Leading the Way: 2011 Youth Summit on Sustainable Transportation

By Mack D. Male · May 7, 2011 at 9:04am

This weekend at the Lister Conference Centre on the University of Alberta campus, about 56 youth from across the prairies and territories are gathered to learn about and discuss public transit and sustainable transportation. Leading the Way is the first regional summit to take place in Canada, other chapters of the Canadian Urban Transit Association will follow suit with their own events later this year.

The conference kicked off last night with opening remarks from Charles Stolte, Manager of Edmonton Transit and Chair of the Canadian Urban Transit Association. He welcomed everyone and shared a few anecdotes from his many years of transit experience. We also heard from Kevin Joll, Manager of Red Deer Transit. He talked about the organizations Vision 2040, an initiative to define the role of public transit in Canada for a 30-year time horizon. He shared this video with us:

Next up was our keynote speaker, Edmonton City Councillor Don Iveson. He spoke about “making a difference” and shared some of his experiences with bringing the U-Pass to life. He had four main pieces of advice for delegates:

Make a strong argument.
Be patient.
Have fun.
Walk the talk.

He noted that it takes time for public transit projects to happen, so even if you make a strong argument you need to be patient. Having fun can help you be patient, and there’s no better way to destroy a strong argument than to not walk the talk!

His slides were fantastic, and contained lots of little nuggets:

“You come out ahead when you invest in public transit.”
If everyone around the world lived the way we do in Edmonton, we’d need about 4 planet Earths to sustain ourselves.
A bus with 12 people is a better investment than a Prius with 4 people. LRT, of course, is even better.

He closed with his popular video on transportation that uses Lego!

The rest of the evening was devoted to brainstorming on the six major questions posted to delegates. The questions align with Vision 2040, and by the end of the weekend each group is going to have a pitch ready to make in a Lion’s Lair competition. It should be interesting to see what everyone comes up with!

The conference runs all weekend, and includes tours of the D.L. MacDonald LRT Garage and the new LEED-certified Centennial Garage. There’s also going to be a dance party on a chartered LRT car! You can follow along on Twitter using the hashtag #LTWSummit. I’ll be posting photos of the event here.

Fun with Open Data and Excel: Edmonton’s Busiest Streets

By Mack D. Male · February 10, 2011 at 9:18pm

Today the City of Edmonton added a new dataset to the open data catalogue – average daily street traffic volumes from 2004-2009. Here’s the description:

Include traffic counts obtained with automatic traffic recorders over the past six years. The volume shown is a total of all vehicles in both directions, over a 24 hour period, for a typical weekday in a year. Volumes shown as a dash "-" indicate no count was undertaken that year. Seasonal adjustments are made to reflect an average weekday during the year. An increase or decrease in volume does not necessarily indicate a trend for a given roadway. Road construction or the introduction of more advanced equipment in 2009 affect the traffic volume numbers.

I’d like to build something interesting with this data, perhaps as part of a future ShareEdmonton release. But to start, I decided to open the data up in Microsoft Excel, something I often do with new datasets. Here’s what I discovered.

First, a few summary points:

There are 1496 street locations in the dataset.
Of those, 823 were counted in 2009. The year with the most counted locations was 2006, at 1076. Just 32 locations were counted every year (2004-2009). There were 531 locations counted in three years or more.
One of the first things I noticed is that every count ends in zero. I know the description outlines that the data is an average, adjusted seasonally, and perhaps for other reasons, but I wonder how close to reality the numbers really are.

Looking at 2009 simply because it is the most recent, there’s a hint of a long tail for the counted locations:

Here are the 200 busiest locations in Edmonton according to the 2009 count:

View Larger Map

To create that map, I used a free utility called Excel to KML. There are all kinds of useful free KML tools online!

