After months of preparation and consultation, the City of Calgary’s draft RouteAhead plan has been released. RouteAhead is a long term strategic plan for Calgary Transit.
RouteAhead will come before the Special Planning Committee on Transportation and Transit at 9:30 am on Wednesday December 12 in the Engineering Traditions room at City Hall. You are welcome to attend the meeting or can send your comments to cityclerk@calgary.ca. A few TransitCamp YYC members will be there.
Imperial Oil’s recent announcement that it will be moving its Calgary headquarters from downtown to Quarry Park raises a debate often heard in cities. Is it a good idea to “decentralize” employment outside of the downtown?
You will often hear the argument that our city should spread employment areas throughout the city so that people can “live closer to work.” This is not something only heard in Calgary, but in nearly every city where commuting is a challenge. The problem, as many people see it, is that everyone is trying to move in one direction to a single location (downtown), causing congestion and long commutes. The argument goes that if employment was closer to people’s homes, they would more easily be able to walk, bike or take transit, or at least their commute would be shorter. As well, people will be travelling in all directions, so we would be making more efficient use of road space (and transit capacity). The best way to do this, as the argument goes, is to spread employment throughout the city.
I will tell you why this is wrong.
The idea seems simple enough, right? If employment is located closer to homes, then people will be closer to work. There is, however, a very large assumption being made with this assertion. The assumption is that the homes that the employment will be close to are the same as homes the workers actually live in. However, this is not always the case and there are several reasons why.
Changing Careers vs. Changing Homes- The first problem with the idea that people will live close to their work is that people change careers more often then they change homes. While people change both their jobs and home locations more often in their early part of their careers (until around their mid 30s) and then less in their later careers, the fact is that most people will change jobs several times while living in the same home. Even if the first job is close to their home, it may not be the case that the second or third job will be, especially if jobs are spread out throughout the entire city. So while employment might be close to people’s homes, there is little to guarantee that they actually work there. If this was the case everyone who worked at the Foothills Hospital would live in University Heights, St. Andrews Heights or Parkdale. That is clearly not the case.
Housing Location/Career Choice Timing Discrepancy- The second problem is the timing of when people choose where to live and when they choose a career. Many people choose to purchase a home after they have settled into a career, so they can choose a location that is closer to their work, but this is not always the case. Sometimes people make a choice of where to live before they settle into a long term career and being able to predict where that job will be is difficult.
Dual Income Families- The third problem with living close to work is the fact that most households now have two income earners. That means two different jobs, most likely with different companies. In a city with spread out employment, this means that even if one partner is working close to home, it is likely the other isn’t, and if employment is spread out, it also probably means that transit between the two locations is poor at best and non-existent at worst. Ask yourself how many couples do you know work at the same location?
Employment Specialization- Spreading employment out throughout the city works when anyone can work any job, or at least work at a job that can be located anywhere in the city. This makes sense in medieval cities, or even early-industrial cities where working in any one trade gave you an opportunity to work at multiple possible locations (although medieval and industrial cities also had a high degree of geographic concentration of industries). However, in the present economy, jobs are highly specialized, and depending on your specialization, the number of possible locations you can work may be limited. Simply having employment close to where you live is no guarantee it will be employment in your field, let alone your specialization.
Non-Employment Housing Location Considerations- The last reason why people won’t live near work if employment is that living close to work isn’t the only consideration people have when choosing where to live. Access to schools, green space and amenities, housing cost, safety, the size and style of the home and a whole host of other factors play into the decision people make of where to live. So while your work may have lots of residential opportunities within walking distance, perhaps the need for a school that fits your children’s needs is more of a priority, and you end up living farther away.
So if spreading employment out doesn’t increase transit, walking or cycling usage, does that mean that centralizing it does? The answer is most often a strong, if qualified, yes. A concentrated central core of employment is often the best method to increase transit, walking and bicycling use in the city. This is why places with concentrated employment cores, such as New York or Chicago have much higher transit ridership (as well as walking and cycling) than say, Houston, Atlanta or Los Angeles (even though LA has a higher average density than New York). Alon Levy has a brilliant post about this very topic that can be found here: http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/a-transit-city-is-a-centralized-city/ .
