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

[MichaelS]

I'd add a few others.

1. Risk sharing and benefit sharing:
   • Often the contracting processes Canadian cities use either means the public takes on too little risk (therefore the consortium increases risk premium), and/or the public receives too little of the benefit (public pays for the train, surrounding landowners benefit from the additional accessibility that is granted by the investment). This can make projects seem expensive (to the public), while still producing significant value (to everyone else) - pure cost is one thing, value creation and capture is the other.
   • Highway investments are mostly immune to this cost/value test that transit struggles with - it's largely just assumed that building giant highways creates value for someone somewhere, hence why there's so little push-back or issues with billions into highways.
   • All this is very complex stuff and there's a million different ways to fund, procure, phase and stage a project - all with pros and cons for cost and value. The complexity and politics involved are often why cities get it wrong.
2. Political interference and outdated institutional preferences
   • Waste time and effort on different alignments that end up not being ideal, biases towards certain technologies (low-floor, subway only ,automated v. driver etc.), anti-transit politics throwing wrenches at every step, NIMBY activism, study fatigue slowing things down at every step at every level, every delay adds inflation costs to the project etc.
3. Pork-barreling with car infrastructure
   • Transit alignments are (obviously) fairly land efficient as that's one of the whole point - transit is the only credible way to move significant volumes of people efficiently and reliable in an urban setting over long distances.
   • However while you are there building the big project, might as well tag on that interchange we always wanted to build. Or widen the intersection because the traffic department has a few things to clean up on their list, or add a bunch of park-and-rides because you didn't bother to figure out how to activate and value-create the lands you are benefitting due to all the runaround in the politics, design and procurement phases.
   • Ironically, this is why transit projects sometime fail to create the value they are trying to - the transit itself is fine, but they choose alignments that benefit car infrastructure and surround themselves with anti-transit land uses.
4. No standards, everything is customized. Every project is infrequent so has to be stood up fresh each time a mega-project comes along:
   • Every Canadian cities has different trains, mostly different technologies, different station designs, different funding arrangements. No one can share actual knowledge and design capacity because everyone is "special". This raises costs everywhere, for arguably little benefit
   • Projects are so big they don't happen often, so all the expertise that is used to figure out how to build a transit mega-project is disbanded each time you finish a project. Very little opportunity to learn and immediately apply improvements to the next project

Good run down, but is there any of #3 happening with the Greenline? I suppose you could say the whole fact it is being tunnelled downtown will help prevent vehicle congestion, but is that the only reason that we are tunnelling?

What I don't get is the idea that we will save money by delaying this. Costs are only going to go up, so we won't get a better price than what we already have, delays will only cost money. Build it, and build it now!

I wish the question being asked was not how do we change this project to make it better, but rather a broader question of is this really the best way to use $5.5 billion to achieve our city building / transit policy goals?

I suppose it is the same question asked in the 2014 Herald article @badc0ffee linked to, just with a different starting project.

 

[darwink]

is this really the best way to use $5.5 billion to achieve our city building / transit policy goals?

Yes, because of the value of time. If we had a time machine and could recast the project in 2015, maybe we would do better. But we don't. So we have our negative known knows, and the risk from known unknowns. But starting again we open up unknown unknowns.

In the end transit is a geometry problem. Moving 10,000 people per direction per hour past a certain point is hard and involves costs to do it well. We cannot think our way out of this unless we want to recast what our base objectives are:

Connect the far north and far southeast with a collective transit mode which will be time competitive with automobile use, and serve the centre of the centre of the business district while maintaining the capacity and travel times for other modes where they interact.

Now do I think the project is perfect? No. Do I think the project could accomplish the same goals for less money by making some political compromises? Yes. Should changes happen if there is a successful procurement? NO.

I think we're pretty close to out of the woods on failed procurement which is awesome.

 

[CBBarnett]

Good run down, but is there any of #3 happening with the Greenline? I suppose you could say the whole fact it is being tunnelled downtown will help prevent vehicle congestion, but is that the only reason that we are tunnelling?

There are co-benefits, so it's not always black and white, but it's a great avenue for scope and cost-creep. The most obvious Green Line one I can think of so far - https://engage.calgary.ca/greenline/78ave

Project highlights​

• 69 Avenue S.E. crossing of CP proposed to close to accommodate future CP operations
• 78 Avenue S.E. would become new connection between Ogden Road and Ogden Dale Road
• 78 Avenue S.E. would be widened to three lanes by 2020 and widened later (~2040) to four lanes
• New signals would be placed at the intersection of Ogden Road and 78 Avenue S.E.
• A new underpass on 78 Avenue S.E. under the CP and Green Line LRT tracks would accommodate traffic

Building a grade-separation will improve truck and vehicle flow, but we are also "future-proofing" this grade separation to assume growth in truck and vehicle flow so that LRT bridge is longer than it would have been. None of these things adds value to transit or transit users, with only a minor hypothetical network resiliency from one less potential collision spot occurring.

