#bill44 on Twitter by Edmontonians & Calgarians

By Mack D. Male · February 4, 2010 at 11:00am

A little while ago, Paula told me she was interested in reconstructing the Twitter stream that happened last year around Bill 44 (PDF and if you want a summary, Ken has a great one). She tried using Twitter Search but quickly found that it only goes back so far, so she asked if I could help. With a few caveats, I said I could.

The first caveat is that the tweets I have are only from people in Edmonton and Calgary (with their profiles set to one of those at the time). I’m sure other Albertans were taking part too. The second is that it’s pretty hard to find all the back-and-forth tweets for the various conversations, so the ones I pulled out all contain the #bill44 hashtag.

I looked at the data for May and June of 2009. Here’s what it looks like:

I was initially surprised by the double peaks, but Paula helped make sense of it:

The first peak is the night debate went until 3:38 AM and the amendments were defeated. The second spike is the night (and early morning) of the final vote. Debate started the evening of the 1st, and ended at about 3:20 AM on the 2nd. The Twitter chatter continued like mad on the 2nd and 3rd, as people bemoaned the result.

Here are the top ten most active #bill44 users during those two months: KenChapman46, Sirthinks, taudette, DebraWard, robertmcbean, AllieW, ChrisLaBossiere, davecournoyer, Paulatics, bingofuel.

After removing #bill44, #ableg, and RT, this is what the word cloud of the tweets looks like:

And here, in chronological order, is all 2406 tweets:

I have archived that spreadsheet here or you can get the full version here. That means you can download the data set and do your own analysis, if you like!

I agree with Paula and all of the others who have said this: Bill 44 was a landmark moment in Alberta’s social media & political history. I’m glad we were able to preserve a part of it.

As a minor aside, I think this a great example of what could come out of MediaCamp.

State of the Calgary Twittersphere – December 2009

By Mack D. Male · January 7, 2010 at 10:00am

Welcome to the tenth State of the Calgary Twittersphere, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Calgary. You can see last month’s stats here.

The source of the data this month is the same as last, primarily Twitter Search but also from Twitter directly. If a user has his or her location set to Calgary, Airdrie, Okotoks, Cochrane, Strathmore, or matching lat/long coordinates, they are considered a Calgarian.

For December 2009:

# of local users: 7122 (a decrease of 346 from November)

To clarify, that means there were 7122 users who posted at least one tweet in December 2009 with their location set to something that makes them an Calgarian as described above. This number should be treated as a minimum – there are probably many more Calgary users without their location set or that were not captured for some other reason.

Here are the rest of the stats for December 2009:

# of tweets by local users: 324614
# of tweets by local users containing #yyc: 11949 (3.7%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 102959 (31.7%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 89063 (27.4%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 20040 (6.2%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 12294 (3.8%)

Here are the numbers above in graphic form:

Here are the top clients used by local users for posting updates:

Some other interesting stats for the month:

Here are the ten users who posted the most locally tagged tweets (#yyc, #yyctraffic, #Calgary, etc.; most tweets first): FlamesTix, WeatherCalgary, C_DIG, a_picazo, donnamct, nscafe, that_angela, lonnietaylor, paulinate, bettybubble
The ten most active local users (most tweets first): izzynobre, ProtruckR, SalBarguil, nscafe, gengenw, FlamesTix, Kristinnuendo, MrRockNRoll, alex_ruiz, opiatedsherpa
The ten most replied to local users (most replied to first): alex_ruiz, that_angela, gotkube, C_DIG, Eves1, alexflint, ang_J, ReaFaceToFace, wintr
Just over 50% of all local tweets were posted between 9 AM and 5 PM.
Local users posted roughly 7.3 tweets per minute in December, compared with 7.3 per minute in November.
The day with the most local tweets posted was December 4th at 13160. On average, 10472 local tweets were posted each day (compared to 10486 in November).
Of the 102959 replies posted by local users this month, 27586 or 26.8% were to other local users.
A total of 1255 users posted 50 times or more in December. In comparison, 962 users posted just once.

Final Thoughts

As with Edmonton, there was a drop in users this month, no doubt due to the holidays. Christmas Day had the lowest number of tweets posted, at just 7086, but it picked up again by New Year’s Eve. Very interesting this month to see the jump in tagged tweets, from 2.6% too 3.7% or an increase of about 3900 tweets. Calgary finished 2009 with roughly 2 times as many active users than in March (the first month I recorded stats) and roughly 2.2 times as many tweets being posted each month.