Centralizing employment is good for transit.
The most obvious reason centralized cities perform better on transit, pedestrian and cycling measures is because a central location is the most optimal location to reduce the average commuting distance throughout the entire city. While a location in say, Quarry Park, will be closer to southeast and south residents, it will be worse for people living in every other quadrant of the city. This is one of the reasons why transit usage in the downtown is 50% of commuters. Outside of the downtown, transit usage drops rapidly.
A quick exercise with a transit map can show why. Take our transit map below and compare traveling from any area of the city to the Downtown vs. Quarry Park (note also that this is a proposed future map, almost no transit lines currently serve Quarry Park, and those that do are only limited stop services- i.e. the 302).
Sure, stations on the future SE LRT have a more direct route to Quarry Park than downtown, but almost all others do not. Those that do have a direct route, such as from the north-central line, still have travel through downtown to get to Quarry Park, making a longer trip. For residents of the NW especially, the move to quarry park makes trips via transit much longer indeed.
That being said, of all the non-downtown locations for an office park, Quarry Park is pretty good. The SE LRT (what we call the Deerfoot Line) provides access for southeast and north central residents directly and northwest residents via a single transfer downtown. Residents in west and south Calgary can get to the site via the Heritage BRT (either directly or via a transfer at Westbrook, Richmond Road, Heritage Park or Heritage LRT station) and northeast residents can use either the Foothills BRT or the Barlow Express Bus to get to the site.
Another reason why concentrating employment is a good idea is that it addresses the issue of people changing careers without requiring a corresponding change in residential location to maintain a similar style of commute. If all jobs are located in a concentrated core area, changing jobs doesn’t mean a change of how you travel to work. You can change jobs several times, but because jobs are all in a concentrated area, you don’t really change where you work. This is especially true in Calgary. An engineer working for an oil and gas company downtown can change jobs dozens of times, never having to move more than 6 blocks and taking the train the entire time. It isn’t a massive change in someone’s commute to get off one transit station later, or walk an extra 2 blocks. Moving jobs from one quadrant of the city to another is quite different, which is why Imperial’s move to Quarry park will likely create difficulties for many transit commuters. This is also why crosstown routes are so important in our city. They allow people to continue to take transit while moving jobs, while also eliminating longer trips and multiple transfers for many trips.
This is not to say that all employment should be in the centre of a city. There will, and should, always be employment areas outside the centre, such as universities, hospitals, industrial areas or other office areas. These secondary employment areas are found in every city. While they are not ideal for transit (transit ridership is always lower in non-downtown locations compared to downtown), walking or cycling as compared to the central city, much improvement can be made to make them more transit-, pedestrian- and cycling-friendly. The real challenge is not to “de-concentrate” employment away from the downtown, but to ensure that employment outside the downtown is concentrated around transit stations. In short, moving employment from the downtown into suburban office parks (or even to peripheral transit stations) is not a great idea, moving employment from isolated office parks to pedestrian friendly areas around transit stations is a good idea.
The primary land use goal of a city trying to encourage transit should be to concentrate as much employment as it can within a centralized core (usually office) well serviced by transit. Along with this it should focus on ensuring secondary employment areas are clustered around transit stations (preferably along radial transit lines that also serves the centralized core to minimize transfers). This allows for an optimization of existing transit infrastructure. Third, it should make it so employment that is adjacent to transit is also designed to be easily accessible to that transit (i.e. not having to cross a freeway to get from the train station to work) and also has residential and service development adjacent to it.
So, is it a good thing for transit that Imperial Oil is moving out to Quarry Park? No. But of all the suburban office locations, is Quarry Park a better location than others for transit? Yes.