Unless the source of funding isn't the Green Line project, this is all costs that benefit vehicles and add only marginal or no value to transit.

 

[Surrealplaces]

I wish the question being asked was not how do we change this project to make it better, but rather a broader question of is this really the best way to use $5.5 billion to achieve our city building / transit policy goals?

It's a valid question...one I've asked myself different times. I guess from my perspective, if we spend the 5.5 Billion (or whatever the city's share ends up being) on something else, we'll be lacking what the Green Line would have offered. We improve somewhere but lack in another area. For example we could replace it with bus lines covering the various section, but it wouldn't be an end to end permanent solution. A Green line would be a permanent solution the city can make long term plans around.
I do think the price of the green line is expensive, but I look at it as a no gain without some pain situation. In the long term, it's better than spending the money on multiple smaller initiatives. Just my two cents.

 

[ByeByeBaby]

Good run down, but is there any of #3 happening with the Greenline? I suppose you could say the whole fact it is being tunnelled downtown will help prevent vehicle congestion, but is that the only reason that we are tunnelling?

If the Green Line existed today at-grade, would we spend billions of dollars to tunnel it to increase car capacity on 12th Avenue leading to a two-lane bridge? Would we spend billions to increase car capacity on the roads it crosses like Macleod, which have had declining traffic volumes for decades? Would we build a new underpass at 2nd St W if 1st St W had two lanes taken up for transit? Would we build a second bridge parallel to Centre St to add two lanes into downtown if we took up two lanes on the Centre St Bridge with transit? Would we spend the money to tunnel through the downtown just to keep car flows up on 4th, 5th and 6th avenues? I think the last one is the only one we'd consider, and it would be a 500m cut-and-cover tunnel; not cheap, but nothing approaching the cost of what we are actually building.

Because we usually start with the assumption that a transit system can't take away lanes from traffic -- despite increasing corridor capacity substantially -- then most of the car subsidy costs are invisible. Imagine how cheaply we could build transit if we started with the assumption that every arterial road should have LRT tracks down the middle; a Green Line-sized project would only be a few hundred million dollars.

The downtown tunnel is by far the most expensive part of the project, particularly magnified by the fact that we're paying the private sector to take on the high risk of tunnelling in a complex environment, we're paying them for financing that risk, paying them profit on top of that risk. The stupid dogmatic use of design-build and P3 project management is another massive problem; the anti-tax crowd loves to deskill the government, then complain when they have to contract out those same skills at much higher cost.

Actually, on second thought, the downtown tunnel is arguably the second most expensive part of the project. It's entirely possible that the most expensive part has been delaying and slow-rolling the project. Had we started it a decade earlier, all of the inflation costs, uncertainty costs, and so on would not be there. And the thing about delay costs is that they don't actually give you anything in return; for all that a downtown tunnel has marginal benefits, it at least has benefits.

 

[accord1999]

I don't believe it would have to go to Panorama to be considered done properly, at least not off the beginning.I'd be happy with it going to Beddington and Panorama as an added extension. This particular line is also funded by the feds and the province, whereas other RouteAhead initiatives aren't, so I'd like to see the city take advantage now and be done with it. The city is only going to get bigger, and we'll have to pay for transit in some way or another. Is the Green Line the most efficient way? It's debatable of course, but once it's built it would be easier for the city to leverage down the road. I look at the Red line and imagine how Calgary would be today if the city didn't it back when they did. It's taken a long time, but we're finally starting to reap some rewards from it.

Yes, getting to Beddington or even 64th would make the Green Line a fundamentally much better system. And that's why I consider it a massive mistake in 2017 that the Green Line team didn't keep it at Beddington-Shepard, the supposed core of the Green Line, even if that meant increasing the project costs to $6+B. Even at that higher cost, the justification for the Green Line is better with significantly higher ridership and replacement of buses from the NC and avoided the criticisms about train to nowhere. And unlike what has happened, a substantial NC segment would have been much harder to neglect and cut back on, to the point where even with the clearly higher rankings for NC extensions, the lack of planning, construction or property purchases means that Seton will probably see LRT before 40th Avenue N.

