S.E. TRANSIT DROPS DOWN PRIORITY LIST

Highest marks go to bus-only lanes on Centre Street

If you want to know whether your alderman supported a cost-benefit analysis on major bus corridor projects, the city map is a pretty good guide.

The route comparison gave highest marks to separated bus-only lanes down Centre Street and to the deep southwest, and aldermen in those districts voted to support the numbers that supported their wards.

The nays came from represen- tatives in wards surrounding the $620-million southeast busway and 17th Avenue S.E. corridor, which got poorer marks.

The critics of the analysis won 7-5 at committee, likely setting up a final decision in front of full council in September, right before the civic election.

High stakes are riding on this decision: The city has about $200 million in provincial “Green Trip” funds to carve up. In December, planners proposed using more than half to start the southeast busway, and to devote $55 million to Centre Street and $23 million to the International Avenue corridor.

But that was before the costbenefit analysis aimed to reorder priorities for this round of funding and future ones.

“If we choose to ignore it, I think that would be foolish,” said Ald. Druh Farrell. She represents part of the Centre Street route, where buses are routinely full weekday mornings and can’t take more passengers.

Calgary’s southeast corner is the largest transit desert in the city, and Ald. Shane Keating’s ward is the only one not touched by a single LRT stop. He led the charge to oppose the analysis which he said would deny his district transit upgrades for the foreseeable future.

“I am saying this is a desperate need in my area, full stop, end of story,” Keating told reporters. “And it’s finally time that council directed funds to go to that area. Not all the funds, but certainly some.”

The cost-benefit analysis considered not only construction costs and ridership, but also redevelopment potential along the route and travel time savings. The bulging cost of the southeast transitway — about six times more than the Centre Street route — bumped it significantly down the list.

Farrell won support from Centre Street area’s Ald. Gael MacLeod, and the 14th Street S.W. route’s Brian Pincott, Diane Colley-Urquhart, and Ald. Gord Lowe, who applauded the statistical basis of the bureaucrat’s analysis and denounced the political bickering that would discard the numbers.

“The beauty contest for what’s up first has been on for three years,” Lowe said.

Keating voted with southeast colleagues Peter Demong, Gian-Carlo Carra and International Avenue representative Andre Chabot. As did northeast Ald. Ray Jones and west-end members Richard Pootmans and Dale Hodges.

MacLeod reasoned that just because the cost-benefit comparisons put the southeast route last in this round doesn’t mean it’s doomed to be last forever. The cost-per-rider comparisons will change when it eventually comes time to debate building the north-central LRT — which will need a fully new right-ofway — and the southeast LRT, which would be constructed on the special roadway the city has proposed for buses down to Douglasdale.

“When we’re comparing apples to apples, LRT to LRT, you’ll see a much different equation than when we’re talking a transitway versus what’s essentially a pre-LRT route (in the southeast),” MacLeod said.