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

[darwink]

I really doubt that, what are you basing that on? An underpass like I proposed would probably clock in somewhere around $150M based on comparable projects in Calgary. The cost of tunneling (plus stations!) is far more than that.

lower volume of dirt excavated and retained, lower width and height requirement on the right of way, lower weight requirement, lower storm water management requirement due to the smaller area of the approaches. lower to no additional land acquisition.

Below grade is a volume game. Anything that reduces the volume is cost by cube.

My personal preference is to elevate the greenline across the intersection, extreme cost avoidance while not compromising the truck route.

 

[ByeByeBaby]

One place of saving money -- both on construction and rolling stock -- is dropping the 9th avenue station. It's always been silly (slow down as many people taking the train from the north to benefit the fewest people possible), but the recent Local Area Plan has made it a complete white elephant.

Here's the area around the 9th and 16th avenue proposed stations:

The vertical blue lines are the stations, and the horizontal line is the point at which you're closer to 9th Ave station than 16th Ave. Which is two and a half blocks! These stations are crazy close! It's closer than the distance from Kerby to 7th St, and that's in the densest part of the city... this is not.

The green areas can't be built upon, because they're parks.
The yellow areas can't be built upon, because they're institutional land.
The red areas allow reconstruction -- but not any real intensification -- because (as of the start of this year) they are Heritage Guideline Areas, areas of low-density single family housing that are to be preserved with this built form.

There is an argument that preserving in place low-density historical residential housing provides a benefit to the city by preserving heritage. I'm not here to agree or disagree with that. We just shouldn't waste our money building a station somewhere that is almost entirely low-density housing and can never intensify in the future; what's the point. Fish Creek Park provides a benefit to the city by preserving natural space; we didn't feel the need to build a station in the middle of it.

The best argument for a 9th Ave station was that the area had 'good bones' and could intensify in the future; that argument has been erased. Leaving space for a potential infill station if plans change and the area intensifies might make sense, but let's not waste any more.

 

[badc0ffee]

I appreciate the effort here, and this is a useful map. But why not include areas east of Edmonton Trail? A lot of it is closer to a 9 Ave station than southern Crescent Heights. 9 Ave & 6 St NE would be less than a 15 minute walk. I do understand not going further west, as that's Rosedale which will probably never densify.

Also the big yellow blob is a high school with 2,000 students.

 

[accord1999]

One place of saving money -- both on construction and rolling stock -- is dropping the 9th avenue station. It's always been silly (slow down as many people taking the train from the north to benefit the fewest people possible), but the recent Local Area Plan has made it a complete white elephant.

I'd imagine it was only thrown in to show a single positive to make up for all the negative changes that were made to Eau Claire to 16th Avenue to save costs.

I wouldn't be surprised if/when they ever get to building the segment, that station gets eliminated.

 

[Transit Apologist]

I appreciate the effort here, and this is a useful map. But why not include areas east of Edmonton Trail? A lot of it is closer to a 9 Ave station than southern Crescent Heights. 9 Ave & 6 St NE would be less than a 15 minute walk. I do understand not going further west, as that's Rosedale which will probably never densify.

Also the big yellow blob is a high school with 2,000 students.

As a recent grad from that school, it and the possible transfers are the only redeeming features of that station. I have personally witnessed southbound trips of routes 3 and 17 crush-loaded by students from the Eau Claire-Chinatown area heading home post-dismissal. Furthermore, 10th Ave is the northernmost intersection on Centre Street where one can catch the 2, 3 and 17 all from a single stop (12th Ave is where they split up, as the 17 goes east to Renfrew and the 2 goes west to get onto 4 Street). So while development opportunity is limited in the area, I feel 9 Avenue would hardly be the deadest station on the line.

 

[googspecial]

I've always hoped that 16 AVE in Phase 1 would be deemed a "temporary" station. With the extension north, they build a new 16 AVE Station below grade that either straddles the Ave or is mostly north of it. That would make 9 AVE Station make the most sense long term. I'd be fine if they skipped 9 AVE now, and built it prior to starting the next phase as it could then be the new temporary terminus until the extension is built out.