This week, TransitCamp is presenting an updated version of our network plan for Calgary Transit. We’ll let you take a look at our proposal below:
The entire TransitCamp Transit Network
As well as a simplified version (express bus routes and station names have been removed):
A simplified version of the network
Before we compare our plan to the RouteAhead plan (which can be found here: http://www.routeahead.ca/), there are some things we need to clarify. First, our plan consists of four different types of transit routes, which are described below. While the map shows these different types of transit for different routes, this is a conceptual idea rather than a concrete plan. What is more important is the alignment of the routes and how they connect to each other, rather than what technology they use. It is important to keep this in mind while looking at the system. Let’s explain what each type of transit consists of:
Light Rail Transit- This is the form of transit Calgarians will be most familiar with as it exists today. Light Rail Transit routes will be much like the current C-Train routes, with dedicated rights-of-way (tracks not shared with regular traffic), separated or signalized intersections that give priority to trains, distinct stations and fare payment made off the vehicle. Although the types of trains may change (to be low-floor), the system would be very much what currently exists on the C-Train network.
Bus Rapid Transit- Bus Rapid Transit (what RouteAhead calls a Transitway), is a form of bus transit that typically uses dedicated bus lanes (i.e. not sharing a lane with regular vehicle traffic), limited stops, off-vehicle fare payment (i.e. you don’t pay the driver directly, but purchase the ticket before and roving transit officers randomly check fares on the vehicle, much like on our C-Train system) and signal priority at intersections. We call this form of transit Bus Rapid Transit, mostly because that is what it is called in most of the rest of the world (places like Bogota are the most common examples given). In our plan, the routes identified as Bus Rapid Transit will have most, if not all of these elements for most of their route. For example, the Heritage line will likely use dedicated transit lanes on Heritage Drive and the TransCanada line will use dedicated lanes on 16th avenue.
Express Bus Transit- This simply is a limited stop service, with minor improvements to increase reliability, such as queue jumps and signal controls. Dedicated lanes will be limited, if used at all. These routes will be very similar to the 300 series routes currently, such as the 301, 302 and 305. The emphasis is on improving speed through limited stops rather than completely removing the bus from traffic. Fare payment will likely be as normal, with passengers paying the driver. However, if considerable speed improvements can be realized by having fare machines at each station, this may also be implemented.
Urban Gondola- Finally, we have proposed an urban gondola. Calgarians will also be familiar with this form of transit, because in reality it is much like a gondola found on a ski-resort (both Sunshine and Lake Louise have gondolas). The exact design and style of the gondola is still to be determined, but the plan would use a system of multiple cars on an aerial cable system. This will be discussed in greater depth in a later post.
So now that we know what our plan entails, lets compare it to the RouteAhead plan (we will just highlight similarities and differences and let you decide which are pros or cons).
Similarities
Focus on network connectivity and crosstown routes- Both plans have a strong emphasis on creating a transit network that uses crosstown routes to provide mobility across the entire city, a considerable shift from the very downtown-centric model of transit currently.
The plan is almost identical- You may think that by coming up with our own plan, TransitCamp would have a radically different vision than RouteAhead. In fact, we had come up with an earlier network plan more than a year ago, before Calgary Transit released their proposed BRT network. That network was almost identical to the BRT network plan and both were created completely independently of each other. Sure, there may be some tweaks here and there (such as connecting the Heritage and Foothills BRT at Quarry Park), but the main structure is the same. The reason this is so is because the routes just make sense. A transit route on 16th avenue is obvious considering the number of major institutions adjacent to it (including SAIT, Foothills Hospital, Children’s Hospital and the University of Calgary). Similarly it makes sense to connect Mount Royal University and Rockyview Hospital to the west and south LRT lines. Network planning is very much like playing connect the dots. The route between those dots is usually pretty obvious, but the exact form that route would take is not.