Since March, I have identified just over 18,000 local users. The number above, 7122, is how many of them were active in December.

The 2009 year in review stats are coming soon, stay tuned!

State of the Calgary Twittersphere – November 2009

By Mack D. Male · December 22, 2009 at 11:47am

Welcome to the ninth State of the Calgary Twittersphere, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Calgary. You can see last month’s stats here.

For November 2009:

# of local users: 7468 (an increase of 185 from October)

To clarify, that means there were 7468 users who posted at least one tweet in November 2009 with their location set to something that makes them an Calgarian as described above. This number should be treated as a minimum – there are probably many more Calgary users without their location set or that were not captured for some other reason.

Here are the rest of the stats for November 2009:

# of tweets by local users: 314583
# of tweets by local users containing #yyc: 8078 (2.6%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 101430 (32.2%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 83106 (26.4%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 19614 (6.2%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 10867 (3.5%)

I think the retweet number might be a little off, due to the new retweet functionality on Twitter.com, but it’s close. Here are the numbers above in graphic form:

Here are the top clients used by local users for posting updates:

Some other interesting stats for the month:

Here are the ten users who posted the most locally tagged tweets (#yyc, #yyctraffic, #Calgary, etc.; most tweets first): WeatherCalgary, C_DIG, a_picazo, stuartrcrawford, ThankASoldier, studiotodorovic, cityofcalgary, aldjohnmar, alexflint, donnamct
The ten most active local users (most tweets first): izzynobre, ProtruckR, SalBarguil, gengenw, alex_ruiz, Kristinnuendo, a_picazo, that_angela, CalgaryCP, workmanrw
The ten most replied to local users (most replied to first): that_angela, alex_ruiz, alexflint, ang_J, carmenincalgary, C_DIG, gotkube, jonincalgary, myownbiggestfan, calgaryfitness
Just under 51% of all local tweets were posted between 9 AM and 5 PM.
Local users posted roughly 7.3 tweets per minute in November, compared with 6.7 per minute in October.
The day with the most local tweets posted was November 27th at 12799. On average, 10486 local tweets were posted each day (compared to 9630 in October).
Of the 101430 replies posted by local users this month, 24933 or 24.6% were to other local users.
A total of 1296 users posted 50 times or more in November. In comparison, 1123 users posted just once.

Final Thoughts

Edmonton is catching up, but Calgary broke the 300,000 tweets in a single month barrier first! There were just 9 days in November with less than 10,000 local tweets posted. This is the second straight month that user growth in Edmonton has been larger too, though not by very much.

Since March, I have identified just over 17,600 local users. The number above, 7468, is how many of them were active in November.

December and 2009 year in review stats are coming soon!

State of the Calgary Twittersphere – October 2009

By Mack D. Male · November 13, 2009 at 9:30am

Welcome to the eighth State of the Calgary Twittersphere, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Calgary. You can see last month’s stats here.

For October 2009:

# of local users: 7283 (an increase of 139 from September)

To clarify, that means there were 7283 users who posted at least one tweet in October 2009 with their location set to something that makes them an Calgarian as described above. This number should be treated as a minimum – there are probably many more Calgary users without their location set or that were not captured for some other reason.

Here are the rest of the stats for October 2009:

# of tweets by local users: 298538
# of tweets by local users containing #yyc or #calgary: 7464 (2.5%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 88740 (29.7%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 84794 (28.4%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 20120 (6.7%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 9133 (3.1%)

I’ve heard that some folks in Calgary use #yyc while others use #calgary, so I decided to do the stats for both this month. Of the 7464 total tagged tweets, just 934 of them used #calgary. Of those, just 381 did not also include #yyc.

