Green Line LRT | ?m | ?s | Calgary Transit

Yeah I've seen that render as far back as 2017. Definitely not new and wondering why it's spurring conversation after all this time. It's not revolutionary at all... if anything it's extremely basic and unexciting.
 
Sure it's not new, but it's sparking a discussion around eliminating lanes in the CBD. Here's the traffic volume per day in 2019:

Traffic Flow.PNG



Notice how most streets are between 15k-25k vehicles per day. Here's some capacity figures from traffic engineering:

capacity.PNG

It shows that our streets downtown are largely too wide for the capacity they see. Also note the capacity figures are 2-way and many streets downtown are 1-way.

TLDR: eliminate as many lanes as necessary to make the green line happen, we have the space.
 
Theres no need for 9th Avenue to be 4-5 Lanes the entire length of the core, same goes for 6th as well. It never hurts eliminating a lane or two on roads that are under utilized to improve the realm for pedestrians and street level activities. Further more, where the station at 7th Avenue and 2nd Street is supposed to go it would hurt no one if the closed that section of 2nd street to build a decent square around the entrance to the station considering that this station would probably become a small transit hub.

 
totally fine with 2nd being a woonerf.
My idea (and completely unrealistic never going to happen) situation for that area around 2nd Street and 7th Ave would be for 2nd street to terminate between 8th Ave and 6th avenue. The Bow Parkade to be demolished, Brookfield finishes the Atrium on Brookfield Place, and they turn the area where the future second Brookfield building would go, the street entrance to the underground LRT station, and the area around where the 2nd Canadian Place building was supposed to go into a Plaza/Park area until it’s developed further.
 
Sure it's not new, but it's sparking a discussion around eliminating lanes in the CBD. Here's the traffic volume per day in 2019:

View attachment 295591


Notice how most streets are between 15k-25k vehicles per day. Here's some capacity figures from traffic engineering:

View attachment 295592
It shows that our streets downtown are largely too wide for the capacity they see. Also note the capacity figures are 2-way and many streets downtown are 1-way.

TLDR: eliminate as many lanes as necessary to make the green line happen, we have the space.
Thanks for this image. Based on this, is there a particular reason why the greenline has to be underground in the beltline? The whole point of the low floor LRV is for it to be integrated with the streets itself. I wonder how much cost savings would come from not having it go underground until 2nd ST SW. If it's a significant amount, I wonder if this could make the north leg go further past 16 AV N then? Because I do agree with the Alberta government that it is pointless for the greenline to end there simply to just make future extensions easier financially.

The projected 11,000 ridership day one I find incredibly hard to believe since I can't imagine those needing to get downtown are going to be transferring from the MAX Orange at Centre ST to do so. If you're near the LRT lines, you're taking those in, and if by 16th itself, the north-south buses along that road are already going downtown. I don't think Centre & 16th will have a strong enough draw to make it a destination at that point either. So where are they getting those numbers from?
 
I cannot put into word how much I hate the idea of having the line terminate at grade in Eau Claire, then building a bridge overtop of PIP. It's ludicrous IMO.
 
is there a particular reason why the greenline has to be underground in the beltline?
It makes the green line a bit faster, but the main reason is protecting traffic from impact.

A rule of thumb to think about scale of costs: each underground station costs $100 million. Each surface station costs $5 million.

Every station is different though. An underground station serving an arena is going to cost more than that as the platforms would need to be larger. And since underground you are talking about volume, you grow in cubes. Plus in squares.
 
The projected 11,000 ridership day one I find incredibly hard to believe since I can't imagine those needing to get downtown are going to be transferring from the MAX Orange at Centre ST to do so. If you're near the LRT lines, you're taking those in, and if by 16th itself, the north-south buses along that road are already going downtown. I don't think Centre & 16th will have a strong enough draw to make it a destination at that point either. So where are they getting those numbers from?
IMO, I think they are getting these optimistic numbers because they need it to be that high in order to help justify the Green Line in general. Even with 11K at 16th, projected ridership is already pretty mediocre (55-65K/day) given the $5B capital and >$40M operating costs.
 

Back
Top