Some of the methods used by Calgary can be described in this paper, by the way – e.g. Calgary limited park-and-rides, which are expensive to construct.

It’s a basic competence issue – you don’t try to help the competition.

Therein lies the rub for many transit agencies–the “competition” is utterly out of their control, and in many cases is not only competing with transit for users, but for captial as well.

For most transit planners, “lets close down the freeways” is simply out of scope.

Calgary engaged in other cost-saving schemes, such as avoiding tunnels and elevated sections at all costs, including the cost of grade crossings. It also made sure to avoid sharing ROW – the downtown transit mall is reserved for light rail, buses, and emergency vehicles. Right now the city is planning to underground the transit mall, but that’s after decades of successful operation. Other cost-saving decisions were operational (no automatic train operation, no air-conditioning on trains) or managerial.

The original $15 million/km figure is not inflation adjusted. However, unlike many other cities, Calgary managed to keep cost growth below economic growth. C-Train’s website lists the current cost of construction as $15 million/km on the surface, $30 million/km elevated, and $35 million/km underground.

And some terms are used to describe the relative “level” of service, as a combined function of route topology, station placement, etc. “Streetcar” is used in this manner as well, as is “metro” and “light rail”.

The trouble is, there are more different “levels” of service than there are terms to describe them in English. There are at least five different levels of service for rail transit that I can think of:

1) In-street, mixed-traffic running local service, generally with frequ,enty stops.
2) Next-to-street running–often with no physical separation between trains and other traffic (cars, pedestrians), and often without signal pre-emption at crossings.
3) Adjacent to a street (either alongside or in the median), with frequent crossings and stops, but some physical separation between the trains and other traffic.
4) In a dedicated right-of-way apart from a road, with more limited crossings (and crossing gates or other barriers installed), but generally at-grade.
5) In a physically protected (either grade-separated or fenced-off ROW) with no (or few) at-grade crossings and no pedestrian access to tracks or train other than at platforms. May have third-rail electrification, driverless operation, or very high operating speeds (>80MPH or so), all of which are incompatible with 1-4.

The first level of service generally gets called “streetcar”, and the last is often referred to in English as a “metro” (when more specific terms like “subway” aren’t used). But “light rail” runs the gamut between 2-4, and many systems called “light rail” even have significant stretches of 1 and 5. MAX, for instance–the transit mall line and Steel Bridge crossing are #1, the route through downtown Portland and downtown Hillsboro generally is #2, Interstate MAX and the Blue Line along Burnside is #3, the Blue Line between Beaverton and Hillsdale and in parts of Gresham, where MAX uses former freight ROWs is #4, and the freeway-running parts of MAX and the West Hills tunnel are #5.

It might be useful to have terminology which better distinguishes between these. Metro rail has no problem with 15,000 pphpd (and can do many times that), #4 light rail generally has no problem either. But it’s a stretch for street-median LRT, and probably a no-go for #2 and #1–both of which Portland has in spades downtown.

Similar analogies apply to BRT, which depending on the context can refer to any of the above levels of service, albeit with caveats appropriate to bus. And one of the main advantages of BRT is that a route can “drop” to #1 level service for short stretches without difficulty, whereas running trains in mixed traffic severly limits their operating characteristics (length and speed).

I would also say this is usually due to GOOD decisions on the part of the designers of the light rail system. There are very few light rail lines that actually operate near capacity and the cost savings from avoiding grade separations and from single tracking are often worth the capacity hit that you take.

In Calgary’s case they had reserved corridors for high capacity transit since the 1960s and the cost of the ROW is not included in the cost of building the system. Alon’s numbers are also not inflation adjusted. Looking at Wikipedia’s cost numbers for Calgary’s light rail system and inflation adjusting them through the BLS inflation calculator gives an inflation-adjusted cost of $30.7 million/mile, which is low for a light rail system but is understandable given Calgary’s far-sighted decision to preserve the right of way. Calgary also benefits from not having Portland’s short blocks along its route and from having a less extensive road network than many north American cities. As a side note, but related to another thread, Calgary IS an example of a light rail system that has extensive freeway median operation, something that U.S. transit activists often oppose.

Conversely, in many developing parts of the world, landowners will find their land seized for public projects (including transit) for little or no compensation, and with little or no legal recourse.

It’s interesting to compare CTrain (Calgary’s system) to MAX. MAX has nearly double the amount of revenue track–54 miles (84 km) vs 30 miles (48 km) for CTrain. Both operate modest, self-service stations with automated ticket vending, and use the proof of payment technique for fare enforcement. CTrain doesn’t have the Streetcar-ish stop density and street-grid running downtown that MAX does, but is still a mostly at-grade system. Yet CTrain gets nearly 3x the number of riders that MAX does.

I suspect the difference in ridership is not in the competence of the transit planners, or in any particular failure of Tri-Met to adequately design the system. As speculated before, the main difference is that Portland has a robust freeway network whereas Calgary does not. Portland’s freeways are smaller in scope and less modern than the 8-lane behemoths found in places like Southern California; but you can get to most any part of town on them. Calgary is one of a handful of North American cities (especially excluding Mexico) where transit is more convenenient for a significant number of trips than driving; Portland, despite not embracing the full-on auto culture of many other US burgs, is not on that short list.

(For instance, MAX in Portland runs three-minute headways each direction across the Steel Bridge; albeit in two-car trainsets, so the capacity is closer to 7000 pphpd. In order to get that performance, though, they had to add a second line through the downtown street network, which operates in the street grid and can’t do better than 5-minute headways or so. Short block lengths in Portland limit trains to two cars each, but that’s an issue specific to Portland, many LRT systems routinely run longer trains).

The only way a pavement gets that many people through on a lane is if its a busway–or if every vehicle is a minivan, loaded front to back with passengers.

Practically speaking–and this is to address Alon’s point–there’s not many places in the US where there is that level of DEMAND. The reason is simple–we’ve extensively built out and subsidized our road network, and for many trips, the car is a more “rational” choice in the US, especially if you already own one. Comparing transit builders (do you mean transit engineers, planning professionals, managers, or whom exactly?) to “retarded giraffes” is a bit unfair–while planners certainly do stupid things, they also operate under cost and political constraints that don’t exist in Europe.