Here are the numbers above in graphic form:

Here are the top clients used by local users for posting updates:

Some other interesting stats for the month:

New stat this month! Here are the ten users who posted the most locally tagged tweets (#yyc, #yyctraffic, #Calgary, etc.; most tweets first): Karaokeworld, a_picazo, C_DIG, SECalgaryNews, aldjohnmar, cityofcalgary, stuartrcrawford, BT_Calgary, that_angela, donnamct
The ten most active local users (most tweets first, with a few bots removed): ProtruckR, Gengenw, workmanrw, scottmiller777, izzynobre, kiambas, Kristinnuendo, CalgaryCP, SalBarguil, a_picazo
The ten most replied to local users (most replied to first): that_angela, C_DIG, Eves1, carmenincalgary, ang_J, alex_ruiz, ReaFaceToFace, myownbiggestfan, gotkube, DarciCollier
Just under 51% of all local tweets were posted between 9 AM and 5 PM.
Local users posted roughly 6.7 tweets per minute in October, compared with 6.1 per minute in September.
The day with the most local tweets posted was October 28th at 11472. On average, 9630 local tweets were posted each day (compared to 8722 in September).
Of the 88740 replies posted by local users this month, 21100 or 23.8% were to other local users.
A total of 1215 users posted 50 times or more in October. In comparison, 1216 users posted just once.

Final Thoughts

User growth was less than Edmonton this month, which doesn’t happen very often! The number of tweets posted by local users is still on the rise, however. There were 5 days in October with more than 11,000 local tweets posted.

Since March, I have identified just over 16,200 local users. The number above, 7283, is how many of them were active in October.

State of the Calgary Twittersphere – September 2009

By Mack D. Male · October 15, 2009 at 9:30am

Welcome to the seventh State of the Calgary Twittersphere, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Calgary. You can see last month’s stats here.

For September 2009:

# of local users: 7144 (an increase of 292 from August)

To clarify, that means there were 7144 users who posted at least one tweet in September 2009 with their location set to something that makes them an Calgarian as described above. This number should be treated as a minimum – there are probably many more Calgary users without their location set or that were not captured for some other reason.

Here are the rest of the stats for September 2009:

# of tweets by local users: 261665
# of tweets by local users containing #yyc: 5867 (2.2%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 80182 (30.6%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 67306 (25.7%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 11788 (4.5%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 7812 (3.0%)

Here are the numbers above in graphic form:

Here are the top clients used by local users for posting updates:

Some other interesting stats for the month:

The ten most active local users (most tweets first): kairocanuck, ProtruckR, larissababe567, CalgaryCP, workmanrw, MrRockNRoll, youthjuice1111, Zarquil, TomAnus2, robertmcbean
The ten most replied to local users (most replied to first): nscafe, kiambas, C_DIG, Eves1, jayincalgary, JohnCornegge, CdnCowgirl, myownbiggestfan, darylcognito, gotkube
Just over 50% of all local tweets were posted between 9 AM and 5 PM.
Local users posted roughly 6.1 tweets per minute in September, compared with 5.5 per minute in August.
The day with the most local tweets posted was September 17th at 10303. On average, 8722 local tweets were posted each day (compared to 7881 in August).
Of the 80182 replies posted by local users this month, 18845 or 23.5% were to other local users.
A total of 1110 users posted 50 times or more in September. In comparison, 1148 users posted just once.

Final Thoughts

I anticipated the user growth for September would have been larger, but at least it’s still going in the right direction! As with Edmonton, the number of tweets being posted by local users is on the rise – there were seven days this month with over 10000 tweets posted.

Since March, I have identified just over 15,300 local users. The number above, 7144, is how many of them were active in September.

State of the Calgary Twittersphere – August 2009

By Mack D. Male · September 16, 2009 at 9:30am

Welcome to the sixth State of the Calgary Twittersphere, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Calgary. You can see last month’s stats here.

For August 2009:

# of local users: 6852 (an increase of 226 from July)

To clarify, that means there were 6852 users who posted at least one tweet in August 2009 with their location set to something that makes them an Calgarian as described above. This number should be treated as a minimum – there are probably many more Calgary users without their location set or that were not captured for some other reason.

Here are the rest of the stats for August 2009:

# of tweets by local users: 244330
# of tweets by local users containing #yyc: 5463 (2.2%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 75678 (31.0%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 67295 (27.5%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 9466 (3.9%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 6945 (2.8%)

Here are the numbers above in graphic form:

Here are the top clients used by local users for posting updates. UberTwitter doesn’t seem to be as popular in Calgary as it is in Edmonton:

Some other interesting stats for the month:

The ten most active local users (most tweets first): kairocanuck, OpenlistCalgary, Kmcdancer123, ProtruckR, ShadderdGlass, gotkube, CdnCowgirl, ThankASoldier, workmanrw, nicolemarr, youthjuice1111 (I put 11 here because OpenlistCalgary is clearly a bot)
The ten most replied to local users (most replied to first): nscafe, gotkube, C_DIG, PeaceBridgeCGY, jayincalgary, CdnCowgirl, kiambas, djkelly, jonincalgary, darylcognito
Just under 50% of all local tweets were posted between 9 AM and 5 PM.
Local users posted roughly 5.5 tweets per minute in August, compared with 5.3 per minute in July.
The day with the most local tweets posted was August 21st at 9521. On average, 7881 local tweets were posted each day (compared to 7694 in July).
Of the 75678 replies posted by local users this month, 20804 or 27.5% were to other local users.
A total of 952 users posted 50 times or more in August. In comparison, 1308 users posted just once.

Final Thoughts

Like the Edmonton numbers, growth in August for Calgary was minimal. It’s the summer, after all! I suspect that growth in September will be higher.

Since March, I have identified just over 13,500 local users. The number above, 6852, is how many of them were active in August.

State of the Calgary Twittersphere – July 2009

By Mack D. Male · August 24, 2009 at 9:30am

Welcome to the fifth State of the Calgary Twittersphere, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Calgary. You can see last month’s stats here.

Apologies for the delay in getting this one posted. The source of the data this month has changed, slightly. In addition to Twitter Search, I added more data directly from Twitter itself. A total of 16,082 tweets were pulled from user timelines directly because they did not exist in Twitter Search.

User identification remains the same. If a user has his or her location set to Calgary, Airdrie, Okotoks, Cochrane, Strathmore, or matching lat/long coordinates, they are considered a Calgarian. If a tweet is “about Calgary” it contains either the word Calgary, the #yyc hashtag, or both.

For July 2009:

# of local users: 6626 (an increase of 980 from June)

To clarify, that means there were 6626 users who posted at least one tweet in July 2009 with their location set to something that makes them an Calgarian as described above. This number should be treated as a minimum – there are probably many more Calgary users without their location set or that were not captured for some other reason.

I’m happy with my previous stats posts existing as point-in-time snapshots. That said, I am continually improving my data set, making it more accurate over time. I am still happy with the numbers I posted for March through May – they are reasonably accurate (within about 100 users). The number I posted for June however, 5646 users, is not accurate. It was actually 6506, which means this month actually increased by 120 users (however I left the 980 above for consistency).

Here are the rest of the stats for July 2009:

# of tweets by local users: 238525
# of tweets by local users containing #yyc: 5028 (2.1%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 72969 (30.6%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 58297 (24.4%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 7713 (3.2%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 8159 (3.4%)

Here are the numbers above in graphic form:

Here are the top clients used by local users for posting updates. You’ll notice that API is now identified separately from web:

Some other interesting stats for the month:

The ten most active local users (most tweets first): _LikeTheAngel, Kmcdancer123, ThankASoldier, euphoricradio, youthjuice1111, strategicsense, NoOnesInControl, eastonj86, mrrocknroll, jacquelinejane
The ten most replied to local users (most replied to first): Kmcdancer123, nscafe, C_DIG, NoOnesInControl, _LikeTheAngel, jonincalgary, ChelseySyrnyk, djkelly, CdnCowgirl, carmenincalgary
Just over 50% of all local tweets were posted between 9 AM and 5 PM.
Local users posted roughly 5.3 tweets per minute in July, compared with 4.8 per minute in June.
The day with the most local tweets posted was July 20th at 8958. On average, 7694 local tweets were posted each day (compared to 6908 in June).
Of the 72969 replies posted by local users this month, 20625 or 28% were to other local users.
A total of 996 users posted 50 times or more in July. In comparison, 1175 users posted just once.

Analysis

There wasn’t much growth in July, which isn’t altogether surprising considering it’s the summer. I suspect things will pick up again in the fall. I’m still fascinated by the difference in tagged tweets between Calgary and Edmonton (you can see Edmonton’s stats for July here).

Since I started recording the stats for Calgary back in March, I have identified just over 12,500 local users. The number above, 6626, is how many of them were active in July.

Twestival Local is happening in Calgary on September 12th! Click here for more info.

Calgary takes first steps toward becoming an Open City

By Mack D. Male · July 21, 2009 at 12:00pm

A motion will go before Calgary’s City Council next week that outlines the first steps in the process of making Calgary an Open City. Calgary follows in the footsteps of Vancouver, which passed a similar motion back in May. DJ has all the details on the Calgary motion here. I think it’s pretty cool that the news is first announced on a blog!

