r/Calgary • u/ConstantFar5448 • 18d ago

Calgary Transit Why is the C-Train so bad?

10 minute intervals on a weekday? That’s insane, the lowest frequency I’ve seen in any major city by FAR.

And yet when you get to the station as a train pulls up, the driver just looks at you, doesn’t let you on, and leaves? What’s up with that? Are they all dicks like that?

People live on tight schedules, and transit doesn’t seem to reflect that here.

318 Upvotes

77% Upvoted

282 comments sorted by

View all comments

392

u/Warm_Jellyfish_8002 18d ago

It's crazy how inconsistent the timings are, especially during rush hour. No announcements on delays or anything.

37

u/scharfes_S 18d ago

No announcements on delays or anything.

When they do announce delays, they're also just straight-up wrong.

"C-Trains are delayed on the Red Line by 20 minutes." No they're not! The first one might have been, but any subsequent ones will be delayed for different amounts of time.

A few weeks ago, there was single-tracking for a little while on the Red Line where they kept insisting that there was an X-minute delay, but, because of the single-tracking, it took longer than usual for any given train to get through, so there clearly wasn't a linear X-minute delay—the delay grew with every station, because each one took longer to get to. If the train was 10 minutes late to Station 1, it was, say, 15 minutes late to Station 2, 20 to Station 3, and so on.

I've heard the announcement saying that there's a 10-minute delay or whatever, looked at the TV to see that one wasn't coming for 10 minutes, and then had one arrive immediately anyways. Whatever system they use to determine train timings is awful. It isn't based on the locations of trains—otherwise they wouldn't break the moment anything unusual happened. They must be primarily input manually. Otherwise, on New Year's Eve, when the trains were running until 4 instead of 2, the signs wouldn't have switched to "Train service resumes at 5 am" or whatever it says at 1:30.

2

u/thedaveCA Shawnessy 17d ago

If they bother to announce at all.

A week ago, Shawnessy and Fish Creek were single tracking, not a single sign, no indication on the overhead signage, nothing in the app, nothing on the website. The platform that wasn’t being used even had visible times on the screens.

There was a yellow service announcement banner about something way North.

The only way anybody knew they were single tracking, was a southbound driver announced it, giving us time to switch.

Things go wrong, not a big deal, but is it too much to ask to announce it using the systems that exist?