Routes are “scaled up” based on performance criteria- While both plans show theoretical build outs of the plan (and phasing in the case of RouteAhead), both will upgrade routes based on a set of criteria rather than a set plan. So while our plan, for example, shows the TransCanada line as Bus Rapid Transit, that is only an estimate of what we think will happen. If the line does very well attracting riders, and we find out a way to construct light rail cost-effectively, the route may actually be Light Rail Transit. Both plans assume that we do not know perfectly how our city will develop and how people will use transit, so we use actual performance and other criteria to decide how to invest in improvements. Most routes will start as limited stop services, and upgrade as necessary.
Differences
More details than RouteAhead- There are a few details that the TransitCamp plan includes, that RouteAhead doesn’t. Our plan includes stations beyond just transfer points, with the stops on each route shown on the map. We also commit to a few alignments that RouteAhead doesn’t, such as using Centre Street for the North Central LRT. As well, we have included what we call “Express Bus Transit”, which RouteAhead seems not to have included in their most recent plan. One example of this would be the providence line connecting Somerset station to the South Hospital.
Naming the routes- We decided to use names for each route. The names are based either on the major road the route follows (such as TransCanada, Crowchild, Macleod, Elbow, Barlow and Heritage lines), a prominent location the route serves (such as the Foothills line serving Foothills industrial park or Symon’s Valley) or a major geographic feature along the route (such as Glenmore reservoir for the Glenmore line, or Confederation Park for the Confederation line). These names are mostly used to help us identify the routes in discussions, as well as a point of discussion of how we label our transit routes (i.e. should we continue to use numbers, or go with names)?
Less commitment to phasing than RouteAhead- The routeahead plan includes a conceptual phasing plan, showing which improvements will take place when. At this point, we haven’t made such a commitment, because honestly, we don’t have an accurate picture of how well each route will do and when upgrades will be needed. For example, with the announcement that Imperial Oil is moving to Quarry Park, it may be the case that the Heritage line upgrades to dedicated bus lanes before the north central LRT is built. At this point it is hard to know.
Quarry Park as a transfer hub- One significant difference between our plan and RouteAhead’s plan is that we have the Foothills BRT (using 52nd street east) going to Quarry Park instead of the South Hospital. In fact, Quarry Park becomes a major transit hub with 4 lines (Deerfoot LRT, Heritage BRT, Foothills BRT and Barlow Express) all converging on the station. We had this idea before Imperial Oil announced its move to Quarry Park, which is quite a coincidence. The reasoning was that residents in the south and west should have a good connection to Foothills Industrial (and similarly northeast residents should have a good connection to Quarry Park). In order to do this, the Foothills line and Heritage line had to meet, the most logical point being Quarry Park. We do sacrifice a direct line between the northeast and the South Hospital, but we feel the change is worth it.
Additional crosstown routes in all quadrants- The TransitCamp plan adds one crosstown route in each quadrant, and two in the south. Looking at the entire network, we generally have one BRT and one Express Bus line serving as a crosstown in each quadrant. The north is served by the TransCanada BRT and the Northmount Express; the east with the Foothills BRT and Barlow Express, the south with the Heritage BRT and the Rivers and Providence Express lines, and the west is served by the Skyway and the Confederation Express. The result is a well integrated network with several crosstown routes serving a variety of destinations with multiple points of connection.
As always, we appreciate your thoughts. We will provide more details on our plan in the weeks to come.
This week, the RouteAhead team presented a draft version of their 30 year vision for Calgary Transit to City Council. The $8 billion plan includes new LRT lines, BRT routes (which we prefer to call express or limited stop services), Transitways (using dedicated transit lanes, which we would call Bus Rapid Transit), a new downtown subway, an LRT link to the airport and even a link between the UofC and Westbrook mall using a mysterious “new technology.” We encourage everyone to see the draft version of the plan and the associated documents, which can be found on the Route Ahead website here: http://www.routeahead.ca/
Here are some of our initial thoughts on the draft plan:
Pros
- The plan focuses on increasing crosstown routes. While Calgary Transit has been tremendously successful in providing rapid and reliable transit to the downtown, with unprecedented ridership for downtown workers, that success has not been translated to other areas of the city to as great effect. Providing high quality crosstown routes serving other employment (and non-employment) destinations, such as Foothills Hospital, Mount Royal University, the Airport and industrial areas (especially Foothills Industrial) will greatly improve transit for many more Calgarians.
