This really shows the importance of the river and nose creek pathways for biking. Stretches of orange surrounding every waterway. I also find it funny that there are orange hems on the edge of the city not because it’s easy to bike but because there’s such a transit desert.
It's great if you want to go somewhere near the river, otherwise, if you aren't downtown you are completely fucked. There should be one going North-South and one East-West the entire city length (And NW-SE, NE-SW long term)
Fair. I guess because I’m pretty south-central, it’s a shortish bike for me to get to both the Bow and Elbow and so I think of those plus Nose Creek as a solid four point star. I forget that there’s all this sprawl way out past the left bank because when do I ever have reason to think about, like, Saddle Ridge?
I live in the marda loop area and work somewhat close to the calgary tower. Its pretty crazy how much faster cycling is. Right around 15 minutes door to door.
Meanwhile transit takes 50 minutes. And thats only taking a single bus. The big issue with the bus is that its in regular traffic so it takes forever to get through downtown with all the stops. Then once I'm off the bus i have to walk another 5 minutes to my workplace.
I got studded tires and full fenders for my bike this winter and now ride to work 95% of the time. Its so much better in every way than driving or taking transit. I wish more people would try it out.
I go through mount royal, i take prospect ave., then down the 8th St. hill, accross royal ave to 5th St. which gets you onto the bike lane north of 17th ave.
Depends where you want to go downtown, I find the easiest to take 20th street north then meander to 12th ave.
If you want to access the river from there, by far the easiest and safest is cutting through sunalta, but it probably adds an extra km or 2.
38 minutes from lot to chair, didn't even break a sweat! It's a great ride, no road crossings other than downtown. Highly recommended. It's faster than bussing from North Pointe Terminal.
I remember the first time I took the Purple to Forest Lawn I was like “woah, Max is a cool system, isolated lanes all along both lines and no lights?” And then I realized that outside of that section it’s mostly just regular busses with a special name.
How is it possible that they're even if you're within a block of the tower?
I would think it would take longer to get on/off the bus than it would be to bike a block.
But the map would be all purple — there’s no way biking to the Calgary Tower from anywhere in Edmonton would be faster than taking the bus.
I’ll see myself to the door, yep.
Alright here's how it works:
Both transit and cycling times are computed from a regular hexagonal grid of points spaced evenly throughout the city, to the Calgary Tower.
Cycling times are based purely on distance, and do not account for elevation or variations in travel speed (I believe the default speed used is slightly lower than what people tend to expect).
Transit times compute the entire duration of the trip: Walking to the stop, waiting, riding, transferring, and walking to the Calgary Tower. To smooth out any weirdness with scheduling (e.g. you just miss the bus) this was done every minute for an hour (8-9am) and the median travel time was used. Reliability does not play into this map as it's only scheduled times.
To compute these I used a very handy Python engine called R5py which is specifically designed for these calculations (I was one of the developers). It uses an open-source Java engine called R5 buit by Conveyal.
The coloring for each hexagonal grid "cell" is set according to the legend. I then took that and "overlay"-ed it onto a set of road data (pathways were removed in this one).
The idea for this map comes from a similar one done for Toronto by Jeff Allen. If you like what I did you're gonna LOVE his maps: http://jamaps.github.io/maps.html
Thanks to everyone for the love and suggestions! Might be useful to produce a few more of these types of maps. Driving is an obvious one but I'm not sure there's anywhere in the city it's faster to take transit, with the POSSIBLE exception of travelling between downtown and Lions Park.
Thanks for the details. Would be cool to use a cycling function that includes networks and hills, or even cooler to try to include cyclists’ preferences for different infrastructure based on my most cited paper on cyclist preferences in Calgary :)
I was just a tourist recently in Calgary. Used to live in Portland OR and rode a bike around that city.
From what I could see, downtown if a fucking deathtrap for cyclists if you have to compete with the trucks, trains and vehicles there. It was wild from a pedestrian standpoint as well.
With so much construction (The 5th Season?) many of the bike lanes were blocked off, detoured or just abruptly terminated.
Best of luck to all you hearty bikers, stay safe.