Here are the top ten busiest locations in Edmonton, according to the 2009 count:

Calgary Trail SW North of Gateway Park Road SW
Capilano Bridge
178 Street South of 81 Avenue
Highway 216 NE North of Sherwood Park Freeway NE
Anthony Henday Drive North of 87 Avenue
HIghway 216 NE North of Baseline Road NE
Anthony Henday Drive West of Calgary Trail
170 Street North of 95 Avenue
Groat Road North of Victoria Park Road
Highway 216 NE North of Whitemud Drive NE

Some of those are expected, some perhaps not. I decided to look at locations that were counted in at least three different years. If you look at the average daily volumes for that subset, here are the top ten busiest locations in Edmonton:

Quesnell Bridge
Yellowhead Trail West of 231 Street
Calgary Trail SW North of Gateway Park Road SW
Capilano Bridge
Whitemud Drive West of 149 Street
Yellowhead Trail West of Fort Road
Cloverbar Bridge
Yellowhead Trail West of 97 Street
Yellowhead Trail West of 107 Street
Yellowhead Trail West of 127 Street

Plotting the top 25 on a map gives a better sense of the really busy roads – Yellowhead Trail and Whitemud Drive:

View Larger Map

Interesting, isn’t it? Of course, it could get a lot more interesting with some mashups. I’d love to have collision data for the City of Edmonton, to see how closely the number of collisions is correlated with traffic volumes. That’s just one example.

Check out the new dataset in the open data catalogue. If you do something interesting with it, I’d love to hear about it!

Bringing Smart Bus technology to Edmonton

By Mack D. Male · January 22, 2011 at 5:57pm

On Tuesday the Transportation & Public Works Committee will receive a report on Smart Bus technology. In short, Smart Bus technology is actually a collection of technologies that will help modernize Edmonton Transit’s entire fleet of nearly 1000 buses. It includes things like automated stop announcements, automated vehicle monitoring, and yes, GPS location services.

There are a number of reasons that this technology is becoming necessary. For instance, between 2000 and 2009:

Annual ridership increased from 43 million to 68 million (60% increase)
Annual service hours increased from 1.56 million to 2.08 million (30% increase)
Annual passenger concerns increased from 8,327 to 13,616 (60% increase)

During the same timeframe, the number of staff to manage service and concerns increased from 25 to 30, which is just a 20% increase. In other words, “staffing has not kept pace with the growth and complexity of the increased workload.” I would add that if we really want to shift Edmonton’s transportation modes, we need to ensure our transit system is modern and efficient.

That’s where Smart Bus technology comes in. The technologies include:

Automatic Vehicle Location
Computer-Aided Dispatch
On-board Mobile Data Terminals
Real-Time Passenger Information Systems
Automated Stop Announcements
Automated Vehicle Monitoring

What will those technologies do for the day-to-day transit rider? Automated Vehicle Location and Real-Time Passenger Information Systems means no more waiting outside when it is 30 degrees below zero for a bus that is running late – you’ll be able to see the real-time location of your bus using the web or a mobile device. Computer-Aided Dispatch and On-board Mobile Data Terminals means that three buses on your route will never be running together – they’ll be evenly spaced out and thus will stay closer to the schedule because ETS control will know where they are and can provide direction. Automated Vehicle Monitoring means fewer buses broken down on the road, and fewer spare buses sitting in the garage – it’ll help ETS monitor the health of its vehicles to ensure they stay on the roads.

The other technology, Automated Stop Announcements, is really what drove this report in the first place. In some jurisdictions, calling out stops has become law, and there have been fines handed out when drivers failed to call out stops. There is no such legislation here, at least not yet, but we shouldn’t have to wait for that to happen. Automated Stop Announcements is an important accessibility feature of modern transit systems, and helps to support Edmonton’s diverse community of transit riders.

The report has been written to highlight the direct benefits to Edmontonians, but there’s important benefits for ETS itself too. The fleet size for 2011 is 959 buses, and that number is not getting any smaller. It’s amazing how much is done manually at the moment, and how “in the dark” ETS control is most of the time. There is no live telemetry from buses right now, which means any information control does receive is via radio transmission. I have heard that even on a normal day, there are a couple thousand calls into control from drivers. Furthermore, bus maintenance is difficult at best right now. There is scheduled maintenance of course, oil changes, etc., but really until a bus breaks down and must be towed into the garage, ETS doesn’t know if something is wrong. And because of the size of the fleet, the garage is packed – buses are parked nose to tail. The automated vehicle monitoring would let ETS know if something was wrong on a bus currently on the roads, and would enable them to pull problem buses into a “trouble lane” when they come back into the garage.