- Network connectivity from the beginning is key. Rather than focusing on one corridor at a time and providing a massive improvement to transit for just one route, while leaving other areas with lower quality transit, the plan focuses on creating a network of interconnected routes as early as possible. By providing this network of routes, passengers can get from almost any part of the network to any other part quickly using frequent transit services. Reducing the number of transfers that passengers need to make is key to ensuring high quality service.
- The plan is technology neutral (kind of). While the map of future capital projects shows different LRT, BRT, Transitway and other technologies for different routes, the plan actually calls for each corridor to be “upgraded” as necessary, which the plan calls “Mode Progression.” This means that each corridor will undergo improvements to increase quality of service (i.e. from limited stop buses to dedicated lanes or from dedicated bus lanes to LRT) when needed. While not always linear (sometimes the route may go straight from limited stop bus to LRT), the concept is that criteria for improvement should drive the technology choice, not the other way around. This prevents the nonconstructive arguments of ”we need LRT here”, when we should be saying “we need transit here” and let the criteria determine what form of transit that takes. Which takes us to the next point:
- The plan uses multiple criteria for improvements. The plan uses three sets of criteria to evaluate when to upgrade a transit corridor. These criteria are Land Use (does the corridor serve areas of transit-supportive development), Customer Experience (will the improvement improve the speed, reliability and capacity of the service) and Project Characteristics (is the project cost effective both in terms of capital and operating costs). By using multiple criteria the plan pursues a balanced approach to improving the network, ultimately improving decision making for expenditure. If a single criteria was used (for instance the raw number of riders on a route) it may lead to improvements that are not cost-effective, or that do little to improve connectivity with other routes.
Cons
- Connecting the SW Crosstown BRT and 52nd ST E BRT. There seems to be a lack of a connection between these two routes. Passengers traveling from the west side of the city going to Foothills Industrial will have to make at least two separate transfers to get to where they are going. A possible solution to this would be to connect the 52nd ST E BRT to Quarry Park, so transfers can be made here. This does sacrifice a direct route from the NE to the South Hospital, but perhaps the cost of creating a single transfer for NE residents going to the hospital is less than the benefit of eliminating a second transfer for west residents going to Foothills industrial. The other option would be to extend the SW Crosstown BRT eastward to make a connection with the 52nd ST E BRT on 52nd Street.
- No connection between South Hospital and Somerset. The plan does not show a connection between the South LRT and the SE LRT, connecting passengers using the South LRT to the the South Hospital. Likely this is because Route Ahead determines this route not to be “rapid transit” but rather “frequent transit” (i.e. it won’t require dedicated lanes or other priority improvements), and it will be shown on a later version of the plan. Either way, this connection should be made, as without it any passengers using the South line would have to travel north to Heritage, transfer to the SW Crosstown BRT and then transfer again at Quarry Park on the SE LRT.
- Could the Airport–LRT connection strategy be implemented more effectively? The plan shows a rail connection from the Northeast LRT to Calgary International Airport, and a limited-stop bus connection from the airport to Centre Street. It seems strange and most disconcerting that RouteAhead’s mode progression analysis would fall so short here, and to such disjointed ends. While the C-Train connection from the Northeast LRT to the airport would leverage the municipal investment in the light-rail-ready Airport Trail Underpass, a rail connection between the airport and the North Central LRT would offer Calgary Transit users the option of traveling a shorter distance with fewer passenger stops in between. Also, the mode progression analysis gives short shrift to Aurora Business Park, the potential railhead and passenger interchange through the Nose Creek Valley for future commuter rail and high-speed rail services, and future commercial and service developments in the vicinity of Airport Trail and 19 Street NE. It is contrary to the Calgary Transit vision and mission of providing effective public transportation service to introduce a needless, and needlessly permanent, transfer point along the Airport Trail corridor between the Northeast and North Central LRT lines, and the strategic problem of moving passengers from Northpointe to Saddletowne, as a case in point, is easily soluble. An airport mass transit connection that contemplates light rail as a means of joining Calgary International Airport to the Northeast and North Central LRT must finish what it starts.
