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

Go Elevated or try for Underground?

  • Work with the province and go with the Elevated option

    Votes: 20 74.1%

  • Try another approach and go for Underground option

    Votes: 5 18.5%

  • Cancel it altogether

    Votes: 1 3.7%

  • Go with a BRT solution

    Votes: 1 3.7%
  • Total voters
    27
Albertasaurus said:
Well, Nelson has been around for a long time and he has to have gotten the $8 billion figure from somewhere, I wonder if someone on Council leaked it to him? I must admit, if the above is true is it really worth $8 billion for a line that only goes to Ogden? That's a huge cost to only serve a few neighbourhoods. Wasn't the main point of Ph 1 to get people from the populous and growing SE suburbs to downtown quickly?

I'm very pro transit but at some point would abandoning this mess and refocusing on an airport rail link make more sense?
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$8 billions for a 10km line??? $800milion per km? 🤨
 
Albertasaurus said:
Well, Nelson has been around for a long time and he has to have gotten the $8 billion figure from somewhere, I wonder if someone on Council leaked it to him? I must admit, if the above is true is it really worth $8 billion for a line that only goes to Ogden? That's a huge cost to only serve a few neighbourhoods. Wasn't the main point of Ph 1 to get people from the populous and growing SE suburbs to downtown quickly?

I'm very pro transit but at some point would abandoning this mess and refocusing on an airport rail link make more sense?
Click to expand...

No matter what this link needs to be built. If you don’t bite the bullet now it will only cost more later. It’s like the tunnel to the airport that was widened to accommodate future lrt. It cost more to do that but it needed to be done for any future connection to work.
 
darwink said:
The citizen's committee group.
calgary.ctvnews.ca

Higher cost estimates could spur change for Calgary's Green Line LRT project

According to an update on Tuesday about Calgary's Green Line project, there are a number of design possibilities on the table because of higher costs faced by the monumental infrastructure project.
calgary.ctvnews.ca calgary.ctvnews.ca
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Another quote from the same Citizen's Committee Group "It makes no sense for it to be running from Shepard to Eau Claire and tunnelling under downtown Calgary, which is full of water"
 
Let’s not forget that Steve Allan was the Kenney crony who was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to find a non existent conspiracy against Alberta Energy and came back with zero evidence after multiple extensions.
 
Colinfill said:
Another quote from the same Citizen's Committee Group "It makes no sense for it to be running from Shepard to Eau Claire and tunnelling under downtown Calgary, which is full of water"
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They suggest elevated between city hall and the library, which has the transit geometry problem (overwhelms the free fare zone) but isn't the worst otherwise.

I'd counter that if elevated, may as well just go right to the centre of the city.
 
CalgaryTiger said:
Something is missing here, with the claim of it only going to Ogden, you need the maintenance facility. If anything, they go to Shepard but cut the tunnel.
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It's just wild speculation. The price is up, so what gets cut to stay within a certain budget. No imagination that one could do something differently instead, if that comes to pass.

I have a feeling whatever is done, whether a bit of cost overrun, or a bit of last minute changes in the Beltline, that the absolutely out of the park speculation will make the what does happen look very reasonable.
 
darwink said:
They suggest elevated between city hall and the library, which has the transit geometry problem (overwhelms the free fare zone) but isn't the worst otherwise.

I'd counter that if elevated, may as well just go right to the centre of the city.
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Can you explain this to me, "elevated between city hall and the library"?
 
Red Star said:
Good points. I'm partially sold on the idea. However, I have a few questions to ask you regarding a surface run train through downtown:

1. How do you propose the Greenline crosses the CP tracks?
2. Do you think there would be excess congestion and increased travel times having three train lines intersect at 7th Ave and 2nd street?
3. N-S city blocks are shorter than E-W blocks. They are about 80m in length. Do you think this length limits the Greenline capacity?
4. Do you think the Greenline crossing all those intersections would increase travel time?
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1. Like how the two lines cross the CP tracks now? Small tunnel for the CP track or elevated.
2. Congestion for trains? or cars? I mean there is Centre, 1st, 3rd, 4th street that cars can take, I don't see how a reduction in a few lanes on one of the the many streets will meaningfully degrade traffic.
3. Agreed this would be a problem, since the GL trains are incredibly long. I don't know the precise length of each street segment but I'd think some can still support a stop.
4. It would increase travel time of course, but we do a good job with lane reversals during rush hour, I can't see why we can't block off the lanes/left turns during high traffic times. And to cross the CP tracks part of it will still be tunnelled.