In the implementation details, the report says that tapping into the City’s open data catalogue “could” be possible. I think that once we have GPS technology on the buses, making that information available to citizens is vitally important and should be considered a “must”. In other cities with the technology, coffee shops have mounted LCD screens that show when nearby buses have arrived (kind of like airport display screens). Citizens always know where the bus is simply by glancing at their mobile device. ETS cannot be expected to write all of that software – Edmontonians will, as long as the data is made available (likely as an API rather than in the catalogue, because the data is “live”).

According to the report, outfitting the entire fleet with all of this technology would cost $32.7 million, and would cost $4.3 million to operate each year. It would take between three and five years to roll out completely. A pilot has been proposed (for 50 buses covering 2 routes) which would cost $3.4 million and would likely start by September 2012. For budgetary purposes, a second option has been included, which is just the Automated Stop Announcements. That would cost $11.5 million to equip the entire fleet, and would cost $1.2 million to operate each year. The corresponding pilot would cost $2 million.

City Council likes options, but they shouldn’t have one in this case. Going with just part of the technology doesn’t make sense. It’ll deliver only partial benefits today, and will cost much more in the future to add the other technologies (which we will have to do at some point). Furthermore, if the Smart Bus technologies are separated, that opens the door for multiple vendors and thus integration problems. I really hope Council recognizes the importance of having all of the Smart Bus technology together at once and doesn’t delay unnecessarily (though I do think it would be worthwhile to figure out if/how Smart Bus technology can be deployed alongside the proposed civic smart card).

I think $33 million to make Smart Bus technology happen across the entire ETS fleet is worth it. The notion of using commodity GPS systems (like cheap cell phones) is attractive, but probably unrealistic given the harsh environment of a bus (hardware needs to be hardened and you can’t be running out to replace components all the time) and other operating requirements. The suite of Smart Bus technologies will provide major benefits to both riders and to ETS itself. And to be frank, the proposed budget is a rounding error compared to the amount of money we plan to spend on LRT, and we need buses to efficiently feed our LRT system to really get the return on investment that is possible.

Let’s bring Smart Bus technology to Edmonton!

You can see the report and attachments here, and you can follow along on Tuesday here.

Edmontonians rank public transportation as the City’s top priority

By Mack D. Male · January 14, 2011 at 9:30am

If it were up to me, that would be the headline on the front of every newspaper and at the top of every news broadcast in Edmonton today. The result was buried in the middle of a report that goes to Council on Monday on the proposed downtown arena, but that makes it no less significant in my mind.

Edmontonians who participated in a statistically valid phone survey from December 20 to December 23 were asked what the key issues are that the City of Edmonton should address. Public transportation, and specifically LRT, came out on top.

The City is addressing this, of course, with an expansive plan to extend the LRT to all corners of the City. Shifting Edmonton’s Transportation Modes is also one of the goals in the City’s 10-year strategic plan, and public transportation is the key to achieving that. But we have to keep pushing. As the City’s Chief Economist John Rose said:

“[LRT is] the urban equivalent of an enabling technology – if you have it, you can do a lot of great things.”

Public transportation is costly – both to build and to operate. No question about that. But it’s worth it, and more importantly, Edmonton’s future success depends on it.

It’s important to remind ourselves, not to mention City Council, that improved public transportation is what Edmonton needs above all else.

Sign of progress

By Mack D. Male · April 28, 2010 at 2:30pm

The new South LRT extension has been the hot topic at water coolers throughout the city this week:

When was the last time that so many Edmontonians were talking about the LRT? Nothing like a little controversy to bring a topic to the forefront. I’ve almost heard more people talking about the delays at 51 Avenue than about the downtown arena! And you know what they say, there’s no such thing as bad press…

Yes it sucks to wait at a traffic light. The City will get the issues sorted out though, I’m sure of that. In the meantime, we should capitalize on the discussions that are happening! Explain to Edmontonians that we’re forging ahead with new LRT extensions and that we’ll learn from this experience.

And wouldn’t you know it, since I started writing this post I received a notice that Bob Boutilier, GM Transportation at the City of Edmonton, will be addressing strategies and challenges associated with fast tracking the NAIT, southeast, and west LRT lines at a news conference tomorrow morning. Excellent!

Start offering bus service to EIA from Century Park!

