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Another thing you would have is flexibility on where you built the track and when you could start service. By deciding that a giant new yard must be built at Shepard, you're forced to build 18 km of track between DT and the SE (basically the same length as the southern portion of the Red Line is...

They may want to avoid confirming that until Stage 1 is well underway.

Even if the capital costs are funded, there's still significant operating costs. Earlier estimates were $40 million/year in net operating costs with ridership at 60k-65K/day. If ridership is only 30K/day then you're looking at $55-$60 million/year, a significant new cost considering the City...

I don't think that's fair to Gray or Mckendrick. They oppose what Stage 1 of the Green Line has become and are offering their own ideas. As they say, success has many fathers, failure is an orphan but also with many people saying that they can do better. IMO basically it boils down to how fast...

Option B was that middle-ground option, but the lack of any savings even using the cheap option probably means that project cost estimates continued to go up far beyond what people had expected in the beginning of the project. There are benefits to the non-car experience as well, the...

They've always wanted to tunnel under the river to past 20th Avenue, that option was rated much higher than anything else they looked at. Option A - Street-level LRT from Chinatown to Crescent Heights on existing Centre Street Bridge, underground at 2 St SW Option B - Tunnel under Centre...

The SE segment goes through long stretches of transit ridership wilderness and nobody ever complains about that. McKendrick dealt with the funding circumstances of his era where billions of dollars weren't available all at once and therefore had to say no to some things, unlike the original...

Yeah, that was the answer given by Fabiola MacIntyre in the 2017 meetings, to save it for development purposes. But as you point out, there hasn't been much at all. It's always been questionable to me on how they only bothered to look in the SE and when hard decisions had to be made...

It wasn't dragging out the process that caused, it was the Green Line team massively under-estimating costs and over-promising how ready it was. The original plan was to start construction in 2018 and finish all 40 km in 2024. What dragged it out was the Green Line team having to revise things...

People in North America often say that but most of the new LRT lines in the US haven't grown overall transit ridership. In some cases, the cannibalization of bus services (due to needing to pay for the expensive trains) or re-routing them to feed train stations means overall ridership went down...

Speaking of Shepard, there's an article today in the Herald again questioning the value of the Green Line Stage 1 given its current costs and terminal points with comments from Jim Gray and Neil McKendrick. McKendrick has some harsh words concerning ridership: The article also throws in a...

The Route Ahead update documents have been published on the City website. For the first time, they've scored and ranked Green Line extensions. https://pub-calgary.escribemeetings.com/Meeting.aspx?Id=8873da23-c7d4-4882-9639-7027ec4fb48a&Agenda=Agenda&lang=English&Item=21&Tab=attachments

I'm assuming that only the mockup is using wood (and probably cheaper grades of steel) since it's only intended to show what a real LRV would look like and will never be used operation and need to handle that stress.

There's an old study from 2006 that claims 7th Avenue could theoretically handle a peak of 36 trains per hour in one direction. But that was back when they wanted to connect both the NC and SE LRT to 7th Avenue from the East. It could be a case of "Situating the appreciation", assuming factors...

Is the 8th Avenue tunnel still on the table? Reading from the November 2020 RouteAhead report it seems like it won't be in consideration for 20-30 years with the expectation that the Green Line will reduce need in the interim...

The challenge and cost of going up Centre Street N is why I think the next extension must be laser-focused on going to 64th only. I don't want a replay of 2017, where they supposedly get enough money to go in both directions but future circumstances changes that and the Green Line team gets to...

But the only real possible extension at such a point, given the uncertainty of whether Stage 1 even crosses the Bow, is for it to continue further south. A bitter pill for NC Calgary to swallow given how the NC LRT was essentially cut in Stage 1. Unlike the Green Line, Valley Line SE only only...

Yeah, I could be too pessimistic. The new Green Line governance and management team hopefully will allow the project to progress better then before and the high oil prices give Alberta the financial resources to extend the Green Line (and hopefully not just to pay for Stage 1 overruns). But I...

In the "Updated Segment 2 Alignment Concept Plan GC2020-0583", it does state that buses would be able to go on the LRT guideway. In ideal conditions, it would be beneficial to the limited stop buses that don't need to stop between 16th Ave and the Centre Street Bridge, but accidents and winter...

At least for the 2017 version, it being underground up to 16th Ave meant that bus and vehicle traffic wouldn't be impacted until money was available to go to 64th. And once construction could start, it would just be a few years of pain until buses could offload riders. But with at-grade from...