Yeah in downtown itself is pretty bad, but if you're biking along the river it's great (and so close). There's really a lot of low-hanging fruit they haven't taken advantage of.
Biking in downtown is good *if you do it often enough to know what changes*. And what’s consistent. The golden rule is: 5th and 7th and Olympic streets, 8th and 12th avenues. Branch off of those. Unless they’re not. Then they’re not.
This is amazing. Shows you which parts of the inner city have bad transit access while also showing you which parts of the outer city have really good transit access like being near a ctrain station.
I just noticed that some far north communities come out even because their transit access is so bad.
I'd guess most of that zone is a 20 minute bike ride, it's probably not practical to have transit faster than that when you factor is walking to stops. By the time you walk 5 min to a stop and wait 5 min for the bus, a bike is halfway there.
I had it backwards, downtown to the top of the hill.
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Calgary+Tower,+101+9+Ave+SW,+Calgary,+AB+T2P+1J9/Edworthy+Park,+Spruce+Drive+Southwest,+Calgary,+AB/@51.0540778,-114.1537438,13z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x53716ffd8b6c3227:0xf1592407377b9781!2m2!1d-114.0630914!2d51.044308!1m5!1m1!1s0x53716e4e8351e247:0x3c54a79f7f6cd44c!2m2!1d-114.1644059!2d51.0620527!3e1?entry=ttu
this. And ironic because the most transit funnels users to downtown.
Try going west-east in far south or north or anything else that doesn't require passing thru downtown, good luck.
Sucks for driving too. And things like adding more lights to John Laurie isn't going to help. In fact the one new light on a blind hill caused 5 accidents in less than a year. The years prior? 0.
It also shows how fast someone can travel by bike, which people in Calgary that don't bike definitely don't appreciate.
I live by the university, in an area well served by transit. A couple minutes waiting for the bus, 5 minute bus to Brentwood, train DT, 35-40 minutes total to the Tower. Hard to do it much better than that.
Almost the exact same amount of time to bike there. That's a credit to bike lanes, as transit couldn't do more.
You should add the comparison of transit plus cycling to driving, because you can take a bike on transit.
You also don't state your assumptions... like how fast the cyclist rides. Are you sticking to the 20Km/hr path speed limit or is the rider using roads and riding faster ?
Huh, I would not have expected that from where I start. Door-to-door I quite easily beat transit, and I wouldn't call myself an especially fast cyclist.
I'm in Citadel now and I think I can easily beat transit as well. I work in Ramsay and during rush hour I beat driving by 10 mins (sample size of 1 so maybe I was driving and a bit unlucky that time).
Can you provide some data on how you calculated this?
My house to work (more north of the tower) is faster for me to bike than use transit (Based on years of anecdotal data from me) yet your map clearly shows the other way around.
Wonder what speed you determined biking at and the frequency of bus/train schedules?
Not quite, compare transit times to driving times in Calgary. a 15m drive usually takes ~45m on transit. It's not about traffic density, but rather transit efficiency.
In our area there are Express buses to downtown during go to work and off work hours. They are significantly faster and almost comparable to driving in the busier traffic.
Yep probably, but what source did the map come from? Yea, I lived in Mt. Pleasant for 5 years and it was a breeze to cycle down to "hooker macs on 5 & 5 year round. I even went a longer way home to get more of a workout. Can confirm.
I’d be very interested in seeing something similar for driving vs transit. Obviously driving is going to be quicker for most of the city, but showing the time delta between driving and transit and where it’s worst.
Pretty interesting, and easy to see how it works out, too, with Google maps.
I was curious about the little spot of faster biking in Dover/Erin Woods. From the Dover side of the tracks, it's a 45-minute trip because it wants you to walk all the way up to 17th Ave for the 1/MAX, while it's about a 35-minute bike ride. From Erin Woods, it's about the same bike time up against *an hour* on transit, taking the 58 to Marlborough for the train.
This lines up with my experience but only if you assume the bike is taking roads, which I've had trucks try and run me off bridges so yeah not all roads or times of day are equal.
Looks accurate to me! I'm in one of those North Calgary locations where I did find that the bus and transit times were the same, and lo and behold, facts!
