Reasons to Abandon Prior Tunnel Vision

While the C-Train is at present the most successful implementation of light rail transit service in North America, its future effectiveness is at risk. The issue is not one of too few riders, as subsequent analysis will show; nor is it one of too many riders, as prior investigation of Calgary Transit’s light rail expansion strategy made plain. What will bring light rail in Calgary to a screeching halt — if the citizens of our city allow it — will be the deadly combination of inertia and tunnel vision. The managers to whom the people of this city have entrusted the future of the C-Train system are mired in the plans, policies, and political environment of the past, which makes it essential to document the changes in fact that will be needed to precipitate the necessary changes in thought to fortify and expand the C-Train system in new and more effective ways.

Perhaps the most self-evident reason to reconsider the extent and the scale of civic investment in the C-Train system is the sustained and significant rise in light rail ridership in Calgary since 1996, over and above already impressive gains in city population and in system length from that time. From 1996 to 2007, the population of Calgary increased from 768,082 to 1,019,942 inhabitants (Queen’s Printer of Canada, 2007; Queen’s Printer of Canada, 2008; City of Calgary, 2007b), representing a gain of approximately 33 percent, and the overall length of the C-Train system increased from 20.3 miles to 27.9 miles (Calgary Transit, 2008c), representing an approximately 37 percent increase that would be reasonably comparable to the growth in population. As a compilation of American Public Transport Association daily ridership reports since 1996 will demonstrate, however, C-Train ridership has risen from 133,700 riders per day in 1996 (APTA, 1997) to 271,100 riders per day in 2007 (APTA, 2008a) — which means that overall ridership has more than doubled from 1996 levels, representing a 103 percent gain. A relatively simple calculation further demonstrates that on a standard APTA benchmark, daily passengers per mile, the C-Train has grown 48 percent from 6586 to 9719 passengers per mile between 1996 and 2007, in the process both strongly outperforming other North American light rail systems (APTA, 2008c; Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon, 2008; San Diego Metropolitan Transit System, 2007; Regional Transportation District of Denver, 2008) and offering service levels comparable on daily ridership and passenger-per-mile metrics to heavy rail metro systems in major metropolitan regions such as Atlanta and the San Francisco Bay Area (APTA, 2008b; Metropolitan Atlanta Regional Transportation Authority, 2004; San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District, 2008). In a North American context, although it will be some point well into the future before Calgary’s passenger-per-mile figures approach those of New York (APTA, 2008b; New York State Office of the State Comptroller, 1999) or Toronto (APTA, 2008a; Toronto Transit Commission, 2007), Calgary operates what is by any reasonable and statistically valid measure a strong and successful light rail transit system, and has earned its residents’ trust in a stronger, more successful one yet.

A robust light rail transit system will also benefit Calgarians through the strategic escalation of transit-orientated development adjacent to C-Train passenger stations. This concept has been axiomatic to city planning in Calgary since at least 2005 in terms of “[creating] a higher density, walkable, mixed-use environment within station areas in order to optimize use of existing transit infrastructure, create mobility options for Calgarians, and benefit local communities and city-wide transit riders alike” (City of Calgary, 2005e:v). Indeed, the Transportation Research Board identified transit-orientated development in 2007 as a critical step towards building passenger traffic on mass transit systems across North America, noting the additional benefit (2007:91) of “their potential to generate transit trips during off-peak periods (i.e., for restaurants, stores, and entertainment attractions), as well as during the peak commute periods”. In its 2005 ranking of 66 current and proposed C-Train stations by transit-orientated development priority and viability (City of Calgary, 2005c), Calgary Transit was able to hint at Heritage Station’s importance in microcosm to municipal and private-sector site intensification near light rail stations as a whole (2005c:2), and its predictions have borne fruit by way of a station plan envisioning a new and improved Calgary Transit operations and control centre (Calgary Transit, 2007:44), and more tangibly by way of a four-tower, 1200-unit condominium complex advertising its proximity and ready access to Heritage Station as an essential feature (Westcorp Properties Inc., 2008). Although the stated long-range goal of transit-orientated development is to maximise land use and density near mass transit stations, this goal derives fundamentally in Calgary from the existing success of the C-Train system in attracting revenue passengers in the first instance.

In his 2004 re-evaluation of the triple bottom line concept, “Enter the Triple Bottom Line”, business analyst John Elkington identified seven key drivers, or “revolutions” (2004:3-7), that are as applicable to examining the future direction of Calgary’s C-Train system as to responding at the corporate level to “[an] agenda [that] focuses corporations not just on the economic value that they add, but also on the environmental and social value that they add — or destroy” (2004:3). Figures cited above from the American Public Transport Association and from civic censuses clearly articulate the premise that the market for C-Train service in Calgary, the first key driver, is larger and growing more quickly than previously anticipated. What follows from this point is the degree to which Calgarians have taken to using the C-Train system since 1996 as a transportation tool, relative to Calgary’s growth in population — suggesting a fundamental and growing shift in civic values, the second key driver. This document is a direct response to the Plan It Calgary Initiative, which itself is a response to the third key driver of transparency, whereby citizens oblige themselves to offer input and to expect throughput in key municipal decisions. The fourth key driver, life-cycle technology, demands the abandonment of quick fixes in favour of a more strategic and systematic view of overall performance, which in the context of C-Train system planning involves examining ways to take maximum advantage of light rail’s scalability as Calgary’s light rail system matures and expands. Such an exercise demands a level of partnership, the fifth key driver, between passengers and transit managers that integrates trust and responsiveness from both sides into sustained system performance and enhancement. From this point, the sixth key driver — time — becomes important, both as a measure of how quickly service expansions and enhancements can be phased into the C-Train system and as an indicator of how long the system as a whole will be efficient and effective. All of these issues ultimately answer to the seventh and final key driver of corporate governance, and the central issue deriving from this key driver is the extent to which transit directors will be expected — and more crucially, permitted — to direct Calgary’s light rail system by its paying passengers.

For all of these reasons, the growth in Calgary’s population and the dividends being paid to its citizens by the rising success of the C-Train system since 1996 dictate a change in focus for the strategic direction of light rail development in this city. Least-cost routing, whereby the financial efficiency of the system has been paramount in route development, made initial C-Train services feasible and created the early conditions for passenger demand and system effectiveness. The time has come, however, for route development and the expansion strategy of Calgary’s light rail transit service, to follow from greatest-benefit routing, wherein financial considerations — while still necessary and important — are secondary to the ultimate goal of providing the most C-Train service to as many Calgarians as possible. If the Plan It Calgary initiative is to respond to Calgarians’ hopes and aspirations for our city, and therefore if the city is to grow and prosper in a changing world, the C-Train system must become this city’s spine, providing a robust and responsive structure on which Calgarians can built and connect with each other.

Works Cited

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