Demand grows for late-night transit
As Calgary moves toward a “late-night economy” — driven by a younger, inner-city-loving, vehicle-averting demographic — the need for latenight transit increases, say business and taxi advocates.
On Wednesday, a city council committee passed a draft of its ambitious 30-year transit blueprint: RouteAhead. It mentions the demand for late-night transit service — something downtown groups are already noticing.
“The demand is there,” said Maggie Schofield, executive director of the Calgary Downtown Association.
People living and working in Calgary’s inner city are increasingly dining and entertaining at later hours and eschewing owning a vehicle, Schofield said.
“It’s quite a large piece of our economy and basically they’re left with little or no (transit) service,” she said, referring to patrons and staff of Calgary’s late-night establishments.
Providing transit for night owls also adds a safe and cheap alternative for staff who finish work in the wee hours.
“We want to make sure that the person who is leaving that club who has been working there all night is going to get home safely,” Schofield said.
But providing late-night tran- sit service won’t happen anytime soon — and it certainly won’t come cheap, says Chris Jordan, manager of RouteAhead.
“The challenge really is financial,” Jordan said.
“A bus or train is an expensive, high-capacity tool to address the late-night demand. Nevertheless it’s something that citizens identi- fied as something for us to work on over the course of the 30 years of the plan.”
Thirty-three per cent of respondents to RouteAhead’s online survey cited late-night transit service as a priority, below real-time arrival signs, CTrain repairs, peace officers at night and cleanliness.
The report calls for a pilot project to investigate the costs and benefits of late-night service on key transit routes — a project at least two years down the road, said Jordan.
The bigger question, he added, is whether Calgarians are willing to pay for that service when there will likely be a “significant financial impact” that would be bore by the city and paying customers.
Meanwhile, Jonathon Campbell, the chair of the taxi and limousine advisory committee, said late-night transit would help ease the demand on the cab industry, particularly during high-demand periods.
“At the end of the day it (more cabs) will never be enough to cover that panic on Friday and Saturday night,” said Campbell. “We’re asking the city to partner with us to facilitate more late night transport with the LRTs and suburban bus transit.”
In August, the city issued 55 new taxi licences to boost the number of late-night cabs serving Calgarians, bring the total number of cabs serving the city of 1.1 million to 1,311.
Increasing the number of taxi licences doesn’t solve the taxi crunch during peak periods and makes it more difficult for cabbies to make money the rest of the week, Campbell said.
“We were expecting more priority put on the late-night transit because they indicated that there was going to be,” Campbell said. “Now it’s one of those things we’ll have to look into and gain support and influence to see what we can get done.”