 

[accord1999]

Actually, on second thought, the downtown tunnel is arguably the second most expensive part of the project. It's entirely possible that the most expensive part has been delaying and slow-rolling the project. Had we started it a decade earlier, all of the inflation costs, uncertainty costs, and so on would not be there. And the thing about delay costs is that they don't actually give you anything in return; for all that a downtown tunnel has marginal benefits, it at least has benefits.

Calgary would still be mired in West LRT work. But the real problem is that the Green Line team couldn't find a way to justify all that spending for mostly empty trains to the SE back then.

 

[darwink]

And that's why I consider it a massive mistake in 2017 that the Green Line team didn't keep it at Beddington-Shepard, the supposed core of the Green Line, even if that meant increasing the project costs to $6+B

just the little thing that this would have killed the project. The strategy could have been much more clear that it was the unfunded priority, and kept going full speed on design and land acquisition.

Alas.

 

[darwink]

Calgary would still be mired in West LRT work. But the real problem is that the Green Line team couldn't find a way to justify all that spending for mostly empty trains to the SE back then.

The SE LRT at the time outstripped the available resources and we would have spent years fighting over at grade in the Beltline.

 

[accord1999]

The strategy could have been much more clear that it was the unfunded priority, and kept going full speed on design and land acquisition.

Alas.

There was lip service given back then about the "importance" of the NC but they haven't even bothered with token gestures like declaring 16th to Beddington as an unfunded, unknown time-frame Stage 2, or completing the design plans or acquiring land on Centre Street. Anybody see the North leg design that was supposed to be ready 4 years ago? The Green Line team strategy of that time was probably to ignore the NC LRT until it died out of neglect and cost-cutting.

 

[MichaelS]

Because we usually start with the assumption that a transit system can't take away lanes from traffic -- despite increasing corridor capacity substantially -- then most of the car subsidy costs are invisible. Imagine how cheaply we could build transit if we started with the assumption that every arterial road should have LRT tracks down the middle; a Green Line-sized project would only be a few hundred million dollars.

Isn't this the plan for Centre Street for the Greenline north?

 

[accord1999]

Isn't this the plan for Centre Street for the Greenline north?

Yeah, and it's about $200M/km from 16th to 64th Avenue (about $1.1B from RouteAhead estimate for 5.2 km of track and 4 stations). Remarkably, it's still about $200M/km from 64th to North Pointe ($1.2B for 5.7 km of track and 3 stations).

trtcttc is right to be concerned about the construction costs of rail outside of the core, that's arguably the most important factor in the Green Line budget blowout. Everybody knew the core was going to be expensive, but the northern and southeastern legs were supposed to be reasonable.

 

[darwink]

Yeah, and it's about $200M/km from 16th to 64th Avenue (about $1.1B from RouteAhead estimate for 5.2 km of track and 4 stations). Remarkably, it's still about $200M/km from 64th to North Pointe ($1.2B for 5.7 km of track and 3 stations).

trtcttc is right to be concerned about the construction costs of rail outside of the core, that's arguably the most important factor in the Green Line budget blowout. Everybody knew the core was going to be expensive, but the northern and southeastern legs were supposed to be reasonable.
View attachment 496652

North of 64th the north estimates get even less reliable. A big cost is whether you roll in a second maintenance centre or not which can make it look more or less expensive.

 

[Joborule]

North of 64th the north estimates get even less reliable. A big cost is whether you roll in a second maintenance centre or not which can make it look more or less expensive.

My opinion is that a second maintenance centre wouldn't be needed from the jump. That's something that could be added decades later if the line requires added capacity. Especially if the eventual Purple Line to East Calgary/Chestermere gets built, and it shares the NCLRT line rather than having a terminus downtown or elsewhere.

 

[trtcttc]

No standards, everything is customized. Every project is infrequent so has to be stood up fresh each time a mega-project comes along:

• Every Canadian cities has different trains, mostly different technologies, different station designs, different funding arrangements. No one can share actual knowledge and design capacity because everyone is "special". This raises costs everywhere, for arguably little benefit
• Projects are so big they don't happen often, so all the expertise that is used to figure out how to build a transit mega-project is disbanded each time you finish a project. Very little opportunity to learn and immediately apply improvements to the next project.

While I'm not sure exactly how much this contributes to the high cost but probably to some degree. However, that should lower with each additional station. Presumably, stations 1-10 will be a new "green line" standard station, but stations 11-20 should just be the same as 1-10. Nevertheless we should really have a standardized national plan when we are doing LRTs in so many cities.