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

Go Elevated or try for Underground?

  • Work with the province and go with the Elevated option

    Votes: 28 75.7%

  • Try another approach and go for Underground option

    Votes: 6 16.2%

  • Cancel it altogether

    Votes: 1 2.7%

  • Go with a BRT solution

    Votes: 2 5.4%
  • Total voters
    37
If we have the same amount of traffic moving through the intersection of 16th Ave and Centre St 20 years from now as we do today, we will have failed at city building. With the right infrastructure investments, there should be far fewer cars moving through that intersection in the future than there is today. We should be planning and investing in our city so that in the future people will be asking 'why on earth did they think of spending hundreds of millions of dollars extra to grade separate that intersection when it's not even that busy'?
 
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outoftheice said:
If we have the same amount of traffic moving through the intersection of 16th Ave and Centre St 20 years from now as we do today, we will have failed at city building. With the right infrastructure investments, there should be far fewer cars moving through that intersection in the future than there is today. We should be planning and investing in our city so that in the future people will be asking 'why on earth did they think of spending hundreds of millions of dollars extra to grade separate that intersection when it's not even that busy'?
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there will be more cars, simply because there will be more people. Even with our policy targets of 50% of all trips by active modes (non-car) by the 50/60 year horizon, it is still double or even greater the amount of people, so the absolute number of cars will actually increase over today. Just not as fast of a rate as population growth hopefully.
 
outoftheice said:
If we have the same amount of traffic moving through the intersection of 16th Ave and Centre St 20 years from now as we do today, we will have failed at city building. With the right infrastructure investments, there should be far fewer cars moving through that intersection in the future than there is today. We should be planning and investing in our city so that in the future people will be asking 'why on earth did they think of spending hundreds of millions of dollars extra to grade separate that intersection when it's not even that busy'?
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20 years is far too short of a timeline for this kind of talk. 100 years, maybe. IMO it's a victory if traffic counts in 20 years are equal to today.
 
outoftheice said:
If we have the same amount of traffic moving through the intersection of 16th Ave and Centre St 20 years from now as we do today, we will have failed at city building. With the right infrastructure investments, there should be far fewer cars moving through that intersection in the future than there is today. We should be planning and investing in our city so that in the future people will be asking 'why on earth did they think of spending hundreds of millions of dollars extra to grade separate that intersection when it's not even that busy'?
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It would be nice to see less cars at that intersection 20 years from now, but the most likely scenario is even more cars, especially as a city grows.
 
From my understanding after chatting with various City of Calgary officials at community events, there is less traffic crossing the Centre St Bridge today than there was 20 years ago. There is also less traffic on the Macleod Trail couplet today than there was 20 years ago. This despite significant population growth in Calgary over the last 20 years and there being more cars in the city than before. Why is there less traffic in these locations than before? The City of Calgary invested in running a serious bus network along the Centre St corridor and invested a ton of cash in extending the Red Line LRT and expanding it to 4 car service. Without these investments Centre St would be far worse of a car sewer than it is today and we'd probably be talking about adding more lanes to Macleod Trail.

The City of Calgary will be investing billions of dollars in pushing Green Line north and the opportunity is there to turn the Max Orange into a fast, frequent service to hit the many points of interest along 16th Avenue. I don't think I am that far out to lunch in thinking that with the right investments in transit infrastructure we can see less vehicle traffic through the 16th Ave/Centre St intersection in 20 years than we see today. The proof is in the fact that that has already happened in significant road corridors in the city. Plus the easiest way to reduce the amount of traffic through that intersection is to keep the Green Line plan as is and eliminate 2 lanes of traffic along Centre St from the river to Beddington Trail so in a way, the problem is going to take care of itself.

Transit projects in North America are stupidly expensive when compared to other projects around the globe. A big reason for it is because people here will happily pump up the cost of transit projects by hundreds of millions of dollars to accommodate vehicles instead of recognizing that the entire point of the transit project is to replace those vehicles and investing those hundreds of millions of dollars across the entire transit network will have a much more dramatic impact on traffic congestion than saving 1 intersection. What was the cost of building the entire Max BRT network? $200 million? So what would have a bigger impact on traffic in Calgary? $200 million on tunneling Green Line under 1 inner city intersection or building out the Max network a second time to service a bunch of other areas in Calgary that currently have crappy transit connections? I'd rather see that money spent on expanding the transit network. Make that trade-off of transit investment versus protecting vehicle movements a couple of times over and guaranteed in 20 years we see less traffic in key areas of the city despite having a much larger population.
 
I’m not really worried about Centre St.

About 16th though? We’re spending a billion or so in the Beltline to avoid crossing Macleod at grade. We’re really going to cross 16th at grade in that context? Given me a break.
 
darwink said:
I’m not really worried about Centre St.