By Mack D. Male · April 20, 2010 at 9:00am

The Transportation and Public Works Committee will be discussing the issue of transit service to Edmonton International Airport (EIA) today. Let me start by saying that I would certainly take a bus to the airport from Century Park if it existed, and that I think public transit to the airport is extremely important. Or as Councillor Don Iveson said so well:

This is one of those litmus tests of whether we’re a city or a town.

I’d like us to be a city.

There are two key reports that are relevant here. The first was written by the Edmonton Transit System Advisory Board (ETSAB), and it recommends that an experimental ETS bus service operate from Century Park to EIA. You no doubt heard about it in the news. The second was written by the Transportation Department, and it recommends that the City of Edmonton not proceed unilaterally with operating service to the airport.

As part of its report, ETSAB did a survey of about 600 passengers in October 2009 and found the following:

The highlight result is that a remarkable 53% of passenger respondents said they are likely or very likely to use airport transit to and from Century Park. Only 1 in 4 of these EIA passengers (13% of all passengers) need actually follow through with their indicated likely usage, and the service will be profitable. Only 1 in 8 of these supporters (7% of all passengers) need follow through for 50% cost recovery level to be achieved.

The accuracy of that survey was not demonstrated, and the Transportation Department’s report rightly pointed that out.

Transportation’s report also makes note of the Capital Region Board’s role in all of this, and I agree it makes sense for surrounding communities to take part. That said, I think Edmonton should be proactive about transit service to the airport.

Beyond that, the report from Transportation just doesn’t add up. Here are the questions I have about it:

Why is there such a focus on 100% cost recovery, when the rest of ETS operates at about 45%? Only “special event service” and charters are subject to 100% cost recovery, and even with planned fare increases to $3 by 2013, cost recovery is only expected to rise to about 54% (see Transit System Fare Policy C451D for more info)
Why are three new buses required and why would the total cost to acquire them be “at least $1.5 million”? First of all, based on 2008 data (large PDF), the City has no lack of spare buses. With a fleet size of 821 40’ diesels, there are at least 146 spare buses available at any given time, 19 of which are reserved for emergency deployment. So wouldn’t it be cheaper to find a way to reduce the number held for maintenance from 127 to 124? And even if we did want new buses, where does the $1.5 million figure come from? Based on the May 2008 report (large PDF) that discussed trolley buses, the cost for a diesel bus in 2010 was expected to be $425,000 whereas the cost for a hybrid was expected to be $650,000.
Of course, the type of bus chosen has an impact on operating costs, which for some reason are $254,000 more in the City report than in the ETSAB report (even though ETSAB used a figure provided by ETS). That same report on trolley buses found that maintenance costs for the hybrid and diesel buses are similar, but that the hybrids use 15% to 20% less fuel.

And perhaps most importantly, why do both reports focus on a ticket price of just $2.50? Especially considering adult fares are up to $2.75 now. I’d be willing to bet that most people who’d use the service would be willing to pay more. I don’t think $5 or perhaps even $10 is out of the question.

And then, on top of all of that, there’s this article in the Edmonton Sun:

The city’s transportation department is proposing to build a dedicated bus lane along the future LRT corridor from city boundaries to the Edmonton International Airport.

So they’re saying bus service to the airport is too expensive, but they want to build an expensive dedicated bus lane for bus service we don’t even offer? To be fair, this was in response to what could be done to move people were the City successful in its bid for EXPO 2017. Still, Transportation boss Bob Boutilier was quoted as saying:

“There are opportunities to build up that ridership now. The cost of building a bus way is a lot less than an LRT route but people will see the value as ridership crawls up and progresses to a higher capacity.”

I can think of a way to build up ridership right now – start offering bus service to EIA from Century Park!

First Look at Edmonton’s South LRT Extension (Southgate & Century Park)

By Mack D. Male · April 17, 2010 at 1:30pm

On Saturday, April 24, the two newest LRT stations in Edmonton’s network are officially opening to the public, and ETS is hosting a Community Fair to celebrate (on ShareEdmonton). Yesterday, the local media got a sneak peek at the new Southgate and Century Park stations, both of which have been under construction since the Summer of 2007.

