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It was reported that not fitting out the Centre Street Station was enough to save $400M. Despite the high nearby population, its low estimated ridership makes it tempting to cut the station box as well (especially if you're a transit user that would not be served by Stage 1). Combined you're...

For their plan, it can go further to enable a connection with the NCLRT. I think their plan is trying to minimize risk by minimizing the amount of new infrastructure and essentially staying out of the downtown core, and using all of that savings to maximize reach. The plan was proposed in May...

I wonder if there's a reluctance to move trains to 8th Avenue because 7th Avenue is closer to the central heart of DT Calgary and the ground-level stations makes it more convenient to hop-on and off a train.

There's a study from 2006 that actually claims the limit on 7th Avenue is 36 trains/hour in one direction. https://www.calgarytransit.com/content/dam/transit/about-calgary-transit/reports/lrt/downtown_final_report.pdf I'm not sure if 36/hour really is possible. But due to loss of DT...

Thanks for pointing that out, I hadn't even consider that. In hindsight, it's almost crazy that the capital costs and constructability of a >$1B project only counted for 10 points out of a 140 point scoring scheme.

Yeah, it was likely another one of those studies which were biased to a specific option, the full tunnel. This report has a more detailed breakdown of the scoring and the elevated option was a decent all-rounder except for community stuff. But because it wasn't the best at anything, it didn't...

Yes, in an ideal world it would be connected and grade-separated. But the significant costs over-run have already compromised the Green Line: -high ridership NC segment cut -the top ranked Bow River crossing using a tunnel was downgraded to the poorly ranked bridge, before being cut -most of...

I fully agree with you here, except that the lack of any progress in planning or land acquisition in the North mean it'll be hard to flip the alignment. And other than Michelle Rempel, there's really no politicians even talking about the North anymore. Unfortunately the train will go SE first...

It may be possible but I think the concept of an independent NCLRT coming into DT on the Centre Street Bridge is relatively new and probably only looked at a high-level. The previous designs using Centre Street would go west around 3rd Ave in order to eventually link with the SELRT. There likely...

It could be a "situating the appreciation" type review in order to get the favored option look good and selected. That seems to have happened a lot with the Green Line. But they had mentioned in 2019 that not connecting the two line would only cause a modest loss of long-term ridership. With...

For the elevated line discussion, from reading the Alignment Options document from 2020 it appears that for the non-tunnel options they don't require NC and SE to connect which would simply things a lot. The elevated option presented won't even have the SE line cross the CPR tracks...

The City's plan after the 2020 revision was also to build to the suburban part first. Stage 1 had been split into three parts, and they were going to build the part from Shepard to 4 Street first because it was "shovel-ready"...

I guess that's the unfortunate consequence of the Green Line taking up all the attention and money for the last decade and an unwillingness for Council to put a limit on just how expensive it could get. And even if Stage 1 is built, you still need billions of dollars to get it useful and where...

There was a second tax cut that the City also kept, so it's about $75M/year now and were dedicated for at least 30 years to the Green Line. I'd expect they'll be used to pay off the remaining debt for the Green Line project and then be a funding source for future transit projects.

What's wrong with user pay? Drivers are willing to pay the capital and operating costs for their vehicles, are transit users willing to pay 3-4X the fare to do the same? Even for relatively successful Calgary Transit, fare revenues currently only account for about 42% of operating costs and 0%...

There's plenty of blame to go around, but I don't think the claim that the UCP review resulted in a 2-year delay holds up to scrutiny. Calgary Council only approved the new plan in June 2020, the UCP approved it in July 2021. But at that same time, the Green Line board was being setup and the...

Yeah, that's a really high frequency. Green Line Stage 1 when it was still 16th-Shepard and an expected daily ridership of 55K-65K only ordered enough LRVs for 8 minute headways.

RouteAhead documents provide more details about costs and possible ridership increases: https://pub-calgary.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=147365 https://pub-calgary.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=227726 But there isn't any plans for the Purple Line to extend...

Even with 2-car trains, the stations will be too long to not block some intersections. Previously when the Green Line was specified to use up to 3-car trains, left turns were only going to be allowed at 7, 9, 10 and 12 Ave N for 2020 version of Stage 1...

But at lot of the slowness also comes from having many stations close together, requiring more stops and total dwell time and forcing the train to constantly accelerate and decelerate. Even with a tunnel, if it had to stop every 500 m a train wouldn't be all that fast. The idea is only back...