Calgary’s motion will result in a report from City Administration to be presented to Council no later than December 2009, outlining the overall strategy for making Calgary an open city. In particular, the report will identify “opportunities to make more of The City’s data open and accessible while respecting privacy and security concerns , and ensuring that data is available through use of open standards, interfaces and formats.” Other aspects of the strategy will include increasing online citizen participation, procuring and supporting open source technologies, and increasing the number of City services available online.

This is exciting news for developers and other creative professionals in Calgary and elsewhere. I’ve been pushing for open data in Edmonton recently, and I really hope we’re not too far behind our southern neighbours on this issue. There are a number of advantages to making data available in open standards and formats:

Citizens can subscribe to data that is of interest to them
Data can be mashed together in new ways, revealing new information
Visualization of data can help citizens make better decisions
Citizens can work together to organize data
Government can learn more about its data from citizen contributions

Additionally, using well-understood, open formats such as XML or CSV helps to “future-proof” the data. You don’t need proprietary technology to read a CSV file – any programming language or software platform will work.

One issue that isn’t mentioned in Calgary’s motion but which is very important, is licensing. It’s important that when Calgary does make data available, that it does so in the least restrictive way possible. Either public domain, or creative commons, or something similar. It would be a shame if they made a ton of data available and then had ridiculous terms of use around it.

Open data is about empowering citizens to work with their governments. I’m encouraged by the recent interest among municipalities in Canada, and I hope the trend continues.

State of the Calgary Twittersphere – June 2009

By Mack D. Male · July 15, 2009 at 10:00am

Welcome to the fourth State of the Calgary Twittersphere, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Calgary. You can see last month’s stats here.

The source of the data this month remains the same – Twitter Search. If a user has his or her location set to Calgary, Airdrie, Okotoks, Cochrane, Strathmore, or matching lat/long coordinates, they are considered a Calgarian. If a tweet is “about Calgary” it contains either the word Calgary, the #yyc hashtag, or both.

For June 2009:

# of local users: 5646 (a decrease of 215 from May)

To clarify, that means there were 5646 users who posted at least one tweet in June 2009 with their location set to something that makes them a Calgarian as described above. This number should be treated as a minimum – there are probably many more Calgary users without their location set or that were not captured for some other reason. See additional analysis below.

# of tweets by local users: 207245
# of tweets by local users containing #yyc: 4269 (2.1%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 68737 (33.2%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 48114 (23.2%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 6637 (3.2%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 8865 (4.3%)

Here are the numbers above in graphic form:

Here are the top clients used by local users for posting updates (remember that web includes all unidentified API calls too). A notable new entry is UberTwitter:

Since I’ve been playing with some temperature data from Environment Canada lately, I decided to plot the average temperature against the number of tweets for each day in June:

Do people tweet more when it’s colder outside? I’m not sure the graph really tells us. What’s clear however is that people tweet less on the weekends!

Some other interesting stats for the month:

The ten most active local users (most tweets first): mrrocknroll, twitty7x, Kiamba, strategicsense, ThankASoldier, C_DIG, ubershmoo, youthjuice1111, steenyweeny, iKasperr
The ten most replied to local users (most replied to first): C_DIG, Kiamba, ChelseySyrnyk, mrrocknroll, jonincalgary, nscafe, darylcognito, djkelly, ubershmoo, Chazzy84
Just over 52% of all local tweets were posted between 9 AM and 5 PM.
Local users posted roughly 4.8 tweets per minute in June, compared with 4.7 per minute in May.
The day with the most local tweets posted was June 17th at 8725. On average, 6908 local tweets were posted each day (compared to 6824 in May).
Of the 68737 replies posted by local users this month, 18206 or 26% were to other local users.
A total of 908 users posted 50 times or more in June. In comparison, 850 users posted just once.

Finally, here are the top ten users in Calgary by followers (most followers first): douglasi, OksanaIrwin, ahhhgolf, twitty7x, strategicsense, CrazyMechanic, broatch, nolanmatthias, ThankASoldier, tessaru

Analysis

Like the Edmonton stats for this month, the Calgary stats don’t look that impressive. Some people have abandoned Twitter, it’s the summer, and as was pointed out in the comments on the Edmonton post, the Iran Election probably impacted my stats as some users changed their location to Tehran.