Interesting Points
- The plan is (purposely?) vague. Although some details about route alignment are provided in the draft plan (such as using 16th avenue for the North Crosstown Route, or 52nd Street), others are not. This is good in that it does not commit the plan to any particular alignment and allows for future study to determine the optimal alignment for each. That, however, does leave some questions open. For instance, the Rapid Transit route from Stoney Trail to the 305 will use Shaganappi Trail and shows a connection to the NW LRT. The question is, where will this connection be made.? Shaganappi Trail is just under a kilometre from Dalhousie Station and almost 2km from Brentwood Station. Would a connection here require a new LRT station to be built at Northland Mall, as some have previously advocated for (and we are sure the owners of the mall would welcome)? Also, the North Crosstown BRT isn’t shown to connect to the NE LRT. Does this imply that the route will continue on 16th avenue until 52nd Street, or will it divert course to connect to the NE LRT at say, Rundle Station. So far this is unclear, but definitely something that must be considered.
- What is the “New technology”?. The plan shows using a “new technology” between the UofC and Westbrook station. Considering a direct connection here would go over Edworthy Park, it is likely that this technology is in fact an urban gondola. The thought is definitely worth consideration.
There is a lot to consider with this plan, and we encourage everyone to share their thoughts here, with their representative on City Council and with the Route Ahead.
Next week, we will present the TransitCamp long range transit plan (an update to our earlier post) and show how it compares to the Route Ahead plan.
Does being pro-transit mean you support a “War on Cars”?
Too often discussions about improving transit deteriorate into accusations of exactly that. Converting vehicle lanes to transit-only lanes, limiting parking to support transit ridership or spending more money on transit infrastructure than on roads almost inevitably triggers the response that these actions constitute a “War on Cars.” Is this really the case though?
To be honest, some pro-transit groups do take a hostile view towards drivers. Some transit advocates view people that drive cars as lazy, destructive and generally unconcerned about the world around them. At TransitCamp, that is not how we view things. We do not see those who choose to drive as being negligent or lazy or evil. We see drivers simply as people making the best choice they can about how to get where they want to go. We do not believe that making people feel guilty about driving will get them to take transit. Instead, as is often the case, transit simply does not work for them in their situation. The goal shouldn’t be to force people to take transit, but to improve the transit system so it works better for as many people as possible.
Transit isn’t going to work for everyone, even with a great transit system. Some people will need to make trips that are too difficult to serve with transit, such as to low density areas far away from other development. Other people may just never want to take transit at all. Others still may need to use a vehicle for other things, such as carrying equipment or as part of a job that requires them to visit multiple sites every day. Transit is not going to work for these people. But that does not mean it cannot be made to work for a lot of others in our city. Simply because not everyone can take transit, does not mean that more people can’t, or that it isn’t a useful service to have.
What we all recognize is that transit benefits many people in a city, including those that never take transit. In fact, some of our members never even take transit at all. For those using it, transit can ease the stress of congestion, save time, save money (a vehicle typically costs between $8000 and $12000 per year to own, operate and maintain) and improve safety (transit riders are 200 times safer than those driving private automobiles). For non-transit riders, transit reduces congestion as well as the burden on parking spaces. For the city as a whole, transit reduces pollution, attracts labour, and makes it generally easier to get around.
However, we are not naive to think that there are not conflicts between cars and transit, especially when it comes to building infrastructure, allocating road space or prioritizing signals.