The total budget for the South LRT Extension from Health Sciences station to Century Park was $690 million, the vast majority of which ($573 million) came from tax supported debt (to be repaid from the New Deal for Cities & Communities). Construction included two new tunnels: one beneath Belgravia road and one beneath the southbound lands of 111th Street. There are also two new bridges: a one-way bridge over Belgravia Road (connects South Campus to Fox Drive) and one across Whitemud Drive. A total of 26 new light rail vehicles were added to help service the extension.

The total length of the South LRT Extension is 7.361 km:

Health Sciences to McKernan/Belgravia: 0.9 km (roughly 1 minute, 56 seconds)
McKernan/Belgravia to South Campus: 1.375 km (roughly 2 minutes, 24 seconds)
South Campus to Southgate: 2.032 km (roughly 3 minutes, 20 seconds)
Southgate to Century Park: 3.324 km (roughly 3 minutes, 46 seconds)

The McKernan/Belgravia and South Campus stations opened a year ago, and at the time I complained that the media advisory encouraged driving and parking. I’m happy to report that the media advisory for yesterday’s sneak peek said this:

Please note that there is no public parking available at South Campus Station. Members of the media are urged to use LRT to travel to the event.

Much better – I hope future advisories look the same!

We boarded the train at South Campus, and headed for Southgate station (located on 111th Street between 51st Avenue and Whitemud Drive):

For another view, here’s Southgate back to South Campus. Of the two new stations, I think Southgate is my favorite. It mirrors the recent renovations done to Southgate Shopping Centre very well, so it looks like it belongs. The artwork in the station is called “Immense Mode” and was created by Dawn Detarando and Brian McArthur. We learned about all of the new safety features (including the secure washrooms) and got to wander around. Here are a few photos of the new station:

Next up – Century Park (located on 111th Street just north of 23rd Avenue). Unfortunately the batteries in my flip died on the way there, so I don’t have video of Southgate to Century Park. I have the return trip though:

As it is the end of the line (for a while anyway) Century Park will probably be the busiest of the new stations, housing an 1100-stall temporary Park & Ride lot, in addition to 130 existing parking stalls. When the bus routes are changed later this month to feed into the new LRT extension, Century Park will receive the bulk of the traffic. The artwork in the station is called “Continuum” and was created by Cezary and Danielle Gajeweski. Here are a few photos of the new station:

If you’d like to check out the new stations for yourself, don’t miss the Community Fair on the 24th. It’ll also be a great opportunity to learn more about the changes to bus routes.

What’s next? Well in addition to needing funds to expand the LRT in other directions, the City is already planning for the next south extension to Ellerslie Road. The preliminary design was approved by City Council in July 2008. You can learn more about the future extension here. The currrent LRT network was built to accommodate four-car trains, but work is underway to upgrade capacity to five-cars. The McKernan/Belgravia and Health Sciences stations are being upgraded now, work which is expected to be complete in October. South Campus, Southgate, and Century Park already support five-car trains.

In just a single year, we’ve had four new LRT stations open in Edmonton. Let’s keep it up! You can see the rest of my photos from the preview here.

West & Southeast Edmonton LRT Route Recommendations

By Mack D. Male · September 3, 2009 at 10:46pm

This afternoon Edmonton Transit announced its recommended routes for West and Southeast LRT lines. The routes “work towards the Transportation Master Plan’s vision to expand LRT service to all sectors of the City of Edmonton by 2040.” Back in June, City Council approved the LRT Network Plan, which identifies how the LRT system will be expanded. These two routes are part of that plan.

Here’s what the recommended routes look like (click for a larger image):

There was a lot of information shared during today’s briefing, which I did my best to live-tweet. Here are some of the highlights:

This is not the LRT you’re used to – it’s low floor technology with smaller, urban style stations.
Initially, there are seven stations planned for the West LRT route and six for the Southeast LRT route.
The two routes are actually part of a single line, which means you’ll be able to travel from Mill Woods to Lewis Estates without any transfers.
Travel time from either end to downtown will be 20-25 minutes. Both speed and carrying capacity is expected to be the same as the current LRT line.
The estimated cost for each route is between $900 million and $1.2 billion.
Short-to-medium term ridership for each line is expected to be 45,000 riders per day by 2040.
Though bus routes will almost certainly be eliminated, service hours will likely remain the same and will simply shift elsewhere (so in effect, the LRT is making the bus system more efficient).
The downtown connection still needs to be considered.