 

[googspecial]

Also I think 4 ST and Edmonton TR should be able to handle any increase in traffic if we were to reduce or eliminate turning movements at Centre ST and 16 AVE.

 

[darwink]

Also I think 4 ST and Edmonton TR should be able to handle any increase in traffic if we were to reduce or eliminate turning movements at Centre ST and 16 AVE.

Yeah. Centre Street will be a slow street. No turning movements wouldn't be great, but not like it needs to accommodate a multitude of long-haul trucks.

 

[ByeByeBaby]

I appreciate the effort here, and this is a useful map. But why not include areas east of Edmonton Trail? A lot of it is closer to a 9 Ave station than southern Crescent Heights. 9 Ave & 6 St NE would be less than a 15 minute walk. I do understand not going further west, as that's Rosedale which will probably never densify.

Also the big yellow blob is a high school with 2,000 students.

Edmonton Trail is a Primary Transit Network corridor, that is -- according to the plans -- slated to have 10 minute or lower frequency service. At 9th Avenue (the closest point to the station), it's over 500m between Edmonton Trail and Centre St, which is around an 8 minute walk. It doesn't make a lot of sense to walk 8 extra minutes so you wait on average 2-3 minutes instead of 5 minutes.

The high school does have a lot of students; the vast majority are in the walk zone:

Those who aren't are largely served with a direct bus (or the #19) from Vista/Mayland Heights and east Renfrew; the LRT isn't a very useful service for them. There is also a population served by bus from the greenfield north of Evanston, when it gets developed. (Historically, there were a lot of students brought in from the Hidden Valley / Country Hills area, but with the opening of the (uninspiringly-named) North Trail High School, that'll stop this fall, go Nighthawks.)

I'm sure there are enough students leaving right at the bell to fill up a bus to downtown -- per the last Census, there are around 70 people aged 15-19 in the Eau Claire / Chinatown area, and I bet there's more going for bubble tea and rolled ice cream, but one or two buses getting filled up at 3:30 is not a strong justification for an entire light rail station.

 

[coaxial]

As someone who went to Crescent Heights, I can assure you there is a greater need for transit access than "one or two buses filled up at 3:30" — far greater than 2 city busloads (not counting the school buses) come in the morning, head downtown for lunch, and then head home after.

Which doesn't justify a station in itself, sure, but there are also plenty of other businesses and homes in the area that would be well served with a local station, without adding an additional 7-15 minute walk.

It also creates better access to the walking path along McHugh Bluff / Crescent Heights lookout, which is one of the premier geographical features of the city, if you ask me.

 

[outoftheice]

I saw this thread on Twitter this morning and thought it was interesting given our recent conversations on this thread about Centre St and 16th Ave. Essentially Britian has one of the highest cost structures in the world for building transit. One of the only other countries where building transit is even more expensive is Canada. One of the main reasons given is scope creep due to NIMBYism.

I found it interesting as we've essentially seen that play out in this thread. Granted, I can appreciate that this thread is a place for discussing hypotheticals and doing some daydreaming but the same thing happens at officially sanctioned public engagement. What we had was a conversation where people were concerned about trains potentially having to wait at a light to cross 16th and turning movements for traffic being impacted slightly. This despite the fact that busses currently run up Centre St every 90 seconds in rush hour which leads to busses waiting at lights and the need to push through busses at that rate probably has a much larger impact on turning movements than a train showing up every 7 minutes. Add on top of that the fact that Centre St carries far less traffic volume today than it did 20 years ago and that it will have a light rail line to reduce that volume by an even larger amount and yet people still feel it needs to have 4 lanes of traffic.

