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What's interesting, is if I'm reading it right, elimination of the free fare zone and bringing it back to a paid 4$ zone only nets them an increase of $5 million?

The free fare zone is one of the reasons the C-Train's ridership is over 200k daily tbh
 
David A said:
Sadly I feel it is like an old circus routine where they follow the elephants around with shovels. Yes, we do need more regular cleaning, but we also need people not to regularly leave messes.
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I see a lot of damaged bus stations around town. Burned up benches, broken glass, garbage.. etc. A lot of this is from addiction. They'll use inside of the shelter. They'll rummage through garbage cans to find some empties. They'll burn the benches while using.
This fentanyl crisis continues...

I think ETS should get rid of the benches and instead have those slanted ,lean-on ones or replace them with all metal regular benches. Don't know what to do about the shelters themselves. If the glass were replaced with plexi, they'd be damaged as well.
Not sure what other cities are doing to remedy the problem. It really sucks.
 
Kosy123 said:
What's interesting, is if I'm reading it right, elimination of the free fare zone and bringing it back to a paid 4$ zone only nets them an increase of $5 million?

The free fare zone is one of the reasons the C-Train's ridership is over 200k daily tbh
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Eliminating the free fare zone only affects people who don't regularly take transit.
If you commuted into the city centre on transit, be it bus or LRT, you already probably have a transit pass.
It's the ones who drive into the city centre and then make use of free LRT on their lunch break or something like that who stand to lose from it, but, they weren't a transit patron to begin with so it's not a big loss.
OK, sure there are fringe cases. Like perhaps the person using a tickets because they work from home so are only in the city centre 2-3 times per week and so a bus pass might not make sense and now this negatively affects them.
Of course, if you're only going a station or two and you're paying a bit of attention I'm sure it would be quite easy to avoid any fare enforcement.
 
I feel with a downtown that is struggling as much as ours still is now, we shouldn't focus on purity tests about how people get downtown, but instead focus on enhancing it for everyone.

The free downtown transit program when we had it years ago did enhance it, because it made it easier for people to get around during the day. Perhaps some of those occasional transit users later became more frequent users as they got used to and more comfortable with it.
 
Gas is closing in on 2$/litre for the 2nd time in 4 years. With global instability expected to accelerate, why aren't we increasing and accelerating transit network improvements? Why haven't we thought of the army being called in to drive buses to bring people between home and work? Why aren't we bringing back work from home?
 
Now that I've been working downtown on a regular basis I definitely take the tram into the downtown core as much as possible. Right now because of the design of the stations we don't officially have a free Fair Zone but we essentially have a free Fair Zone. Why do I say that, is because I'm pretty certain that all the street people that's are hanging out at the stations inside the shelters and those that are hopping on the trains are not paying customers at all. I again would rather see the pass Gates reinstalled at all LRT stations and if they want something for LRT customers they could easily add a minimal fee while in the downtown core.
 
At least there are more LRT extensions opening in the next few years. I think that transit should look at the frequency of the connections, and consider more routes around hubs like downtown and the U of A. Why aren’t routes like Groat Road, Gretzky Drive or 98 Avenue not used more by Edmonton Transit?
 
Edmcowboy11 said:
Now that I've been working downtown on a regular basis I definitely take the tram into the downtown core as much as possible. Right now because of the design of the stations we don't officially have a free Fair Zone but we essentially have a free Fair Zone. Why do I say that, is because I'm pretty certain that all the street people that's are hanging out at the stations inside the shelters and those that are hopping on the trains are not paying customers at all. I again would rather see the pass Gates reinstalled at all LRT stations and if they want something for LRT customers they could easily add a minimal fee while in the downtown core.
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You know I originally thought this, then I've seen on multiple occasions the unhoused using the ARC machines on the Valley Line to buy tickets.
 
Kosy123 said:

More for the transit folks here but how doable would a distance based fare work here? Also transit surge pricing is a wild concept lol
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In a way, the Edmonton region has a form of distance-based fares. The city costs one fare and St. Albert and Sherwood Park more. Kinda like Zone 1 and Zone 2 in Metro Vancouver.

Ottawa used to have extra fares for peak hours and an extra add-on above that for express routes. Back in the day, the base fare was 2 tickets, peak hours 3 tickets, and express 4 tickets. Not sure what they do now.

IMO simplicity is better, but fare cards make a range of choices possible.
 
BrettB said:
In a way, the Edmonton region has a form of distance-based fares. The city costs one fare and St. Albert and Sherwood Park more. Kinda like Zone 1 and Zone 2 in Metro Vancouver.

Ottawa used to have extra fares for peak hours and an extra add-on above that for express routes. Back in the day, the base fare was 2 tickets, peak hours 3 tickets, and express 4 tickets. Not sure what they do now.

IMO simplicity is better, but fare cards make a range of choices possible.
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I do forget that we already have distance based fares already. I'm just baffled by the idea of surge pricing that Calgary is considering.

We all got out issues with ETS but man I'm happy at all the steps forward we're taking, even if they're smaller than we'd like
 
BrettB said:
In a way, the Edmonton region has a form of distance-based fares. The city costs one fare and St. Albert and Sherwood Park more. Kinda like Zone 1 and Zone 2 in Metro Vancouver.

Ottawa used to have extra fares for peak hours and an extra add-on above that for express routes. Back in the day, the base fare was 2 tickets, peak hours 3 tickets, and express 4 tickets. Not sure what they do now.

IMO simplicity is better, but fare cards make a range of choices possible.
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Calgary runs one of the longest LRT systems in North America, and flat fares have arguably incentivized continued sprawl — including the wave of workers commuting from Cochrane, Okotoks, and Airdrie to the nearest station at city limits. There's some logic to a distance-based fare, but the contradiction is council's repeal of citywide rezoning last month, which sends the opposite message.

In effect, they're pricing the symptom and protecting the cause — a tax on the suburban sprawl their own policies created, while actively blocking the changes that would actually move the needle.

This is also why I am weary of Alberta's pending commuter rail plan unless it comes with some serious inner city investment. Building regional rail just makes it easier to live 60km from work, while the Green line stalls and inner city bus frequencies stay flat, that's just bankrolling the sprawl pattern all over again. Transit dollars should make the *city* more dense and livable before they make the more distant ones more commutable - otherwise we're just doing more to cause sprawl than to prevent it.
 
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BrettB said:
In a way, the Edmonton region has a form of distance-based fares. The city costs one fare and St. Albert and Sherwood Park more. Kinda like Zone 1 and Zone 2 in Metro Vancouver.

Ottawa used to have extra fares for peak hours and an extra add-on above that for express routes. Back in the day, the base fare was 2 tickets, peak hours 3 tickets, and express 4 tickets. Not sure what they do now.

IMO simplicity is better, but fare cards make a range of choices possible.
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Exactly. However, I feel it would be a mistake for the city to look at raising fares for peak hours as some sort of cash source. I would go the other way, reduce the rates for off peak hours to try get more use for busses and trains that are already running.
 
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