The routes were evaluated based on a new set of decision-making criteria established in December 2008 for LRT route planning. Initial screening looks at feasibility, community, and environment. The next stage is the specific evaluation criteria, with weights in brackets:

Land-use/Promoting Compact Urban Form (4)
Movement of People/Goods (3)
Feasibility/Construction (2)
Parks, River Valley and Ravine System (2)
Social Environment (2)
Natural Environment (2)

Southeast LRT

Recommended Route
Route Options

The Southeast LRT corridor travels north from Mill Woods Town Centre on 66 Street, continuing north on 75 Street. It then uses Wagner Road to extend either over or under the CP Rail line to 83 Street. From there, it proceeds along 83/85 Street north to 95 Avenue, then along 95 Avenue to Connors Road with the route crossing the North Saskatchewan River, either replacing the Cloverdale footbridge or adjacent to it, and east into downtown to connect to the proposed Quarters development, providing a surface (street level) connection to Churchill LRT station, ultimately connecting to Grant MacEwan College.

Major potential stations: Muttart Conservatory, Bonnie Doon Mall, Grey Nuns Hospital, Mill Woods Town Centre

Key benefit: Direct link to downtown, minimizes traffic impacts to Connors Road.
Key weakness: Neighbourhood disruption.

West LRT

Recommended Route
Route Options

The West LRT corridor goes from Lewis Estates east along 87 Avenue, then north on 156 Street. It connects to downtown via Stony Plain Road and 104 Avenue, providing a surface (street level) connection to Grant MacEwan College.

Major potential stations: MacEwan, Oliver Square, Jasper Gates, MacEwan Arts Campus, Jasper Place, Meadowlark Shopping Centre, Misericordia Hospital, West Edmonton Mall

Key benefit: Direct connection to downtown, opportunity to transform Stony Plain Road into a transit corridor for west neighbourhoods.
Key weakness: Impact on established neighbourhoods.

Discussion & Analysis

At this point, I’m simply happy to see this moving ahead. The South LRT expansion has been going well, and it’s important to keep momentum and interest. The West LRT route has definitely been the more controversial of the two, and I don’t see that changing (which likely means that the Southeast LRT route will get built first).

I talked to Councillor Kim Krushell this afternoon to get her thoughts on the recommended routes. While she too was happy to see progress, she had reservations about the West route, telling me that she didn’t necessarily agree with the weighting of the evaluation criteria. “Some estimates put the number of people working at the U of A at 50,000 and the number working downtown at 60,000. The recommended route bypasses a major employment centre.” While she’s “not against the Stony Plain route” she will be asking questions to better determine if the Stony Plain route is actually better, and admitted that “the Oliver connection is appealing.”

That got me thinking about the impact of the West LRT route on the University of Alberta. While many who work in the area may not replace their vehicles with the bus, there’s a good chance they’d use Park and Ride and take the train to work. Students on the other hand, will almost certainly use the bus if no other transit option is available. I called Students’ Union President Kory Mathewson to get his thoughts: “The biggest impact for students is access to afforable housing. The more transit connections we have to the University, the more options students have.”

I expect to see a number of community meetings and town halls related to the West LRT route over the next couple of months.

What’s next?

This is far from a done deal, and there are a bunch of upcoming events you should know about. First up are a series of public information sessions taking place on September 21 and 23 for the Southeast LRT route and September 29 and 30 for the West LRT route (full details here). This is your opportunity to learn more and to ask questions.

Next is a statutory public hearing on November 9th, followed by a report back in December 2009. Concept engineering, which includes working with individual neighbourhoods to site stations, complete environmental analysis, planning a new maintenance facility site, and further defining the downtown connection, will take place from November 2009 through December 2010. It is during the engineering phase that details like home expropriation will be determined.

Funding is in place for a Lewis Estates Transit Centre and Park and Ride facility (with over 800 parking stalls). The Transit Centre is expected to be completed in March 2010, and the Park and Ride in July 2010.

Beyond that, a lot depends on the direction and priorities set by City Council. We should get some indication of their thoughts at the Transportation Master Plan public hearing taking place on September 14.