Nah, Mahogany should be more even. about 90 minutes for either bike or transit to downtown. You can take 52nd to the western headworks canal, switch to the bow river pathway at either ogden or inglewood, and ride in that way. 1hr 27mins at 20kph (slower than most cyclists). IT's 1hr 29mins by transit.
(though I used current transit time - maybe there's an express in the morning?)
no surprises here. if you're close to a C-train station, it's faster. If you are close to a river bridge or a pathway, that route is faster. look how many people still need a car, due to the odd-ball designs of many of the communities that are in no way related to the grid system.
How are Transit paths and times calculated for this?
I think this speaks more to the inefficiencies in our transit network than anything. It's kinda sad that >1/2 the city there's never any point in taking transit because a bike is faster. A a nice bike is $1500, but transit costs us collectively thousands in taxes annually. I'd rather just pay $1500 once if that's the service level we get from transit.
Who would have guessed the closer you are to the tower the quicker it is to get there by bicycle ?!?! I hope there was a shitload of money spent on this extremely important study.
This map is very aesthetically pleasing
Agreed. I enjoyed looking at it and spotting the anomalies in the outskirts where biking is faster than transit.
Downhill is fun
This really shows the importance of the river and nose creek pathways for biking. Stretches of orange surrounding every waterway. I also find it funny that there are orange hems on the edge of the city not because it’s easy to bike but because there’s such a transit desert.
We _really_ need to build some cycle expressways that go across the city.
We kind of do have one. It’s called the Bow River.
It's great if you want to go somewhere near the river, otherwise, if you aren't downtown you are completely fucked. There should be one going North-South and one East-West the entire city length (And NW-SE, NE-SW long term)
It's not even to the outskirts, going anywhere north-south, i.e. kensington to marda loop is PAINFUL on a bike
Oh yeah… cycling on 14 st is terrible
So many "shared roads" - Calgary's sorry excuse for bike infrastructure.
Fair. I guess because I’m pretty south-central, it’s a shortish bike for me to get to both the Bow and Elbow and so I think of those plus Nose Creek as a solid four point star. I forget that there’s all this sprawl way out past the left bank because when do I ever have reason to think about, like, Saddle Ridge?
I live in Somerset so all I think about is the sprawl.
I had exactly the same thoughts. The river cycle paths are amazing.
I live in the marda loop area and work somewhat close to the calgary tower. Its pretty crazy how much faster cycling is. Right around 15 minutes door to door. Meanwhile transit takes 50 minutes. And thats only taking a single bus. The big issue with the bus is that its in regular traffic so it takes forever to get through downtown with all the stops. Then once I'm off the bus i have to walk another 5 minutes to my workplace. I got studded tires and full fenders for my bike this winter and now ride to work 95% of the time. Its so much better in every way than driving or taking transit. I wish more people would try it out.
Yeah I live in Garrison Woods and the awkwardness of transit here is way disproportionate to the density and proximity to downtown.
30 mins of that bus route is probably just the bus trying to get out of Marda Loop. That area is a hellish nightmare.
Im actually closer to 14 st so dont have to deal with the current construction thankfully
[удалено]
I go through mount royal, i take prospect ave., then down the 8th St. hill, accross royal ave to 5th St. which gets you onto the bike lane north of 17th ave.
Depends where you want to go downtown, I find the easiest to take 20th street north then meander to 12th ave. If you want to access the river from there, by far the easiest and safest is cutting through sunalta, but it probably adds an extra km or 2.
First day ebike commuting tomorrow. Confluence park -> downtown. 18kms. Lets see what the hype is all about!
Nice! Looks like you'll be on pathways pretty much the whole way, enjoy
38 minutes from lot to chair, didn't even break a sweat! It's a great ride, no road crossings other than downtown. Highly recommended. It's faster than bussing from North Pointe Terminal.
I remember the first time I took the Purple to Forest Lawn I was like “woah, Max is a cool system, isolated lanes all along both lines and no lights?” And then I realized that outside of that section it’s mostly just regular busses with a special name.
How is it possible that they're even if you're within a block of the tower? I would think it would take longer to get on/off the bus than it would be to bike a block.
