train out to that edge of the city through mostly low-density neighbourhoods. This might provide some reduction in traffic, but will further overload the downtown stations, which are all along 7th Avenue South.
Some of the other candidates, like Alnoor Kassam and Sandy Jenkins have better ideas. They propose:
Calgary has a mass transit system like many other cities - our's is a Light Rail Transit system called the C-Train. It has it's problems but it does move a fair number of people. Currently there are three legs of the system running out from the downtown core, as can be seen here.
Dave wants to extend the NW and NE legs out to the essentially the very edge of the city, much like he did with the South leg. This doesn't make a lot of sense as the trains are already very full. He also wants to build the West leg of the C-Train out to that edge of the city through mostly low-density neighbourhoods. This might provide some reduction in traffic, but will further overload the downtown stations, which are all along 7th Avenue South.
Some of the other candidates, like Alnoor Kassam and Sandy Jenkins have better ideas. They propose:
- expanding existing train stations to allow for 4-train cars instead of the current 3 car limit. This would increase system capacity by 33% and reduce the crush of people on trains during rush hour.
- rerouting the planned West leg of the C-train south so it reaches Mount Royal College, which would be helpful due to the student load in that area and the prevalence of higher-density housing.
- Rerouting the downtown C-train line from the surface of 7th Avenue to be underground either 7th or 8th avenue. This would help reduce the number of train/vehicle and train/pedestrian accidents. There have been over 20 fatalities involving the 7th avenue C-train line since 1981, while the subway in Toronto has had only 5 since 1950...
posted by Technical Bard | 22:10
3 Comments:
I agree that Bronco's idea doesn't make sense. The only reason may be to enrich his developer buddies who may have invested on new developments near those stations.
A north line that runs "pass" the airport and extends into those new high density neighborhood like Panorama would be an even better idea.
Speaking of Taxi, the problem there is also the lack of licenses. It really is a joke that for the size of Calgary, we only have some little taxi allowed on the road and they are all controlled by 2~3 cab companies.
I will be happy as long as that Madeline King woman is no longer on council..... She is a disgrace who takes any chance she can get to get on T.V to bash the City Police who can't do their jobs because of bleeding hearts like hers
The city is clearly in the pocket of the taxi commission, otehrwise there wouldn't be the shortage of taxis we see currently. As such, any train to the airport would drastically cut into taxi revenues, so the city won't do it.
When I moved from Calgary to Vancouver I found a train (the SkyTrain) that ran far more often than the C-Train ever did. How often does the C-Train run during rush hour, these days? Simply adding more trains should alleviate the crowding significantly.
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