RESOLUTION OF LRT DELAYS IN DOWNTOWN CALGARY: A LOW COST TECH, HIGH BENEEFITS SOLUTION

Calgary Transit has played a major role in transporting Calgarians since its inception in 1909. Today, Calgary is Canada's fourth largest city. Its downtown is home to the second highest number of corporate headquarters in Canada, and surrounding downtown is a crescent of low density residential communities to the north, west and south, and heavy and light industries along with warehouse businesses along the city's east side. This development pattern has produced intense demands for travel to the downtown as well as for cross town work trips. The paper focuses on Calgary Transit's Light Rail Transit that, in 2002, carried 76.1 million customers, an average of 87 trips per capita. Transit ridership has increased 40% in the last ten years, and the system continues to expand to meet the growing demand with new buses and LRVs being added to service new routes and LRT extensions.