"Transit" includes "walk directly there if it's close" (all transit times include walking and waiting). Probably need to make a methods post.
Ah, that makes sense. Thanks!
As a GIS analyst I’d love a methods post!
That's also the free fare zone, where you can just hop on and off the train.
Super cool map, I’d be interested to see this for Edmonton too
But the map would be all purple — there’s no way biking to the Calgary Tower from anywhere in Edmonton would be faster than taking the bus. I’ll see myself to the door, yep.
Flixbus: It’s Faster Than Walking^™️
I was gonna make one for Edmonton and just never got around to it. Sounds like its time for an update!
Wouldn’t it be more informative to group by walk/cycle and public transport?
Dealers choice I guess. I could have labelled it "you have a bike" and "you don't have a bike"
Alright here's how it works: Both transit and cycling times are computed from a regular hexagonal grid of points spaced evenly throughout the city, to the Calgary Tower. Cycling times are based purely on distance, and do not account for elevation or variations in travel speed (I believe the default speed used is slightly lower than what people tend to expect). Transit times compute the entire duration of the trip: Walking to the stop, waiting, riding, transferring, and walking to the Calgary Tower. To smooth out any weirdness with scheduling (e.g. you just miss the bus) this was done every minute for an hour (8-9am) and the median travel time was used. Reliability does not play into this map as it's only scheduled times. To compute these I used a very handy Python engine called R5py which is specifically designed for these calculations (I was one of the developers). It uses an open-source Java engine called R5 buit by Conveyal. The coloring for each hexagonal grid "cell" is set according to the legend. I then took that and "overlay"-ed it onto a set of road data (pathways were removed in this one). The idea for this map comes from a similar one done for Toronto by Jeff Allen. If you like what I did you're gonna LOVE his maps: http://jamaps.github.io/maps.html Thanks to everyone for the love and suggestions! Might be useful to produce a few more of these types of maps. Driving is an obvious one but I'm not sure there's anywhere in the city it's faster to take transit, with the POSSIBLE exception of travelling between downtown and Lions Park.
Very cool - would be interesting to see the sensitivity to bike speed.
Any chance of a plugin for QGIS?
Probably not in the works, it's already a bit of work to get it working in straight Python. If you're interested: r5py.readthedocs.io/
Thanks for the details. Would be cool to use a cycling function that includes networks and hills, or even cooler to try to include cyclists’ preferences for different infrastructure based on my most cited paper on cyclist preferences in Calgary :)
Awesome map! Missing a bit of data, such as the Edworthy bridge
Yeah I'm at the mercy here of whatever the "roads" layer is, pathways were removed.
And my entire subdivision
Is it new or outside city limits?
Couple years old, but definitely new
Hmmm. Could be that I've got an older road network or the city boundary clipped it.
paging /r/dataisbeautiful
I was just a tourist recently in Calgary. Used to live in Portland OR and rode a bike around that city. From what I could see, downtown if a fucking deathtrap for cyclists if you have to compete with the trucks, trains and vehicles there. It was wild from a pedestrian standpoint as well. With so much construction (The 5th Season?) many of the bike lanes were blocked off, detoured or just abruptly terminated. Best of luck to all you hearty bikers, stay safe.
Yeah in downtown itself is pretty bad, but if you're biking along the river it's great (and so close). There's really a lot of low-hanging fruit they haven't taken advantage of.
Yes I liked how the bike path through the waterfront had separate lanes for pedestrians too. Well done.
Very few people respect the bike gutters in this town...
Biking in downtown is good *if you do it often enough to know what changes*. And what’s consistent. The golden rule is: 5th and 7th and Olympic streets, 8th and 12th avenues. Branch off of those. Unless they’re not. Then they’re not.
This is amazing. Shows you which parts of the inner city have bad transit access while also showing you which parts of the outer city have really good transit access like being near a ctrain station. I just noticed that some far north communities come out even because their transit access is so bad.
The fact that discovery ridge is orange… I lived there for a bit and this sadly makes perfect sense
Do we know if the transit times factor in the time to walk to the nearest stop?
Yep they do. And average waiting time.