About 16th though? We’re spending a billion or so in the Beltline to avoid crossing Macleod at grade. We’re really going to cross 16th at grade in that context? Given me a break.
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The traffic lights at 16th Ave and Centre St are what cause the congestion around that area. The lights have to be timed to account for the fact that Centre St has buses that are meant to have signal priority travelling along that corridor every 90 seconds in rush hour. This means that Centre St needs to be given a high priority in the light sequencing. Green Line trains are planned to operate every 7 minutes at peak period and Centre St will have 2 fewer lanes. To me, this says that the traffic lights at that intersection can actually be re-timed to allow much better flow on 16th Ave once the trains start running than what exists today. What will grade separation achieve for vehicular traffic that the re-sequenced traffic lights won't? Even with grade separation you are still going to have an intersection with traffic lights and turning movements at that location.
 
outoftheice said:
The traffic lights at 16th Ave and Centre St are what cause the congestion around that area. The lights have to be timed to account for the fact that Centre St has buses that are meant to have signal priority travelling along that corridor every 90 seconds in rush hour. This means that Centre St needs to be given a high priority in the light sequencing. Green Line trains are planned to operate every 7 minutes at peak period and Centre St will have 2 fewer lanes. To me, this says that the traffic lights at that intersection can actually be re-timed to allow much better flow on 16th Ave once the trains start running than what exists today. What will grade separation achieve for vehicular traffic that the re-sequenced traffic lights won't? Even with grade separation you are still going to have an intersection with traffic lights and turning movements at that location.
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IMO it’s too busy an intersection not to have grade separation. I’m not someone who drives a vehicle down 16th Ave. during rush-hour but I can’t imagine how that’s going to go giving extra right of way time to Centre Street.
In my own humble opinion, I don’t think the green line should be at grade anywhere (other than the river crossing) until it gets past 16th.

It’s not just a traffic issue for me, it’s also a safety issue. Rail transit should be separated from crossing roads as busy as 16th Ave. They’ve already done it with the northwest line at 16th Ave., and 19th St. It should be the same at 16th and centre in my opinion.
 
outoftheice said:
The traffic lights at 16th Ave and Centre St are what cause the congestion around that area. The lights have to be timed to account for the fact that Centre St has buses that are meant to have signal priority travelling along that corridor every 90 seconds in rush hour. This means that Centre St needs to be given a high priority in the light sequencing. Green Line trains are planned to operate every 7 minutes at peak period and Centre St will have 2 fewer lanes. To me, this says that the traffic lights at that intersection can actually be re-timed to allow much better flow on 16th Ave once the trains start running than what exists today. What will grade separation achieve for vehicular traffic that the re-sequenced traffic lights won't? Even with grade separation you are still going to have an intersection with traffic lights and turning movements at that location.
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Not having to cross both 16th and Centre as a pedestrian to make a transfer is a big transit benefit.

Also being able to raise the frequency and train length.
 
Even if traffic levels at the 16th Ave section is reduced when the full Green Line is complete, the at-grade stations IMO results in significant compromises in the desire to turn that section of Centre Street into a walkable, "cozy" main street versus stations that can handle high passenger counts and provide comfort in bad weather.

To minimize the footprint of the stations, the plan is to make them pretty spartan so they're not expected to have heated or enclosed shelters and only a partially covered platform. I'd expect them to be in the bottom 25, 20% of CTrain stations for comfort while waiting 10 minutes for a train in the winter or a heavy rainstorm. The below are side views of what the stations could look like (from GC2021-0736) and even if they are much more minimalistic than existing stations, their length will probably still be quite isolating between the two sides of the street

1699311206894.png
 
hagandazs said:
I remember in very early conversations of going underground when the line does cross 16 Ave. So it would be at-grade up to the 16 Ave end of line, but pushes the scope of re-work (converting 16 Ave station) and tunneling into a future extension project. (I dont know how much of that at-grade alignment south of 16 Ave would have to be re-graded to maintain a 6% max down into a tunnel. Whatever depth that would be to get under 16 Ave. And I would assume that takes 16 Ave station out of service during the re-work)

Eau Claire to 16 Ave isnt even a guarantee at this point. But if the current Green Line funding was more plentiful, maybe they should have considered putting in the trench and portal (south of 16 Ave) in now, to reduce the amount of re-work in the future.
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There is no funding for Eau Claire to 16th ave. The project team have already admitted that it would basically take a miracle to fit that within the current budget.

From the Green Line website:

"Green Line is focused on Phase 1 of the project, from Shepard to Eau Claire. The Green Line Board is committed to managing costs and risks. Should costs of escalation and other risks not materialize during Phase 1, the Board will make a decision on timing and direction for Phase 2. The timeline for that decision has not been set."
 
I still find it a huge shame that they haven’t even considered, given the jump over the river is pushed back, extending the southern terminus into Mackenzie Towne. The cost/benefit seems absolutely crystal clear to me, having a station in an actually populated neighbourhood outside of the inner city, in an area where the right-of-way already exists. Like… duh!
 
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