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By Don Patterson
Staff Reporter
While it may be a number of years before a transit service connects Foothills municipalities with the city of Calgary, municipalities near the city feel the time to start planning for that day has come.
Municipal councils in the MD of Foothills area signed on to a Calgary Regional Partnership (CRP) transit exploration study that will look at how transit service can be planned for and provided across the Calgary region.
“Now is the time to be looking at it to decide where it should be,” said Okotoks Mayor Bill McAlpine.
The transit study will take place in conjunction with the CRP’s land use plan to identify future land use patterns around transportation corridors. The project will look at regional development plans, demands for service, travel patterns, initial transit services that could be provided and long-term options such as commuter rail, LRT or Bus-Rapid Transit. The provincial government is paying the full cost of the project’s $500,000 price tag.
McAlpine said the Town has looked at providing transit service in the community, but hasn’t proceeded with the idea yet. However, he noted most communities don’t start a transit service until they reach a minimum population threshold. Once they do, he added, they are heavily subsidized by taxpayers to be viable.
“We haven’t done anything definitive yet. I guess it’s in the thinking stage of how we can bring the community together,” he said.
Municipal manager Rick Quail said the Town has prepared for future transit service and has planned for a centrally located, major transit centre in town at some point in the future.
Quail said the provision and growth of transit services would follow an evolutionary path, growing and expanding over time from bus service to commuter rail or LRT into the city.
However, he said the report will have to plan for ultimate, long-term needs from the start.
“You need to plan for and provide the infrastructure, whether it’s the main stations, the parking, the circulation systems and transit systems within your own community,” he said.
He said the report drawn up from the study will assist municipalities in the region as they plan transit systems in the future.
“We need to start now, even if the system isn’t developed for a decade,” he said.
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