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

[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.

 

[darwink]

^ Lack of standardization is an issue. Not having a Canadian standard isn't the problem though, it is having systems built in a way which is totally custom.

In some cases the fault is seeking the lowest cost rather than a standard plan. Ottawa is the perfect example: the contractor mashed a bunch of systems together and assumed the best. Edmonton tried to implement the most modern signalling and train control tech while the contractors didn't anticipate a system which had analog quirks and was built to 1970s standards. Toronto insisted that it was better to redesign streetcars to work with their switch design rather than replace the switches with modern ones. Montreal immediately diverged from their parent VAL system, and continues to heavily customize. Toronto is also highly customized, where they have to operate with 3 different signalling systems.

Ironically, Vancouver's system is the most standardized given the SkyTrain was the textbook gadget-Bahn for a long time.

Calgary with high-floor LRT is in a good spot, they're not hard to build AND the fleet is large enough that there is no problem for customization within the general S-Bahn brief (car length, track geometries). Calgary's last custom order became the defacto North American standard when the other largest fleet operator bought cars which were largely the same. The design is even replacing heavy rail in Cleveland and non standard LRVs in St Louis.

I totally get the appeal, the simplistic YouTube analysis that some countries even standardized station depth so they could buy a single model of escalator. I don't think that is a huge driver of cost as long as the station depth aligns with off the shelf components.

What is a huge driver? Trying to decrease disruption as much as possible during construction by limiting site size, limiting land acquisition to the bare minimum without any analysis of the cost tradeoff, growing underground infrastructure due to aesthetic preference versus surface or elevated.

 

[Mountain Man]

Reading about the problems on the new LRT line in Montreal, really hope CT is doing their due diligence and we don't end up with day 1 problems like Montreal, or systemic problems like Ottawa.

 

[darwink]

Reading about the problems on the new LRT line in Montreal, really hope CT is doing their due diligence and we don't end up with day 1 problems like Montreal, or systemic problems like Ottawa.

Day 1 problems are normal. Ottawa problems are not.

 

[badc0ffee]

I would have thought the NC line north of Beddington Trail would have the least uncertainty and lowest cost because the corridor already exists. The land was set aside and never developed.

 

[MichaelS]

I would have thought the NC line north of Beddington Trail would have the least uncertainty and lowest cost because the corridor already exists. The land was set aside and never developed.

Similar situation for the SE leg, especially south of Shepard.