From the Calgary Herald – Nov 20, 2007

The release of the Vital Signs report by the Calgary Foundation, the significant slippage in citizen satisfaction on the recent citizen satisfaction survey, and the unprecedented loss of three incumbents in last month’s election all point to the same thing: Calgarians are feeling uneasy.

They know that we need change in how we run the city. It’s not the same city as in 1985, just a bit bigger. Business as usual just won’t cut it anymore.

That’s why it’s so important for council to pay a lot of attention to the “planning” part of strategic planning as it heads into its priority-making session Wednesday. (It may surprise some to know that they are only just now starting the priority making, after they have spend nearly a billion dollars in their first meetings, but that’s part of the problem here.)

Public transit is a prime example. While my colleagues at the Better Calgary Campaign and I applaud this council’s new-found commitment to transit, we remain concerned that the investments that council has chosen may not be the right ones.

First, some background. As we have argued in the past, investments in public transit are the single most important expenditures city governments can make. Great public transit systems are the answer to so many of the problems that plague us — congestion, air pollution, even poverty and social isolation can be alleviated by transit systems that work.

However, Calgary Transit’s growth seems to be happening without any planning at all. To be sure, there is a long-term capital plan, but this plan seems almost entirely focused on the LRT system, not bus and other solutions, and is focused on getting people downtown by train.

The publicly available plans ignore east-west and circle routes, and discuss Bus Rapid Transit only in the context of filling in until LRT can be built. Each of the three major investments recently announced

either violate this plan, or no longer meet the city’s needs .

The West Line: an answer in search of a problem.

When the proposed routing for the West LRT was drawn up nearly 25 years ago, the land west of Sarcee Trail was meant to be an employment centre — that’s why the LRT was supposed to go there.

Given that it has grown up as a conglomeration of retail and low- density housing, why are we continuing down this path?

Rather than commit $1 billion or more to building and operating this line, we need to answer some difficult questions: Is this line needed at all? Would dedicated busways on Bow Trail, for example, divert nearly as much traffic at a fraction of the cost? Are other LRT extensions, especially the southeast line, a better way to go? If the west line is built, how can we best serve the high-density neighbourhoods and employment centres that it skips, including Mount Royal College?

When the McKnight-Westwinds station is opened next month, the LRT will be within sight of the airport terminal, with largely bare land in between. While the plan has not been to extend this line to the airport, doing so is the cheapest, smartest answer both for serving travellers and the thousands of people who work there. Once the new airport runway is built, we can never have this option again, and we will regret not taking it.

Instead, the proposed extension, which does not even appear in transit’s 20-year plan, turns its back on the airport and cuts through the heart of an existing neighbourhood, Martindale. The routing cuts through that residential community, passing within a couple of blocks of an elementary school on a quiet road. Why not divert the route to serve Martindale and not disrupt it?

The northwest extension: the right use of $100 million?

The northwest LRT extension is the most egregious of the three. It doesn’t appear anywhere in transit’s plan, and it serves two communities only, one of which — Tuscany — is one of the lowest- density neighbourhoods in the city.

Imagine what the same investment could be applied to: several BRT lines running across the city on east-west and circle routes, as well as downtown, for example. How about a BRT serving only five stops –Whitehorn station, U of C, Foothills Hospital, Mount Royal College and Chinook station, for example? Why not a dedicated bus way and system of line reversals on 14th Street? On the operating side, it could hire an additional 133 operators for 10 years. Is a one-stop extension really worth this?

What should council do? At the very least, it should shut down the N.W. extension, and redirect the funds to higher-priority items, like a spur line to the airport or faster expansion of platforms to fit four-car trains. Most important, though, they need to stop and think. A four-month moratorium on building might be costly, but would pay benefits far in excess of any costs.

Naheed Nenshi, instructor of nonprofit studies at Mount Royal College’s Bissett School of Business, volunteers with the Better Calgary Campaign.

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