To keep up-to-date on these and other LRT projects, visit http://www.edmonton.ca/LRTprojects.

UPDATE: Thinking about the West LRT a little further, does it matter that it doesn’t go directly to the University of Alberta? By the time it’s built, the Quesnell Bridge will be widened and express bus service from West Edmonton Mall to the U of A will likely be quite fast.

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.

Airport Passenger Statistics for Edmonton & Calgary

By Mack D. Male · June 24, 2009 at 11:50pm

Earlier this evening I was a guest on The Lesley Primeau Show on 630 CHED. Along with Brittney, we talked about Twitter. That went pretty much as expected – Lesley doesn’t hate social media, but she doesn’t get it either.

While waiting for the show to get started, we were talking about the Edmonton City Centre Airport (ECCA). I’m in favor of closing “the muni” while Lesley very clearly favors the status quo, or perhaps even restoring scheduled service to ECCA. She feels that Edmonton needs an airport downtown to become a great city – I think we need density in the centre, not an airport.

Things got slightly heated when Lesley said that the only growth the Edmonton International Airport (EIA) has seen was from the consolidation back in 1995. She also said that EIA will never rival the Calgary International Airport, and that growth there has been far stronger. I challenged her on both of these assertions (and have heard others make them recently). Lesley said I needed to do my homework, that I was wrong.

So I did my homework. I wasn’t wrong.

Let’s start with the first myth – that EIA’s growth has only come at the expense of ECCA. Here are the annual passenger numbers for each airport from 1995 to 2008 (I’m going with scheduled passenger numbers, which is why ECCA is 0 after 1996):

Here they are in table format:

YEAR	EIA	ECCA
1995	1943797	835612
1996	3104322	417002
1997	3720623	0
1998	3791574	0
1999	3700016	0
2000	3843321	0
2001	3940416	0
2002	3773800	0
2003	3882497	0
2004	4081565	0
2005	4511451	0
2006	5213992	0
2007	6065117	0
2008	6437334	0

What can learn from those numbers? The key years are 1995-97, obviously (the plebiscite vote took place on October 16, 1995). Passenger traffic at EIA, which had been stagnant since the early 1980s at about 2 million passengers per year, increased by more than the amount that passenger traffic at ECCA decreased. Passenger traffic at ECCA decreased by 835,612 from 1995 to 1997, while passenger traffic at EIA increased by 1,776,826.

Clearly there was something besides consolidation that caused traffic at EIA to increase. Growth at EIA leveled off from 1998 until 2002, but you’ll recall that was a difficult time for the airline industry – Edmonton was not alone.

Now let’s look at the second myth – that Edmonton will always be second to Calgary. Here are the annual passenger numbers for EIA and YYC from 1996 to 2008:

Here they are in table format:

YEAR	EIA	YYC
1996	3104322	6967571
1997	3720623	7547156
1998	3791574	7731034
1999	3700016	8010883
2000	3843321	8090426
2001	3940416	7794519
2002	3773800	7884194
2003	3882497	8576541
2004	4081565	9174039
2005	4511451	10148718
2006	5213992	11279080
2007	6065117	12265754
2008	6437334	12507111

Calgary is definitely busier than Edmonton – nearly twice as busy. Edmonton is in a better position today relative to Calgary than it was in 1996, however. It’s a little difficult to tell from the graph/table above, but Edmonton’s growth overall since 1996 is actually stronger than Calgary’s. Here are the annual percentage increases:

In total, passenger traffic at EIA has increased 107% since 1996, whereas passenger traffic at YYC has increased 80% since 1996.

Is that enough to suggest that Edmonton can emerge from the shadow of Calgary, at least when it comes to their respective airports? Maybe, maybe not. But the data clearly shows that YYC isn’t light years beyond EIA as some would like to suggest.

As an aside, while doing my research I found statistics for EIA for three more years: 394000 in 1962, 755000 in 1973, and 1100000 in 1974.

The public hearing on the City Centre Airport continues tomorrow at City Hall. You can see my resources post here.

Sources: EIA Website, EIA Passenger Statistics, YYC Website, Calgary Airport Statistics, numerous EIA press releases, Wikipedia, Tourism Calgary.