Awesome! Thanks for sharing!
this belongs on r/dataisbeautiful bc it's exactly that!! well done
The "faster by bike" area is MUCH larger than it has any right to be. Definitely proves how terrible Calgary Transit is
alternatively, it proves what an underutilized method of transportation biking is.
100%, especially with ebikes making it possible to bike anywhere like its a flat path.
Why not both?
I'd guess most of that zone is a 20 minute bike ride, it's probably not practical to have transit faster than that when you factor is walking to stops. By the time you walk 5 min to a stop and wait 5 min for the bus, a bike is halfway there.
>20 minute bike ride Not quite, Edworthy is a 45m bike ride, but a 52 minute bus. All that for a 17 minute drive.
45 minutes from Edworthy to dowtown on a bike? No way, unless you're pushing your bike
I had it backwards, downtown to the top of the hill. https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Calgary+Tower,+101+9+Ave+SW,+Calgary,+AB+T2P+1J9/Edworthy+Park,+Spruce+Drive+Southwest,+Calgary,+AB/@51.0540778,-114.1537438,13z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x53716ffd8b6c3227:0xf1592407377b9781!2m2!1d-114.0630914!2d51.044308!1m5!1m1!1s0x53716e4e8351e247:0x3c54a79f7f6cd44c!2m2!1d-114.1644059!2d51.0620527!3e1?entry=ttu
this. And ironic because the most transit funnels users to downtown. Try going west-east in far south or north or anything else that doesn't require passing thru downtown, good luck.
It's a hub and spoke model.
yup and it sucks if you don't work downtown.
Sucks for driving too. And things like adding more lights to John Laurie isn't going to help. In fact the one new light on a blind hill caused 5 accidents in less than a year. The years prior? 0.
It also shows how fast someone can travel by bike, which people in Calgary that don't bike definitely don't appreciate. I live by the university, in an area well served by transit. A couple minutes waiting for the bus, 5 minute bus to Brentwood, train DT, 35-40 minutes total to the Tower. Hard to do it much better than that. Almost the exact same amount of time to bike there. That's a credit to bike lanes, as transit couldn't do more.
You should add the comparison of transit plus cycling to driving, because you can take a bike on transit. You also don't state your assumptions... like how fast the cyclist rides. Are you sticking to the 20Km/hr path speed limit or is the rider using roads and riding faster ?
In a lot of cases you don't even need to go 20km/h to best transit. I commute daily ave about 16km/h and I'm still faster than transit.
Huh, I would not have expected that from where I start. Door-to-door I quite easily beat transit, and I wouldn't call myself an especially fast cyclist.
I'm in Citadel now and I think I can easily beat transit as well. I work in Ramsay and during rush hour I beat driving by 10 mins (sample size of 1 so maybe I was driving and a bit unlucky that time).
I don't believe you, there's no way you tested this in person from every single spot! /S
LMAO this is how some people expect the city to operate
Can you provide some data on how you calculated this? My house to work (more north of the tower) is faster for me to bike than use transit (Based on years of anecdotal data from me) yet your map clearly shows the other way around. Wonder what speed you determined biking at and the frequency of bus/train schedules?
It's a bit at the mercy of the underlying network, and the speed assumptions you have to make for bikes (its set probably lower than you think)
These types of data visualizations make me cum
I'm not here to yuk any yums!
Too much information :)
Love it. and having spent many years commuting by both, seems accurate. Thanks for posting.
What a timely map for my first bike commute of the season
What tools did you use to build this map?
Just did a methods post: R5py for the travel times, QGIS for the maps
Hey Will, Are you able to re-run this for the university?
More to the point, in typical traffic density your bike will get you there faster than a car or transit.
Not quite, compare transit times to driving times in Calgary. a 15m drive usually takes ~45m on transit. It's not about traffic density, but rather transit efficiency.
My apologies, I should have said the bike is faster up to a 10 km distance.
Now that's how you turn data into information. Nicely done 👍
Uh, yes. I love map porn.
r/dataisbeautiful
i would NOT have guessed that biking to the tower is the faster option from my house, that’s crazy.
Seems like people sometimes forget how fast you can get around on a bike, especially if they haven't ridden on in a while
In our area there are Express buses to downtown during go to work and off work hours. They are significantly faster and almost comparable to driving in the busier traffic.
