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

Best direction for the Green line at this point?

  • Go ahead with the current option of Eau Claire to Lynbrook and phase in extensions.

    Votes: 41 59.4%

  • Re-design the whole system

    Votes: 22 31.9%

  • Cancel it altogether

    Votes: 6 8.7%
  • Total voters
    69
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
 
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.

transitcosts.com

Final Report

Transit Costs Project Final Report Download the Final Report
transitcosts.com transitcosts.com
 
outoftheice said:
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
Click to expand...

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.
 
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.
 
outoftheice said:
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?'
Click to expand...
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:
1693004423212.png

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.
 
badc0ffee said:
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.
Click to expand...

- Removing the reversible HOV lanes and turning 2 lanes into bus only lanes works for me. Why not? I feel like you're presenting the idea as if it would somehow be bad.

- 16th Ave is not a local road because we made the decision to widen it into a 6 lane cross-town route. That being said, we are just wrapping up spending several billion dollars to build a Trans-Canada bypass so all non-local traffic can avoid having to use 16th. If the concern is that 16th Ave gets backed up east-west due to the lights at Centre St, I would repeat my point that that is, in part, due to the fact the light timings must accommodate 3 lanes of lane-reversal north-south traffic on Centre St that includes busses timed every 90 seconds trying to get through that intersection. Eliminate 2 lanes of traffic off Centre and take into account the trains will be running every 7 minutes and I would argue that Green Line means the lights could be retimed to favour east-west flow on 16th far more than it does today which means traffic flow on 16th might actually get better.

- Centre St may be one of our few bridges over the Bow, but that bridge was completely closed to traffic for 2 years when it was being refurbished and the world didn't end. That was also at a time when more people were driving downtown than are today and when transit options were far worse than they are today. If Calgary survived just fine with a complete closure, we should be able to manage 2 lanes being removed.

- I don't think I am being dogmatic by pointing out it's a bit crazy to spend several hundred million dollars to preserve traffic movements exactly how they are today at an inner city intersection of two roads that will carry a multi-billion dollar LRT as well as a Max BRT and benefits from a several billion dollar ring-road to allow out of town traffic to bypass it. Perhaps we accept traffic movements may just have to change a bit and use that several hundred million dollars to build more transit elsewhere... which is essentially what Europe does.

- Agreed we will still be going back and forth on this in the 2030s.... Green Line debates are the gift that keep on giving 😄
 
accord1999 said:
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:
View attachment 502317
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.
Click to expand...

- Correct, the communities had big concerns over tunnel portals and how they are several hundred metres long and divide the community. Keeping the train on the surface eliminates one, possibly two tunnel portals (assuming the train was just to be buried under 16th Ave) and actually does a better job keeping the communities connected.

- Several intersections being blocked off to accommodate the stations is a car problem for local traffic only, not a pedestrian problem. Given the low floor trains, the station platforms are essentially sidewalks and pedestrian crossings can easily be created between the station platforms and the sidewalks. The communities wanted a walkable main-street. Having several intersections blocked to vehicle traffic is actually an improvement over the busy 4 lane street that exists there today.

- Agreed that if Green Line never proceeds past 16th Ave, then the current design might cause issues but I would argue that the project is meant to be phased and each phase must be looked at in the context of the entire project. We shouldn't be spending hundreds of millions of dollars over-building each phase because we are worried the next phase may never happen. That becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy at it makes each phase so expensive, the next one becomes harder to deliver.

For example, we could spend several hundred million dollars burying the train under 16th in case the next phase is never built or we could actually use that same money to build north to 28th Ave station. Now that we're building further north, the concerns we were over building 16th Ave for start to dissappear. But maybe we should overbuild those next few blocks and extend the tunnel a bit further in case the project stalls out at 28th Ave but the extra cost of doing that means we could probably extend the line to 40th Ave. That's essentially what the Twitter thread I quoted argued. Instead of increasing costs by over-engineering their rail projects, European cities are plowing those savings into extending their rail networks and the momentum builds on itself. In the UK and in North America, we plow the cash into over-engineering which limits what we can build, which limits the positive outcomes it generates which means the next phase is more expensive and the outcomes are also just as limited and so we end up killing project momentum. If I had to choose between a tunnel between Eau Claire and 20th Ave or building Green Line on the surface from Eau Claire to 64th Ave, I'll happily choose the option to build it to 64th Ave every time.
 
outoftheice said:
That being said, we are just wrapping up spending several billion dollars to build a Trans-Canada bypass so all non-local traffic can avoid having to use 16th.
Click to expand...
Not unless you only consider traffic originating from and destined to outside of Calgary to be "non-local". It's a crosstown route and most of the traffic is in-town. The ring road will displace some of those trips, but not most.
 
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Took a read through a recent Green Line email. I see the city is using the Green Line to put some money into parks around future stations. As has been said, it's not just the tracks and stations that balloon the costs of these things. It's all the stuff that gets attached to them. They're like the Olympics in that way, why not try to get the long list of infrastructure projects done by tying it to this other, much bigger project.

In 2021, Council approved Parks Foundation Calgary to lead and manage the project, and Green Line provided $4M of seed funding to be leveraged by Parks Foundation to develop a minimum of six park projects along future Green Line stations.

First up:

George Moss Park Redevelopment​

George Moss Park, located in Ogden just 200 metres away from the future Ogden Station, was identified as the first project. The redevelopment of George Moss Park redevelopment will create a safe and fun gathering place for the community. It will feature basketball courts that incorporate a public art element, open seating area, a community plaza, tot lot playground and plenty of green space to connect with fellow community members.

Public Gardens Initiative | Green Line LRT

www.calgary.ca www.calgary.ca
 
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outoftheice said:
- 16th Ave is not a local road because we made the decision to widen it into a 6 lane cross-town route.
Click to expand...
I would argue that 16th Ave has always been a cross-town route, it didn’t “become” one when it was widened to 6 lanes. It’s been the TCH route through Calgary for decades. In fact the City had plans to develop a freeway for this route (on 24th Ave. alignment I believe). When 16th was widened the City admitted they were abandoning the expressway plans and instead tried to sell us on this “urban boulevard” idea.

Sorry, not really on topic for this thread but just wanted to respond to that comment.
 
Socguy said:
RM transit has a nice little video about trams that raises a number of good questions as to why Calgary is going with low floor when it would be better served with the original high floor...
Calgary specific starting at about the 10:50 mark.

RM transit on modern trams
Click to expand...
I wish CT had hired this guy in the early days of Green Line planning so we kept with the high floor “city trains” as he calls them, instead of the low floor street car “tram” we are getting.
 
I feel like his video doesn't really address the core argument why CT chose low floor for the Centre St corridor. Centre St is very space-constrained, and high floor platforms would extend the length of each platform significantly, raising station construction costs and causing more neighborhood disruption. I could be convinced that the benefits of high floor on design & maintenance outweigh the negatives, but I'd need to see a full picture comparison between the options.
 
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