Ideally it'd be tunnelled, but compared to countless other larger cities that run surface transit routes effectively, not sure why one extra line would cause chaos and gridlock downtown. Travel times will be slower through the core, but most of the travel during peak times will be to/from downtown instead of through. Maybe you lose 5 minutes, or conversely lose years to driving or packed 301 busses because the line won't go remotely far enough. I can understand tunnelling portions of it, but I thought part of the high cost is associated with tunnelling from Eau Claire to Crescent Heights. Not sure why Eau Claire could not be a surface station then cross the bow elevated like the other CTrain lines.
 
trtcttc said:
1. Like how the two lines cross the CP tracks now? Small tunnel for the CP track or elevated.
2. Congestion for trains? or cars? I mean there is Centre, 1st, 3rd, 4th street that cars can take, I don't see how a reduction in a few lanes on one of the the many streets will meaningfully degrade traffic.
3. Agreed this would be a problem, since the GL trains are incredibly long. I don't know the precise length of each street segment but I'd think some can still support a stop.
4. It would increase travel time of course, but we do a good job with lane reversals during rush hour, I can't see why we can't block off the lanes/left turns during high traffic times. And to cross the CP tracks part of it will still be tunnelled.

Ideally it'd be tunnelled, but compared to countless other larger cities that run surface transit routes effectively, not sure why one extra line would cause chaos and gridlock downtown. Travel times will be slower through the core, but most of the travel during peak times will be to/from downtown instead of through. Maybe you lose 5 minutes, or conversely lose years to driving or packed 301 busses because the line won't go remotely far enough. I can understand tunnelling portions of it, but I thought part of the high cost is associated with tunnelling from Eau Claire to Crescent Heights. Not sure why Eau Claire could not be a surface station then cross the bow elevated like the other CTrain lines.
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You also have a train on train crossing, which will be technically difficult with the trains we bought. 600V DC and 750V DC. Edmonton used to have a system for a trolley bus to cross the LRT, but the much larger vehicles make the problem more difficult. Would require a redesign of the new LRVs at the very least.

The north south blocks are relatively short at about 80m. The trains that are ordered are 42m per car. Not a huge deal to shrink them, but they will shrink by more than 2m, being modular and all, unless we fund the development of a shrunken module. The underground stations were shrunk from ~130m to save money, but it didn't matter much because frequency could accommodate needed future capacity. Would require some modelling, but I doubt both the old LRT on 7th, and the new one on 2nd, could each maintain north of 8,000 people per direction per hour.

Travel time is everything! Would need to dig back into the reports from 2016 ish, but it degrades a whole lot more than 5 minutes iirc.

Your last point, yeah, that is a pretty easy scope to remove. Though best to not think of the station as underground per-se, but as a trenched station surrounded by a building. That is a difference between a 2x cost and a 10x cost.
 
Albertasaurus said:
Well, Nelson has been around for a long time and he has to have gotten the $8 billion figure from somewhere, I wonder if someone on Council leaked it to him? I must admit, if the above is true is it really worth $8 billion for a line that only goes to Ogden? That's a huge cost to only serve a few neighbourhoods. Wasn't the main point of Ph 1 to get people from the populous and growing SE suburbs to downtown quickly?

I'm very pro transit but at some point would abandoning this mess and refocusing on an airport rail link make more sense?
Click to expand...

My guess is it's a rumour that conflates two issues where Council has likely been informed that Eau Claire to Shepard will cost $XX but that requires additional funding from provincial and federal governments that have shown zero interest in coming to the table so the plan B is that they could build Eau Claire to Ogden within the original project budget and that might just have to be good enough.

If that's the case, I'm okay with it. Get the costly, complicated downtown segment out of the way and then just start incremental extensions of the line to the north and to the south afterwards. Both the provincial and federal governments have said they are open to funding future expansions, just not more money for Stage 1. Plus it has the added middle finger of penalizing the UCP for not offering more money by holding the train back from the ridings in south east Calgary they won.
 
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