Planning the Extension of Calgary's Bi-Modal Express Transit Network | Reza Mahmoudi, Ph.D. - Driving Operational Excellence and Innovation in Transportation and Logistics

Table of Contents

Overview

CLIENT
City of Calgary, Calgary Transit the municipal public transport agency
LOCATION
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Role
Designer, Planner
Markets
Transit & Rail Transportation Market
Solutions
Bus Rapid Transit (BRT)
Light Rail Transit (LRT)
Transit Planning
Network Design
Express Transit
Sustainability
Transportation Services
Regions
Calgary Metropolitan Region

Our Client’s Challenge

Calgary is a city in the Canadian province of Alberta. As of 2021, it had a population of 1,306,784 within the city proper and 1,481,806 in the metropolitan area, making it the third-largest city and fifth-largest metropolitan region in Canada.
RouteAhead is Calgary Transit’s 30-year strategic plan that guides the delivery of safe, accessible, and customer-focused transit service for Calgarians. It is structured around three core principles, i.e., Customer Experience, Network Planning, and Financing Transit, to shape transit service over the next three decades.
RouteAhead is informed by the Municipal Development Plan (MDP), which describes the vision for growth in Calgary over the next 60 years, and the Calgary Transportation Plan (CTP), which includes the transportation policies that will help guide Calgary towards the MDP vision over 30 years.
RouteAhead was originally approved by City Council in 2013.
A major component of RouteAhead is the expansion of Calgary’s bi-modal express transit network, integrating Light Rail Transit (LRT) and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems. However, with significant population growth, shifting travel patterns, and increasing demand across the city, RouteAhead required reassessment to ensure its long-term plans remained valid and responsive to future needs.
This project focused on several key objectives:

Critical Assessment: Evaluating RouteAhead’s alignment with projected 2076 demand, land-use patterns, and the development of new communities and emerging central business districts.
Scenario Development: Defining the specifications and characteristics of potential future demand scenarios to analyze the effects of induced, shifted, and new demand on long-term planning.
Data-Driven Corridor Planning: Applying analytical and data-driven methods to conduct corridor studies and develop a long-range expansion plan for Calgary’s express transit network.
Stakeholder Reporting: Presenting results and strategic recommendations to city managers and Calgary Transit leadership to inform decision-making and guide future network development.

Calgary Transit’s primary challenge was to assess whether the current long-term plan for expanding the city’s express transit network remains realistic and aligned with future demand. If updates were necessary, the key questions included how the revised plan should be structured, where new LRT and BRT stations should be located, how new routes should be aligned or existing ones extended, and what fleet size would be required to adequately serve demand across the expanded network.

Our Solution

In partnership with the Government of Alberta, the City of Calgary, and Calgary Transit, and using detailed demand data provided by Calgary Transit, our four-year project developed a revised plan for expanding the city’s express transit network. While many of RouteAhead’s original recommendations remained relevant, our analysis identified key modifications needed to achieve Calgary’s mobility goals through 2076.
For this project, we were granted access to extensive datasets, including predicted demand data for 2024 and 2076, the city’s master planning documents, and technical reports with detailed information on operational and capital costs, fleet size, and every BRT and LRT line within the network. With this comprehensive data foundation, our team applied innovative, data-driven methods to complete the project through three major stages defined in our proposed project pipeline.

pipeline for express network study Figure: Project Pipeline Based on Proposed Data-Driven Framework.

Identifying Locations for New LRT and BRT Stations

Using a combination of the provided datasets and multiple stated preference surveys conducted by the Transportation Engineering Group in the Department of Civil Engineering at the Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary, we developed a data-driven analytical approach to determine the optimal number and locations of new LRT and BRT stations across the city. The proposed method carefully considered factors of equity and accessibility to ensure that all areas of Calgary are suitably served by the expanded network.
The objectives of this stage were to:

Assess the service coverage of the existing express transit network.
Identify locations for new LRT stations, BRT stations, and shared LRT-BRT stations.
Develop an origin-destination (O-D) matrix between catchment areas and key destinations for different access modes within each area.
Create multiple future demand scenarios to evaluate how potential changes in travel patterns might affect the number and placement of new stations.
These analyses enabled us to identify optimal station locations across the city based on projected demand for 2024 and 2076, supported by further scenario-based evaluations.

shedarea — Figure: Sample Shed Area Analysis.

sample analysis — Figure: Sample station Location Results.

Network Design, Frequency Setting, and Fleet Sizing

After determining the locations of new LRT and BRT stations, we developed a comprehensive, data-driven approach to redesign Calgary’s bi-modal express transit network. The process included:

Developing a large-scale, data-driven bi-modal network design model that minimizes total costs for both users and the transit agency.
Integrating fleet sizing and service frequency setting directly into the optimization framework to ensure operational feasibility and efficiency.
Creating a set of advanced, replicable algorithms powered by metaheuristic techniques to solve the network design problem under various scenarios.

The project was done with particular attention to the following conditions:

Every express transit trip must require no more than two transfers,
Access to express transit must be guaranteed for all city zones,
No modifications are permitted to the existing LRT network structure.

base result Figure: Sample Network Design Results.

Outcomes

Scalable Data-Driven Framework: Developed a replicable, data-driven framework for extending or redesignig an existing multi-modal express transit network.
Near-Optimal Solutions: The advanced models and algorithms produced solutions with less than a 1.6% error rate, demonstrating exceptional performance and establishing a strong benchmark for solution quality.
Operational Continuity: Ensured uninterrupted transit service throughout the network extension process.
Sustainability Benefits: Reduced costs for both users and the transit agency, improved accessibility and equity across the network, and enhanced community well-being while maintaining rapid service standards.
Compliance and Strategic Guidance: Provided the City of Calgary with clear direction on updating RouteAhead, particularly regarding the expansion of the existing LRT–BRT network.

Recommendations and Policy Implications

The findings have several important implications for transit planning and policy:

Prioritize LRT Station Placement: LRT station locations should be determined first, followed by the identification of BRT station sites.
Sequence Planning Logically: Station locations should be finalized before corridor alignments are designed.
Balance User and Agency Costs: Achieving an equitable and accessible rapid transit system requires a balanced consideration of both user and agency costs.
Integrate Demand and Supply Models: Coupling demand forecasting with supply optimization ensures a more robust and adaptable long-term transit plan.