And where did this discussion lead us? In order to solve a possible problem of slight delays to transit and local traffic, we got various proposals that would add hundreds of millions of dollars to the cost of this small stretch. Multiply this approach over a 44 km stretch of track and we are easily adding a billion plus dollars to the cost of the project to avoid small inconveniences to users at a local level. Transit operates as a network which means the benefits are compounded as the network is improved so imagine if we took that billion dollars in Green Line savings and built out a bunch more of the RouteAhead plan with it. Suddenly the question becomes 'should we try to solve slight local traffic delays at the 16 Ave and Centre St intersection and apply that philosophy across the entire line or should we build an extra billion dollars of transit infrastructure and improve traffic across the entire city?'

European cities build transit where replacing vehicle lanes with tracks, at-grade crossings and cheap transit prioritization methods such as traffic lights are a given. In North America we build our transit where tunnels and over-passes are viewed as mandatory and spending a small fortune to improve transit travel times by 5 minutes isn't questioned. Europe is building a lot more transit for a lot cheaper as a result. Maybe we should try to learn a thing or two from them. Green Line along Centre St is the perfect place to demonstrate we can.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1694990887439233239

 

[trtcttc]

If anyone wants to look at detailed case studies for transit cost, I found this to be a really informative resource with cases from different cost cities around the world.

One big reason for our cost being so high is the privatization of construction and offloading of risk. Our agencies are often tasked with managing contractors, and they often don’t have the technical expertise to do it properly. We see this in various projects like Eglinton in Toronto where the provincial agency and the contractor are actively suing each other. The agencies are not managing the constractor’s work effectively and the contractor’s are bidding higher to account for scope creep and risks. For the number of public transit projects in this whole country, we really should have a federal railway agency that is able to hire and keep expertise in house and apply good practices to every project around the country

The other big cost is what you mentioned, political and prioritization of traffic. They gave an example that Vancouver’s Canada Line, built relatively cheaply using cut-and-cover methods was mired in lawsuits from business owners until 2020, 11 years after the line’s opening. And their latest line is tunnel bored which is far more expensive.

But I think a lot of these are inter-linked. Having lived in Toronto during the Eglinton construction, I find it hard to support these infrastructure projects despite really liking them. I can imagine the same if someone is from Ottawa. It’s hard to tell people and business owners to deal with disruption when the line is almost 5 years delayed (Eglinton) and literally broken (Ottawa). Calgary’s track record has been better previously but if they bungle the Green Line, public support for infrastructure will drop even more and make it even harder to build future projects. That would be really unfortunate, as the city continues to grow, public transit needs to be able to keep up.

Final Report

Transit Costs Project Final Report Download the Final Report

transitcosts.com

 

[ahuch]

I saw this thread on Twitter this morning and thought it was interesting given our recent conversations on this thread about Centre St and 16th Ave. Essentially Britian has one of the highest cost structures in the world for building transit. One of the only other countries where building transit is even more expensive is Canada. One of the main reasons given is scope creep due to NIMBYism.

I found it interesting as we've essentially seen that play out in this thread. Granted, I can appreciate that this thread is a place for discussing hypotheticals and doing some daydreaming but the same thing happens at officially sanctioned public engagement. What we had was a conversation where people were concerned about trains potentially having to wait at a light to cross 16th and turning movements for traffic being impacted slightly. This despite the fact that busses currently run up Centre St every 90 seconds in rush hour which leads to busses waiting at lights and the need to push through busses at that rate probably has a much larger impact on turning movements than a train showing up every 7 minutes. Add on top of that the fact that Centre St carries far less traffic volume today than it did 20 years ago and that it will have a light rail line to reduce that volume by an even larger amount and yet people still feel it needs to have 4 lanes of traffic.

And where did this discussion lead us? In order to solve a possible problem of slight delays to transit and local traffic, we got various proposals that would add hundreds of millions of dollars to the cost of this small stretch. Multiply this approach over a 44 km stretch of track and we are easily adding a billion plus dollars to the cost of the project to avoid small inconveniences to users at a local level. Transit operates as a network which means the benefits are compounded as the network is improved so imagine if we took that billion dollars in Green Line savings and built out a bunch more of the RouteAhead plan with it. Suddenly the question becomes 'should we try to solve slight local traffic delays at the 16 Ave and Centre St intersection and apply that philosophy across the entire line or should we build an extra billion dollars of transit infrastructure and improve traffic across the entire city?'

