darwink
Senior Member
7th Ave is the most minimal I think. Shallow, no mezzanine. The Beltline Stations since they're underground have to be deeper underground due to the Red Line Tunnel. That means the station box is already excavated, and you can choose either to backfill, or use the space for stuff. For various reasons, the anglo world preference is to stuff back of house elements into the station box, and if room allows, do a full length mezzanine. In okay implementations, you don't expand the excavation to support this, in bad ones, the tail wags the dog, and the volume increases to accommodate services and the mezzanine.The downtown station entrance buildings look way overbuilt. No wonder costs are out of control on this thing. Can these just be stairs / escalators popping up to the sidewalk with an elevator somewhere?
In Calgary, it is almost always cheaper to buy more land than to increase station box volume. But changing that to optimize at this point would involve additional land acquisition, which the way the city does it, could add years to the schedule (going straight to expropriation would speed this dramatically AND be better for landowners, but the perception is a 'negoatition' is better even if the perception is wrong).