Leong: Calgarians back on transit — politicians need to come aboard

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Four years ago, as we entered our first pandemic spring, we were often bored out of our minds.

We entertained ourselves by binging television show and podcasts, hoarding toilet paper, baking large quantities of sourdough bread, and making bold predictions about what the world would be like once we were done with COVID-19.

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One such prediction: no one would be using public transit anymore.

That one was clearly wrong, for Calgary anyway.

Ridership statistics published by the city last week show a continuing rebound for Calgary Transit, with 25.5 million trips recorded across the system in the first quarter of 2024, up 21 per cent over the same period a year earlier.

Additionally, there were almost 8.8 million CTrain boardings in March 2024, breaking a November 2014 record for monthly LRT ridership.

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Meanwhile, data released earlier by the American Public Transportation Association shows Calgary was among North American’s top performers in 2023 for post-pandemic transit ridership gains, recovering to almost 90 per cent of 2019 levels.

In this category, Calgary was outdone only by Miami — whose system carries a much smaller number of people — with ridership almost at 100 per cent of pre-COVID numbers.

In terms of transit trips per resident, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Edmonton are at the front of the class among North American cities, with only New York ranking ahead of them.

This real-life success is something to be happy about.

But those positive feelings are hard to translate into the world of politics — the place where important people hold the purse strings for things like public transit.

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This is sadly true of the Green Line, Calgary’s largest infrastructure project to date with a price tag of about $5 billion.

Green Line concerns rise, alongside its price tag

The price tag was set about a decade ago — but we would eventually learn it was too optimistic, given the complicated nature of the project.

And with post-pandemic inflation, it’s no surprise costs might still rise, with the people hired to run the project constantly looking for ways to keep costs under control.

Now, provincial Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen has warned the city there would be no more money from Alberta for the Green Line.

(Interestingly, this news came about a week after the province said it would be willing to spend untold billions to create and operate a province-wide passenger rail network.)

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In an interview with columnist Rick Bell, Dreeshen blamed former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi for the Green Line’s troubles.

He should have directed his message a little higher up the food chain.

First, to the person Nenshi wants to replace, former NDP premier Rachel Notley, whose government hemmed and hawed for two years before committing its share of the initial cost, then two more years before finalizing the paperwork.

Second, to former UCP premier and federal cabinet minister Jason Kenney, who rolled into town with surprise cash for the Green Line, upending plans for what was until then was a rapid bus line.

Calgary had chosen to built a north-central to southeast transitway that could eventually be converted into light rail. It wasn’t my favourite option at the time but it was better than no rapid transit at all — which, from a transit rider’s perspective in the affected parts of town, is close to what we have now.

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Had we stuck to the initial plan, the transitway would have opened by now, according to articles our archives.

Instead we have multiple levels of government bickering, trying to make political hay, or both. Meanwhile, we are playing catch up with actual infrastructure, with delays mounting and the cost of everything rising.

Calgarians who are increasingly turning to transit to meet their transportation needs — especially those in the southeast and the north — are left to wait for the supposed grownups in charge get their act together.

Politicians are so busy trying to make their opponents look bad, they’ve forgotten who they work for and why they are there: us.

rleong@postmedia.com

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