European cities build transit where replacing vehicle lanes with tracks, at-grade crossings and cheap transit prioritization methods such as traffic lights are a given. In North America we build our transit where tunnels and over-passes are viewed as mandatory and spending a small fortune to improve transit travel times by 5 minutes isn't questioned. Europe is building a lot more transit for a lot cheaper as a result. Maybe we should try to learn a thing or two from them. Green Line along Centre St is the perfect place to demonstrate we can.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1694990887439233239

What's the relative density of these European cities in comparison to Calgary though? I suspect there's a bit of a difference there, you have less people here with longer distances so travel time becomes an important factor in whether or not people take transit.

 

[badc0ffee]

If Centre street is fine from a traffic standpoint as a two lane road, we should immediately remove the reversible HOV lanes and turn them into bus lanes until the green line comes.

> small inconveniences to users at a local level

16 Ave is not a local road, though. And Centre street is one of our few bridges over the Bow.

The situation on this stretch is generating so much discussion because it needs special consideration given its role in the road network. Ignoring that and dogmatically removing traffic lanes is just as bad as dogmatically wanting subways everywhere to preserve every single lane and turn movement. This stretch is difficult from a planning perspective, and I suspect the city knows this, which is why the detailed design stops at Eau Claire now.

We'll probably still be going back and forth about this when Eau Claire station opens in 2030 or whenever.

 

[accord1999]

I found it interesting as we've essentially seen that play out in this thread. Granted, I can appreciate that this thread is a place for discussing hypotheticals and doing some daydreaming but the same thing happens at officially sanctioned public engagement. What we had was a conversation where people were concerned about trains potentially having to wait at a light to cross 16th and turning movements for traffic being impacted slightly. This despite the fact that busses currently run up Centre St every 90 seconds in rush hour which leads to busses waiting at lights and the need to push through busses at that rate probably has a much larger impact on turning movements than a train showing up every 7 minutes. Add on top of that the fact that Centre St carries far less traffic volume today than it did 20 years ago and that it will have a light rail line to reduce that volume by an even larger amount and yet people still feel it needs to have 4 lanes of traffic.

And where did this discussion lead us? In order to solve a possible problem of slight delays to transit and local traffic, we got various proposals that would add hundreds of millions of dollars to the cost of this small stretch. Multiply this approach over a 44 km stretch of track and we are easily adding a billion plus dollars to the cost of the project to avoid small inconveniences to users at a local level. Transit operates as a network which means the benefits are compounded as the network is improved so imagine if we took that billion dollars in Green Line savings and built out a bunch more of the RouteAhead plan with it. Suddenly the question becomes 'should we try to solve slight local traffic delays at the 16 Ave and Centre St intersection and apply that philosophy across the entire line or should we build an extra billion dollars of transit infrastructure and improve traffic across the entire city?'

I don't think the idea of the segment from the Bow to 16th Avenue being underground is purely about about NIMBY or about not affecting traffic. Replacing vehicle traffic was supposed to improve the Centre Street urban landscape, such as:

The Green Line isn't going to be some quaint street car that's only 20 m long and puttering along at slow speeds, if it's successful it's going to be a 125 m long train with 150+ m stations. Two stations at-grade will prevent significant sections of Centre Street from even seeing across the street, and several intersections will be blocked off. And with the limited space in the area, transfers to/from buses are going to be a hassle.

And the final issue is that since no segment has been confirmed as the next stage, losing two lanes may in fact cause massive traffic delays that won't be resolved for another 10, 20 years. The irony is that car drivers will probably be able to adapt better than the many dozens of buses per hour that use it today.