Quote:
Originally Posted by jawagord
You just read whatever you wanted into this, didn't you Shallowstar? I never wrote it would solve traffic issues, I wrote it would take riders away from transit. Common sense, give people an alternate choice and some will use it, if it is more convenient or less costly than transit a lot more will use it.
FYI Calgary doesn't have near the traffic issues of the world's big cities and isn't anywhere close to its vehicle capacity. Live somewhere with 10 million people and spend 2hrs in your car to go 5km and you'll know what traffic congestion is.
Calgary's congestion problem is on the LRT, good luck trying getting a seat or even onto the train at rush hour!
LRT ridership in Calgary is artificially supported by City policy to limit parking downtown and by making it the most expensive parking in NA. If people were offered free available parking downtown LRT ridership would drop dramatically, the self driving vehicle/service essentially does that. So ya this won't solve traffic issues, it will increase vehicular traffic and maybe we will get closer to big city congestion but for many more people it will be faster and preferable to transit.
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You think driverless cars will be cheaper than transit? That seems very unlikely.
You're right that Calgary's traffic congestion pales compared to big cities (see Jakarta for an example of a city with ridiculous congestion, but also for an example of how bad things get when you DON'T have decent public transit options) but as the city grows it's very important to have decent public transit options. Building an entirely surface Green Line would be just repeating the mistakes of the past (particularly 36 Ave NE).