| When the Calgary Electric Railway debuted in 1909, developers in and near the young city had a love affair with the new streetcar service. The horse and buggy was the main transportation choice of the day, and the streetcar marked a new kind of convenience and ease in travel.
A British entrepreneur named John Hextall started developing the community of Bowness in 1911, and transit was one of the first things on his mind. Hextall decided to give the City of Calgary the land that is Bowness Park in exchange for streetcar service to his new community. The construction of the track went quickly across the open prairie, taking only a few months.
Almost a century later, Calgary is still burgeoning with new suburban development. But laying LRT track isn’t as simple as digging holes for ties and slapping rail over top. Public transit in most North American cities has taken a back seat to the automobile, and Calgary’s infrastructure reflects this priority. Where developers once pulled Calgary’s transit system well beyond the city limits, transit now struggles just to reach the city’s outermost communities.
REACHING THE LIMITS
When a developer decides to create a community, they pay a transportation tax to the city for road projects in that community. Calgary Transit sees none of that money. While locations for bus stops and routes are considered during the planning process, transit usually lags far behind the immediate construction of roads.
"The biggest challenge we face is keeping pace with the demand for transit in up to 20 new communities that are developing at the same time," says Ron Collins, Calgary Transit’s spokesman.
When service finally does get started in new communities, it’s usually in the form of a shuttle bus that runs only during peak hours.
"I think they actually lose some transit patrons because of their inability to actually fund transit in the initial start-up phase of the community," says Bob Clark, a vice-president for Carma Developers Ltd. Carma has built several suburban communities in Calgary, including Tuscany and McKenzie Towne.
For Calgary Transit, the challenges are many. Like most North American transit systems, they’re strapped for cash. Gone are the days when developers would exchange land with the city for transit service.
"There was a shift in (developers’) thinking in about the 1920s," says Donald Bain, a retired businessman who has documented Calgary Transit’s history in his book Calgary Transit: Then and Now. "But maybe there should be a tax put on developers to provide transit. Maybe the time has come to do that again. They’re going to have to do something."
Since Calgary Transit gets none of the tax that developers pay the city, they rely heavily on money in their fare-boxes to pay for service. (Half of Calgary Transit’s revenue comes from fares.) And if there are no buses running in a community, there’s no money in the boxes, and so it goes.
Bain says that if transit could be implemented immediately in new communities, Calgary Transit could woo potential riders with good service.
"The only way you can get riders is by providing a transit system that people find attractive," Bain says.
To that end, some developers have subsidized certain transit routes to make their communities more marketable. Carma, for example, subsidized the operation of a shuttle bus in McKenzie Towne for over a year when the community first started.
"We certainly saw a benefit because it’s a transit-oriented neighbourhood," says Clark.
But developers are under no obligation to contribute to transit, and developer subsidies are the exception and not the norm.
TRANSIT-FRIENDLY DEVELOPMENT
While city planners map out transit service in suburban Calgary, they’re also trying to deal with Calgary’s urban sprawl and road congestion. They may be helped along by a planning concept that’s as old as the streetcar: transit-oriented development.
Essentially, this concept is about building walkable, high-density development near C-Train stations to encourage transit use.
Alderman Bob Hawkesworth says this concept can be key in changing the city for the better.
"Primarily, it’s to reduce the number of vehicle trips on the roads," says Hawkesworth. "It reduces urban sprawl. There are lots of advantages."
Transit-oriented development includes housing, stores and services, recreational facilities, and the pedestrian infrastructure that makes the area around a C-Train station an enjoyable place where people will want to spend time. Everything is built with the realization that all transit users start and end their trips as pedestrians.
City planners cite the Lions Park and Bridgeland/Memorial stations as examples.
Unlike the Chinook station, where you have to walk for almost 10 minutes to get to the mall of the same name, the Lions Park station is a stone’s throw away from North Hill Mall and high-density apartment buildings.
"If people live right on top of an LRT station, their transportation options are so much better," says Hawkesworth.
Calgary has plenty of examples of non-transit (or pedestrian) friendly development. At shopping destinations like Crowfoot and Signal Hill, the tan-coloured buildings are spread far apart, and pedestrians have to traverse awkwardly (and often dangerously) across parking lots and roads to get from one store to another. Storefronts aren’t close to sidewalks on the road, but are planted firmly at the back of the Wal-Mart-style parking lots.
City planners say that this kind of commercial development poses a big challenge.
"We want stores to be right by the sidewalk and road," says Glen Radway, a senior planner for the city. "What they want is a big sea of parking."
Radway also says that developers who build around transit stations won’t be able to steamroll over communities, but will enter into a symbiotic relationship with them.
"Transit-oriented development should be able to help existing communities," says Radway.
Nigel Waters, a geography professor at the University of Calgary, suggests that once the northwest leg of the C-Train is extended past Dalhousie, some of the older stations could be redeveloped.
"Perhaps you could reduce the parking lots at the Brentwood and even at the Dalhousie stations, and then put in more transit-oriented, high-density residential development," says Waters. "That would help, but retrofitting is a little bit difficult."
In fact, that’s what city planners have in mind. Radway points to the Anderson station as an example. It used to be the end of the south line, so there’s a lot of parking space owned by the city. Since the line now goes further south, some of that land can be used for other things.
"That’s the station we’ve been telling council we’ll probably do," says Radway.
Waters says that the city planners are coming up with good ideas that make a lot of sense for Calgary.
"It’s just getting their political masters to have the will to move that in the right direction that seems to be the challenge," says Waters.
MAKING IT HAPPEN
The ideas are in place. City council recently approved transit-oriented development guidelines for developers to follow. But if the ideas are to transform into bricks and mortar, both city council and developers will have to actively see it through.
"We need developers to be interested," says Hawkesworth. "Now that we have the ground rules in place, it’s a matter of building partnerships with developers to get the job done. They have to benefit as well as the city has to benefit."
Hawkesworth says it’s largely council’s responsibility to make sure the ideas become a reality.
"At the end of the day, the key component here is whether members of council have the imagination, vision and foresight to support this kind of development," he says. "I think it’s in the public interest. After all, the public has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in our LRT system." |
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