For us, the real debate is not about transit vs cars, but what is the most efficient use of resources. When it comes to allocating space, often transit should have priority for the simple fact that transit is more efficient on space. That is, more people can travel along a single lane on transit than they can driving private automobiles. When we advocate for things such as making cars wait for transit at a traffic signal, it is not because we think transit riders are better than car drivers, it is because a bus carries around 60 passengers and an LRT over 600. We just think 600 people on a train are a greater priority than the 30 or 50 or even 200 waiting at a light for a train to cross.
The same goes for converting traffic lanes to bus lanes. Sure it may seem like the road isn’t being used as efficiently as before, but you have to remember that each bus represents about 60 cars. While a freeway carries about 1 800 people per lane per hour (ideally a minimum of 2 seconds between each car), bus lanes can achieve about 4 800 people per lane per hour (assuming 80 people per bus and 1 minute between buses, some systems exceed this substantially because buses are closer together) and heavy rail transit (subways and metros) can carry up to 40 000 (roughly 1500 people per train with 2 minutes between each train). That is 20 times more than a freeway lane. The reason is that people on a train sit or stand right next to each other, while drivers have an entire car and a lot of space around them. The 7th avenue Transit Mall carries around 18 000 people per hour per direction at maximum capacity (completely full trains). Imagine how many extra vehicle lanes we would require if we didn’t have the train.
So remember, the next time you hear someone mention that transit improvements unfairly favour transit riders, just respond that transit improvements really just favour lots of people over a few people. It isn’t a “War on Cars” it is a War for Efficiency.
In last week’s blog, we discussed creating a goal for Calgary Transit. This goal was to achieve 25% mode share for the commute by 2025 (i.e. 25% of people traveling to work would use transit during rush hour). The idea was to increase the amount of ridership from the current 17%.
Alderman Gian-Carlo Carra (Ward 9) criticized this goal (via Twitter). His critique wasn’t that the goal wasn’t ambitious enough, it that we were measuring it wrong.
What we measure matters. The metrics we use in our lives, whether they are test scores in school, performance measures at work or points scored in hockey, influence what we value and what we focus on. The measurements we use determine how we allocate resources, make a choice between one strategy and another and how we reward different behaviours. That is the first lesson of Gian-Carlo’s critique. In the words of Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in Economics:
If you don’t measure the right thing, you don’t do the right thing.
Gian Carlo was pointing out that by making a goal around just commuters using transit, we end up focusing too much on work trips alone, to the detriment of other trips that transit serves. If Calgary Transit were to focus solely on improving the percentage of commuters using transit, resources would be diverted from routes that service non-work trips, such as people doing errands, going to visit friends or just going out, to those getting to work during rush hour. As well, we would miss all those workers who don’t work the typical nine to five job. If we were to focus only on the the commuter transit user, service hours during off-peak travel periods would be cut and routes not servicing work-trips would be curtailed in order to devote more service hours and resources to getting people to work during those two and a half hours each morning and evening. But by doing this, we would be improving according to the measurement we were using. That just doesn’t seem right.
If focusing on the just the commute isn’t the right metric, what is?
One alternative would be to create multiple goals for transit. We could create not only a goal for work trips, but also for non-peak trips (those trips occurring outside the rush hour) and then compare the two against each other. If we are performing well on transit ridership during rush hour, but not as well on during other parts of the day, we can allocate service hours to bolster service during those non-peak times or focus more on facilitating non-employment developments to locate closer to transit (recreation, shopping etc). The question becomes, how do we measure that?
The percentage of people using transit to work is typically taken from Census data (literally how many people respond to the question “how do you travel to work”), while the percentage of people traveling downtown using transit during rush hour (which just passed 50% this year as we noted in the last post) is calculated by a physical count of all the cars, bikes, pedestrians and transit users going downtown during a particular day each year (called the downtown cordon). However, measuring how many people take transit outside these times or for different purposes is more difficult to measure.
Asking each individual where they are traveling to and why is obviously a costly and time consuming process. Usually proxy measures are used such as fare payments, but this becomes difficult with people who use monthly passes. And then there is the whole issue of transfers. The process can become very complex and difficult very quickly.