There are some encouraging signs, however. The increase in tagged tweets this month surprised me – maybe #yyc will try to catch up to #yeg! Also, since I started recording the stats for Calgary back in March, I have identified just over 11,000 local users. The number above, 5646, is how many of them were active in June.

I didn’t monitor things as closely in June as I do normally, so there’s a chance I might not have captured all of the data. In particular, I’m not sure if June 13th/14th was really that low or if there was a data import error of some kind. Either way, I think the data above represents the overall trends accurately.

I’ll be making some changes to hopefully boost the accuracy of the numbers in July.

Highlights from the Alberta High Speed Rail report

By Mack D. Male · July 7, 2009 at 11:00am

Yesterday the Alberta government released a report assessing the potential for high speed rail service in the Calgary-Edmonton corridor. The report, which has been sitting on the shelf for about a year, was commissioned by the province and was prepared by Transportation Economics & Management Systems, Inc. (or TEMS). There are actually three parts to the report, which you can download here:

The press release included a few highlights, but nothing incredibly satisfying:

Nearly 10 million passenger trips took place in the Calgary-Edmonton corridor in 2006, with the breakdown as follows: 91% were by automobile, 6% were by air, and 3% were by bus.
The faster the high speed train, the greater the ridership and revenues.
People said they were willing to pay fares ranging from $56 to $120 for a one-way trip. (To compare: the lowest fare in the next month on WestJet currently is $99, or by car I can make the trip on about $20 of gas.)

I decided to dig into the report a little further. I was struck initially by the numerical nature of it – if numbers and formulas scare you, avoid reading the report. There is some useful, easy-to-understand data as well though.

The diagram above illustrates the Calgary-Edmonton corridor, and the five stations that would be part of the high speed rail system: Downtown Edmonton, Suburban Edmonton, Red Deer, Suburban Calgary, and Downtown Calgary. Each of the three major centres is called a “super zone”, and includes the surrounding communities, at least for the purposes of the report.

The images above illustrate the four types of generic train technologies used to represent various technology classes.

Talgo – 125 mph or 200 km/hr – diesel
JetTrain – 150 mph or 240 km/hr – turbine electric
TGV – 200 mph or 320 km/hr – overhead electric
Maglev – 300 mph or 480 km/hr – magnetic levitation

According to Wikipedia, the fastest conventional train in the world is the French TGV which set a speed record of 574.8 km/hr. The fastest non-conventional train in the world is the Japanese JR-Maglev which set a speed record of 581 km/hr.

This table outlines the strategies/predictions for each of the above:

	125 mph	150 mph	200 mph	300 mph
Average travel time (h:min)	2:00	1:45	1:35	1:00
Frequency (roundtrips/day)	8	10	14	17
Fare (in cents/mile)	25	35	40	60
Maximum fare one-way (Calgary-Edmonton)	$56	$80	$90	$120
Maximum fare one-way from Red Deer	$28	$40	$45	$60
Ridership (in thousands) in 2051	2821	4301	7656	10745
Passenger revenues (in millions of 2006 $) in 2051	137.1	269.0	610.0	1127.9
Market share (2011-2051 is constant)	1.85%	3.10%	4.84%	6.73%

Some other data points:

Demand for travel in the corridor is predicted to triple in the time period 2006-2051.
Total benefits by super zone are as follows: Calgary (40-45%), Edmonton (30-35%), Red Deer (20-25%)
Economic impact from building the system would range from $4.6 billion to $33.4 billion, depending on the type of technology used.
Growth in the economy of 0.2 to 0.5 percent, depending on the type of technology used.
Between 3400 and 7162 long-term (40 year) jobs would be created across the province.

There’s a lot more data available in the report if you want to take the time to read it.

What’s next? The government says it will continue to look at various options for the province’s future transportation needs, including high speed rail. No decisions have been made at this time, and the report itself makes no recommendations. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of support for the idea at the moment.

I personally think if the province is going to be spending money on transit, it should be on city and regional transit. Both Edmonton and Calgary could use the assistance to improve their respective transit systems – something akin to MoveOntario 2020 and Toronto’s Transit City.

This issue certainly has legs, however. It has been brought up and discussed many times over the years. You can follow along and participate on Twitter using the hashtag #abhsr. For more general Alberta political topics, use #ableg. There’s some great commentary up on the stream already.