Happy New Year, and More Exact Change, Please

It wouldn’t be wise, especially given how easily The Fishwrap’s city beat reporter got Franked a couple of weeks ago, to suggest that the reaction to this morning’s story about Calgary Transit’s fare hikes for 2010 stems entirely from the shut-ins and sociopaths who so enjoy frothing at the mouth in online media comment boxes.

In the broader context, though, the optics of increasing transit fares in the face of a tentative economic recovery are not good. Cash fares are poised to rise $0.25 to $2.75, tickets in ten-pack booklets are slated to rise by a dime to $2.40, and monthly passes are expected to cost $2.25 more a piece at $85.25. When the prices of C-Train tickets, property taxes, power bills, and for that matter bread and butter are all going up, and pay packets are not, Calgarians are naturally going to feel squeezed, threatened, and taken for granted. Also, the pressure on Calgary City Council to deliver a balanced municipal budget for 2010 later this month with as modest an increase in mill rates as possible under the circumstances suggests that service hours on already-underutilised feeder bus routes will be the first item on the chopping block; the effects of the ensuing vicious circle I will leave to my Gentle Readers to determine. One readily appreciates the sense suburban transit patrons would thus experience of being kicked where the hair is short.

Let’s try to put things into perspective, however, and show a little pity for the good burghers of Toronto. (Please. Try. Just a little.)

The Toronto Transit Commission, an entity with its own reasons for giving people cause to complain, approved its own round of fare increases for 2010 a couple of days ago. Red Rocketeers will pay $0.25 more for cash fares at $3.00, $0.25 more for a charmingly quaint metal token at $2.50, and a sobering $12.00 more for a monthly Metropass at $121.00. Now while the TTC imposes a more substantial burden on its patrons to keep the lights on and the trains, at least most of the time, running — farebox revenues cover about 68 percent of TTC operating costs, compared to about 55 percent on a good day for Calgary Transit — the scale of the fare increases Hogtowners are facing very much calls the value proposition of The Better Way™ into question. It also casts some light on the deal Cowtowners get for public transit, or at least for the C-Train and for higher-demand trunk routes, based on what we’re begrudgingly willing to pay at the farebox.

Here are the two systems’ 2010 fare increases head to head:

Calgary Transit:
Cash Fare: $2.50 in 2009, $2.75 in 2010; increase of 10.00%
Ticket Fare: $2.30 in 2009, $2.40 in 2010; increase of 4.35%
Pass Fare: $83.00 in 2009, $85.25 in 2010; increase of 2.71%
Pass/Ticket Multiple: 36.09 in 2009, 35.52 in 2010; decrease of 1.58%
Pass/Cash Multiple: 33.20 in 2009, 31.00 in 2010; decrease of 6.63%

Toronto Transit Commission:
Cash Fare: $2.75 in 2009, $3.00 in 2010; increase of 9.09%
Token Fare: $2.25 in 2009, $2.50 in 2010; increase of 11.11%
Pass Fare: $109.00 in 2009, $121.00 in 2010; increase of 11.01%
Pass/Token Multiple: 48.44 in 2009, 48.40 in 2010; decrease of 0.08%
Pass/Cash Multiple: 39.64 in 2009, 40.63 in 2010; increase of 1.74%

One point we need to compare here between Calgary and Toronto is the annual increase in price of each fare medium. The TTC wins the showdown on cash fares, rising 9.09% in contrast to the 10.00% increase Calgary Transit will see. Where tickets, tokens, and monthly passes are concerned, though, Calgarians are getting a break that their counterparts in Toronto are not. The price of a Calgary Transit ticket in a ten-unit booklet is set to rise 4.35%, while a TTC token, usually sold in units of four, will increase by 11.11%. The price increase of a Calgary Transit pass works out to 2.71%, which is in stark contrast to the 11.01% jump in the price of a TTC Metropass. These numbers imply a much stronger incentive for Calgary Transit passengers to buy ticket books or monthly passes instead of paying cash at the farebox than Red Rocketeers would have.

The other figures worth mentioning are the multiples, which quantify how many fares one would have to pay at the box to cover the cost of a monthly pass. For the TTC, the Pass/Token Multiple stays almost the same, sliding an infinitesimal amount in 2010 from 48.44 to 48.40, meaning that one would have to buy just over four dozen TTC tokens at the bulk rate of $2.50 to cover the $121.00 cost of a 2010 Metropass; perversely, the Pass/Cash Multiple rises slightly in 2010 from 39.64 to 40.63, meaning that even with the increase in cash fares to $3.00, one has to pay one more cash fare in 2010 than in 2009 to cover the price of a Metropass in Toronto. On Calgary Transit, meanwhile, the Pass/Ticket Multiple drops slightly in 2010 from 36.09 to 35.52, and the Pass/Cash Multiple dips significantly in 2010 from 33.20 to 31.00, so that a monthly Calgary Transit pass saves about half a ticket or two cash fares more in 2010 than it does in 2009. What these numbers mean to my Gentle Readers is that Calgary Transit is nudging its passengers in favour of ticket books and monthly passes by way of making the best of the bad situation hiking cash fares by a quarter represents, whereas the Toronto Transit Commission is sharing out the fare-hike misery more or less equally.

Do these figures indicate the superiority of Calgary Transit over the TTC? Not by a long shot, as anyone trying to get across town from deepest, darkest Douglasdale on evenings and weekends would attest. There’s a lot of hard work to be done over the next several weeks, months, and years to do transit right in this town, but for what Calgarians are paying at the farebox for our C-Train, trunk route, and feeder bus service, we could be doing much worse.