That brings us to the second lesson: don’t use a metric just because it is easy to measure. Measuring the percentage of people using transit to get downtown, while complex and time consuming, is more straight-forward than measuring how many people take transit to get to other locations. Just because something is easy (or at least easier) to measure, doesn’t mean it is important.
Transit isn’t just for getting people to work. Great transit cities allow people to use transit to go out for dinner, to go shopping, to visit friends, see the doctor, pick up some groceries for the weekend, play sports, see a movie and many other things. A great transit city is a place where taking transit for almost any trip is convenient, safe and affordable.
One development that will greatly improve this situation is the roll out of the Connect card later this year (if things go according to plan). Apart from being incredibly convenient (passengers with a connect card simply have to “tap” a sensor to pay the fare, which would be deducted from their pre-paid card), the connect card has another benefit, it provides an incredible amount of data for Calgary Transit. Rather than relying on physical counts of passengers or fare collection, the Connect card will provide Calgary Transit with accurate measurements of how many people are using transit, at what times and on what routes (although not perfectly, as not all passengers will be using the cards, but definitely a huge improvement). This will allow us to improve the way we evaluate our transit system by opening numerous other ways to measure performance.
One of these measurements is to think in terms of “Transit Consumption”. This is the total number of transit trips taken each year, divided by the population. This is an interesting metric, because it doesn’t value any particular trip more than another. Using this metric, one person taking transit 14 times a week is equal to 7 people taking transit twice a week. Whether that trip is to get to work, the doctor’s office, or the grocery store, the value is the same. It is definitely an interesting way to look at transit (although it isn’t without its faults either), and may be one more way we can evaluate our transit system.
We should always understand what we are measuring and why. It isn’t just important to measure our progress, it is important to understand what that measurement means. Too often we blindly focus on a improving a measurement thinking we are being diligent, when too often we are being misguided. Choosing the right metric(s) for Calgary Transit is an important part of setting a long-term strategy, and shame on us if we neglect an important part of what transit does, just because it is hard to measure.
Any visionary plan should have a goal, and Route Ahead is no different. With out measurable goals, we have no way of knowing how well the plan is working. The previous goal was to have 50% of downtown workers using transit. That goal was exceeded already in 2012, when the percentage of downtown workers using transit reached 51%.
At Transitcamp, we want Calgary Transit to pursue aggressive goals for increasing transit use in the city. While there are many goals Calgary Transit should pursue internally (such as costs per revenue hour, fare recovery, etc) we think the main focus should be the percentage of people using transit for their commute. Although the methodology isn’t perfect, the Civic Census started collecting data on the mode of transportation to work in 2011, and plans to do so every three years. In 2011, the percentage of Calgarians using transit to get to work was 17%. We think we can do better. But how much better we can realistically do is another question.
Let’s compare Calgary to some other cities in Canada, Australia and the US in terms of transit ridership (Canadian and Australian numbers are from their 2006 census, the US from the 2000 census. Note Calgary had 16% transit use in 2006 according to these numbers). Calgary follows a similar trend among Canadian cities to generally outperform American cities in terms of transit ridership, as shown by comparing to similar sized US cities (from 750 000 to 2.5 million):
As can be seen above, comparing to US cities isn’t a good benchmark, mostly because US cities (outside of New York and a few select very large cities) have such dismal transit ridership. However, comparing to Australian and Canadian cities is a bit more fair, and paints of better picture of how Calgary compares to these cities:
Calgary does fairly well compared to similar sized cities, such as Adelaide, Perth, Edmonton and Ottawa. However, we think we can do better. In fact, we think Calgary can have among the highest transit ridership in North America and Australia.
So what goal should we set for Calgary Transit? We think Calgary can achieve 25% transit ridership by 2025. This is slightly better than Toronto or Montreal currently, but not impossible given the time line (plus it has a nice ring to it).
What do you think? What goals should Route Ahead set for Calgary Transit in the long term?