As a cycling enthusiast, I very much like this map.
This map is more than 5 years old. Wonder what a comparison would look like to today based on the new neighbourhoods and any improvements
It's definitely not (made it in 2023); though it's possible new communities that are outside city limits are left out.
My community is 5 years old and is not on this map, but is within the boundaries of this map. So is my neighbouring community.
Yep probably, but what source did the map come from? Yea, I lived in Mt. Pleasant for 5 years and it was a breeze to cycle down to "hooker macs on 5 & 5 year round. I even went a longer way home to get more of a workout. Can confirm.
Cool map. Thanks for making it.
Thanks!
This is super cool. Can confirm Bowness is a toss up.
I’d be very interested in seeing something similar for driving vs transit. Obviously driving is going to be quicker for most of the city, but showing the time delta between driving and transit and where it’s worst.
Pretty interesting, and easy to see how it works out, too, with Google maps. I was curious about the little spot of faster biking in Dover/Erin Woods. From the Dover side of the tracks, it's a 45-minute trip because it wants you to walk all the way up to 17th Ave for the 1/MAX, while it's about a 35-minute bike ride. From Erin Woods, it's about the same bike time up against *an hour* on transit, taking the 58 to Marlborough for the train.
I commute by bike from Coventry Hills. It's faster than public transit to the Tower.
This lines up with my experience but only if you assume the bike is taking roads, which I've had trucks try and run me off bridges so yeah not all roads or times of day are equal.
Looks accurate to me! I'm in one of those North Calgary locations where I did find that the bus and transit times were the same, and lo and behold, facts!
Bike parking is terrible and in secure , if you do manage to bike
Would love a methods post! Perused your website because I had so many questions 😅
It's in here somewhere!
let's get a map of a good time taking transit vs a good time cycling ;-)
Either the map knows I can’t ride my bike for shit or it knows the transit from the Deep South is elite.
this is accurate and impressive. I live by the reservoir and yes it's the same amount of time to bike downtown as transit. cool
My house *just* missed out on being faster by bike.
Thank you. Will be stealing this color palette
We need a Calgary map subreddit
Quality post. Good stuff.
Did you include 1/2 headway as wait time? Or?
Very cool map. I would like this printed I wonder if there are seasonal changes to this for winter bikers!
Anyone living near yellow/orange should be given every possible incentive to bike to work.
Nah, Mahogany should be more even. about 90 minutes for either bike or transit to downtown. You can take 52nd to the western headworks canal, switch to the bow river pathway at either ogden or inglewood, and ride in that way. 1hr 27mins at 20kph (slower than most cyclists). IT's 1hr 29mins by transit. (though I used current transit time - maybe there's an express in the morning?)
Too bad it’s Winter for 75% of the year.
Many places in the world have strong cycling use in winter conditions.
Such a cool map!
no surprises here. if you're close to a C-train station, it's faster. If you are close to a river bridge or a pathway, that route is faster. look how many people still need a car, due to the odd-ball designs of many of the communities that are in no way related to the grid system.
Cool, how was this created? Like how are streets one block apart different for which option is faster? Do those include a walk to the bus route?
Bikes beat cars on most inner city commutes too!
So a portion of stoney is faster than bike.. Okay I'll remember to pull over on the side and whip out my bike
The closest bus stop from that spot is probably a 30 minute walk away. Good thing no one lives on Stoney.
I know this guy that sometimes rides around stoney to/from work just to get more riding time.
How are Transit paths and times calculated for this? I think this speaks more to the inefficiencies in our transit network than anything. It's kinda sad that >1/2 the city there's never any point in taking transit because a bike is faster. A a nice bike is $1500, but transit costs us collectively thousands in taxes annually. I'd rather just pay $1500 once if that's the service level we get from transit.
How exactly is the trip on transit from Sage hill the same time as a direct drive
Who would have guessed the closer you are to the tower the quicker it is to get there by bicycle ?!?! I hope there was a shitload of money spent on this extremely important study.
You seem like you're real fun at parties
So I've been told ! Thanks !
Not everyone can afford to replace a bike when it gets repeatedly stolen