Data Project: North-Central LRT Alternatives

Here’s a quick Easter update for the data project. The addition to the files (at the usual place) is an alternative alignment for Calgary’s proposed North-Central LRT alignment. This alternative would take the CTrain underground from the Bow River right up to Beddington Trail while tunneling under Centre Street North. It would also serve as a functional extension of the Southeast LRT which would otherwise end at an Eau Claire subway station.

The route and station locations were largely inspired by work done over on TransitCamp by Peter Schryvers. You can find those articles over on CivicCamp. I will note that I took artistic liberties with the station names and presumed that the line would otherwise follow the Calgary Transit route past Stoney Trail (up to 150th Avenue North).

Data Project: Calgary Transit Layers

Funded stations on the Under-Construction West LRT Expansion

This is only a small step towards building a full transit layers package. So far, the only features included are placemarks for current and future (funded) CTrain stations. The full package will include the lines as well as future planned stations, plus information on each point about which routes they are serviced by and whether or not they are in the free fare zone. It will not include bus stops or maintenance facilities (you can find all the bus stops on Google Earth already, and there’s far too many for me to contemplate making an alternate version of those right now).

You can find the transit package in the usual place (hint: over there on the links sidebar).

Update (April 9, 2011)

The transit package has been restructured into three categories:  1) current system, 2) future additions (funded), and 3) future additions (proposed). Colours have been altered slightly for easier viewing with other Google Earth layers (especially the roads), and the track (line) segments are now included as well.

Checking the numbers twice on HSR

German ICE3 Train - © Wikimedia Commons

The last week has been a flurry of news. The next federal election is off to a start, a friend is nominated for the Green Party in Calgary-Centre, Canadian big city mayors are calling for a national transit strategy, and other exciting things.

Today, the Green Party of Canada released it’s HSR policy. Now, I’m onboard for HSR, at least as an issue of long-term connectivity between Canadian cities in relatively dense urban corridors. I believe that, in the long run, we are eventually going to have to do this as the price of energy goes up (which will drive up the absolute cost of train travel up but drive it down relative to driving to taking the plane). Like any megaproject which requires vast amounts of public spending, it will require a lot of planning and due process.

As soon as I read the GPC release, however, I knew that something smelled fishy. Let’s take a look.

Primer: Federal Politics and Canadian Cities

If you are like me, you probably caught Wednesday’s Globe and Mail article elucidating the positions of Canada’s big city mayors regarding the Federal role in urban infrastructure funding. It’s a good time to talk about it, with the hints of an election coming up. And I’ll make this clear: this needs to be an election issue.

In this article I’ll provide, with as much brevity as I can afford, what Canada’s political parties seem to be thinking regarding the subject.

Calgary Historical Boundaries: 1884-2007

Following up after the release of the municipal boundaries for cities and towns, I have a new file up on the Data Project. This one contains all the different boundary changes for Calgary right from it’s incorporation as a town in 1884 right up to the last annexation in 2007. This file is mostly complete — I have purposely left out a small annexation in 1974 that, as far as I can tell, is merely the addition of a right-of-way that didn’t add any noticeable area to the city.

The file is based off of the History of Annexation map from the City of Calgary website.

Data Project: AB Municipal Boundaries Update

As the title says, I’ve updated the AB Municipal Boundaries on the data project (see the sidebar). Gone is whatever folder used to be there, the new file is directly under Alberta Municipalities.

For now, all that I have in there is the complete set of cities and towns in Alberta. I’ll add other types of municipalities later on, such as villages and M.D.s/Counties. The majority of the reference material comes from the town websites of individual towns, as well as of surrounding counties and the Municipal Government Board Boundary Search.

The variations in the presentation of municipal land use information I found could make a good topic for a later post. For now, I will just say: there are towns who seem to think it is acceptable to substitute brochure maps for legal documents. Hate, hate, hate, hate.

Calgary Communities, Fixed Wards & City Borders

Beltline-san is the biggest and one of the oldest guys on the block

So, after about a week of slowly building it up, I have the file up for the communities in Calgary. It includes polygons for everything that’s included on the city map up to September 2010. There are probably little mistakes all over the place, and I’ll correct them as I come across them or get notified. Some mistakes are out of choice because it made working with the boundaries easier (for example, I tended to draw borders up the middle of roadways where applicable) while others are simply out of lack of either appropriate data or tools. It would help if I could find more area structure plans or area redevelopment plans online that were kept up to date. But then again, nearly nothing is in a single easy-to-access place, which is part of the reason I’m doing this in the first place.

At the same time, I’ve fixed most of the problems with the Ward boundaries. I still probably wouldn’t be using them for any select operations if you are using a fully-featured GIS.

One other change too. I took all the municipal borders and put them in a single file, while scrapping the individual folders for cities and towns except for Calgary. They will come back, of course, if I start putting up their respective sub-municipal data later on.

Note on the title image: The Beltline had a population of 18,902 as of the 2010 Civic Census, the most out of any single community in Calgary and 210 more than suburban Evergreen. The Beltline ARP predicts a doubling of the population in the next quarter-century, with the plan-as-approved allowing up to and over 55,000! As for it’s age, although the Beltline is a creation of the last decade, the two former communities of Victoria and Connaught (as well as the Stampede Grounds, though they can’t really be considered a “community”) that the Beltline welded together have been around since the creation of the Town of Calgary in 1884.

The RemUrb Data Project

Okay, it’s time to officially announce it. Lately I’ve been brooding over how Calgary doesn’t really have any open data. And I don’t mean the maps, tables, pictures, news and documents they currently put out (mostly in pdf format) on Calgary.ca. I’m talking data in a form that can be used by the public for analysis purposes. Things that can help “us” make more informed decisions about how we want the city to grow and develop.

But it’s going to be in limited fashion on my part. No, I’m not part of any open data initiatives you can see growing out there, and I’m not meeting up locals in a public library on a Saturday for an afternoon of number-crunching. Hell, I don’t even live in Alberta right now.

So instead, what I can offer with my time not spent working on more complex school-related GIS products are some points, lines, polygons, and tabular data that you can use. Because you at least need somewhere to start. And because I can start getting them up online right now… oh wait, yesterday! (okay, I cheated, it was about 07:00-08:00 AST)

What is on there up right now is pretty limited. You’ll find KMZ (Google file format) maps, sorted by municipality. Currently I only have the municipal boundaries for 10 cities/towns in the Calgary Area as well as Calgary’s Wards. The next product I haven’t decided on yet… I could either keep drawing out these boundaries, put together some tables you can use in conjunction with the polygons, or I could start the huge task of drawing out all of Calgary’s communities. Oh joy.

Sources:

Calgary Ward Information
Carstairs Development Map
Municipal Government Board Annexations

The Bow goes Bigtime

He was off by a few minutes, but close enough.

At 16:15 this afternoon, I was diligently plugging away at work, unaware that anything of significance would happen this day.

It seems, however, that I was wrong.

Sure, nothing huge and momentous happened that would rock the foundations of western civilization and perhaps bring catastrophe to millions. However, the urban community in Calgary got another feather in its cap as SSP’s Calgary poster Bigtime got on the air with CHQR AM770. Their subject: The Bow.

July 2, 2010 Walk: Construction and a Fried Egg Sandwich

The Bow - she rises!

Following Canada Day, I decided to go downtown and test out the camera on my new smartphone on my favorite photography subject – urban development. Another purpose of the trip was to meet my mother for lunch, which I will talk about towards the end of this post. But first, some pictures and observations, after the break…