The turn in the weather over the past few days has made the footing treacherous and the going slow for man, beast, and automobile alike here in Calgary. It also brought to mind a photograph an enterprising Ottawa resident contributed to cyberspatial posterity last winter, and one that seemed appropriate to share through the magic of diydespair.com:

So Much for Stoney Trail

With the recent news of the failed referendum on the southwest extension of Stoney Trail, the discussion of completing Calgary's ring road -- at least that part of the discussion not given over to dark, conspiratorial mutterings -- is turning to potential options for Plan B, involving some sort of grade-separated expressway link across the Elbow River through the Weaselhead Flats and the Glenmore Reservoir. The illustration below hints at the scope of the problem:

This is what a partial cloverleaf interchange at 66 Avenue SW and a southward extension of Crowchild Trail would look like. I leave it as an exercise for my Gentle Readers to compute the chances for the poor souls at ABDoT and the City of Calgary to convince sixty-odd residential landholders in the leafy, bucolic suburban environment of Lakeview, along with the owners of the Earl Grey Golf and Country Club, that a thousand metres of newly-planned expressway would be just the ticket to serve the greater good and to ensure the safe and efficient movement of freight traffic throughout the city.

A Little Exercise in Fare Predictions

Edmonton Trail Transit Service Radii

This diagram could use a little explanation.

What I wanted to do was see for myself whether a 504 Edmonton Trail Car would be crowded out or made redundant by previous proposals for light metro C-Train service through north-central Calgary. My hypothesis was that a tram serving more stops more slowly would attract more riders to stops within a 400-metre service radius than to light metro stations (serving fewer stations less slowly, natch) within a 600-metre service radius. To illustrate the conditions on the ground for this hypothesis, however, I needed to draw myself a picture. Thus the product of the magic of Microsoft Paint before your slavering fangs right now:


Line 203 of the C-Train (north to southeast) is the line in green, with smaller blue circles illustrating 400-metre radii from stations and larger, fainter blue circles illustrating 600-metre radii. Line 204 of the C-Train (the orbital line) is the line in orange, with smaller orange circles illustrating 400-metre radii from stations and larger, fainter orange circles illustrating 600-metre radii. The 504 Edmonton Trail Car, in contrast, is the line in red, with smaller yellow circles illustrating 400-metre radii from stops.

UPPITY DATE: I've run some calculations that show a target ridership for the 504 Car in the range of 2,219 to 3,573 daily passengers per mile. The most recent APTA numbers for the C-Train, in contrast, show 10,663 daily passengers per mile.

Garrison Square Turning Radii

This quick-'n'-dirty diagram shows potential vehicle turning radii at Garrison Square SW, the central gathering and amenity point in Calgary's inner-suburban Garrison Woods development. The white circles each represent a turning radius of 25 metres, while the yellow "yolks" each represent a turning radius of 18 metres.

That these figures represent the standard and compressed turning radii of a Siemens Transportation Systems S70 Avanto is not entirely coincidental.

Hey, Let's Make This an Open Letter to TDL Group's Paul House! Why Not?

What follows herein is the text of a facsimile I transmitted earlier today to Paul House, the executive chairman of TDL Group Corp., the parent company of the Tim Hortons donut chain.

Thank you so much for the astonishing display of ineptitude and indifference to your customers that it was my dubious pleasure to experience today at your Tim Hortons outlet at the intersection of 11 Street and 12 Avenue SW in Calgary.

My investment of five minutes’ queuing and $4.29 in a box of a half-dozen donuts will be my last at Tim Hortons. Although I must confess to some surprise at the absence from your outlet’s display case of the strawberry jelly donuts on which my wife had set her heart today, what I found particularly galling was the utter lack of interest your outlet’s counter staff demonstrated in identifying an alternative product offering, or even in investigating whether a refreshed supply of said donuts might be in the preparatory stages. Furthermore, when I subsequently informed your outlet’s counter staff that I would, against my better judgement, accept two plain old-fashioned donuts, two Boston Cream donuts, one maple dip donut, and one chocolate glazed donut, I was surprised and nonplussed, to say the least of it, to be offered a box of a half-dozen donuts with none of the selections I had requested. In addition, while I can accept on a conceptual level that Tim Hortons outlets generally and the Tim Hortons outlet at the intersection of 11 Street and 12 Avenue SW in Calgary particularly might not accept the Visa card that I proffered to complete today’s transaction, I cannot and will not countenance the brusque, unpleasant, and perfunctory tone in which I was informed of this specific tenet of TDL Group Corp.’s company policy. When you compound these events with the domestic disappointment and discord that took place, and with the documentation of these proceedings that was of course the inevitable product of today’s experience, you will surely agree that the negative customer experience and the ultimate consequences of my decision to make a Tim Hortons purchase today far exceed the monetary and gustatory value that might be inherent to a Tim Hortons product.

Please rest assured that I have no intention of ever again darkening the doorways of a Tim Hortons outlet, whether at the intersection of 11 Street and 12 Avenue SW in Calgary or elsewhere. The experience is simply not worth the time, the money, the strife, or the aggravation.

Six C-Tram Routes in Search of a Champion

Some more maps for you folks to ponder:

The 501 Beltline Car;

The 502 Red Mile Car;

The 503 Mission Car;

The 504 Edmonton Trail Car;

The 505 Richmond Road Car;

The 506 Grand Trunk Car.

Антракт: Новые и усовершенствованные схемы Си-Трэйна