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

[accord1999]

I was going to say this reminds me of the SF Central Subway, but our project's cost is "only" $649 million/km for 9 km, vs. $957 million/km (Canadian dollars) for their 2.74 km line.

The Green Line has a segment that's pretty desolate though and should be a lot of cheaper. Anybody want to guess at how the split is now between the expensive DT and east of 4 Street? Stage 1 is now $5.8B (not including financing charge) so the 2.4 km DT might be around $3.5B?

In 2019 this was how they split the costs:

 

[lemongrab]

The Greenline and the Event Centre 1.0 were two sides of the same coin. Decisions made early without evaluation then presented big problems which weren't reexamined, instead, direction from council, whether from motion, or as expressed preference during Q&A, or from a councillor directly leading a process, was treated as sacrosanct. Extreme preference to not go back to council for redirection slows everything down. For the event centre, we saw how much better the result was when the footprint was allowed to grow, and the target number of seats was allowed to shrink which were both against Council preference.

For the Greenline, we never had that, because even during this last project phase, the expressed preference from a Q&A from iirc 2017 was stuck to. That preference is so strong, that even cutting most of the distance was preferable. But we never saw the tradeoff in public. I'm not confident an evaluation was ever made.

Imagine what it would be like being a career official in that environment. You don't get truth to power when council can define not giving answers they want as being difficult and have you shuffled off with little difficulty.

Its one reason project boards are in best practice brought in very early for projects that aren't typical, and stood up with a CEO that is compensated appropriately for the magnitude of the project. The board insulates the CEO from being fired, and the CEO can speak truth to power. The board forces the council to define their objectives early, and then works to meet those objectives, and shields the project from changes outside of those objectives. Having the objectives defined, lets the CEO respond to most requests with either: this does not serve the objective, do you want to redefine the objective? or, this is out of scope with the objective, perhaps this could be pursued through other means.

I think you've hit on perhaps the most integral issue here - the objectives seem to have been pushed to the backseat a long time ago. The GL Board wasn't even mandated to meet objectives...it was created to deliver 'the program'. The program being 16th to Shephard. It even explicity excludes BRT improvements (see bolded below - I suspect that meant the BRT north stuff included in the 2017 plan, but it could also be read to exclude any consideration of BRT anywhere)


From the GL Board Governance Manual:

MANDATE

5. The mandate of the Board is to use its collective expertise to govern and oversee the successful Delivery of the Program, and to carry out Council direction provided to administration and to the Board related to Delivery of the Program.
...

DUTIES AND AUTHORITY

Program Implementation

3 b. the construction and implementation of the Program in a manner consistent with the Capital Budget and the scope, schedule, and plans approved by Council;

g. the management of scope changes to the Program as requested by The City, the Project Cos or contractors

...

Affordability of the Program

6. The Board shall monitor the Affordability of the Program and advise Council if material changes to the scope, schedule, or Capital Budget are required.


...


Scope – means the scope for the Program, defined by Council as extending from 126th Avenue Southeast to 16th Avenue North, Calgary, as approved by Council and as may be amended by Council from time to time (which may be divided into Segments 1, 21A and 2B), but excluding Bus Rapid Transit improvements.

I think most can agree that the Program (Stage 1 as determined in 2017) was not an absolute clear cut homerun best choice (even if you agree that it was a good enough choice). It was arrived at by a poor process, perhaps with ill-defined objectives? So while I can understand the desire to keep the scope narrow to try to get things going, that shouldn't happen at the expense of the original objectives

Were the objectives officially published at any point? In the very simplest terms, I'd have to think the primary objective was something like: build the best possible transit for about $5B (of course with a whole bunch of points to define what that means in terms of service, ridership, targetting the North/SE, and the need to satisfy requirements from Prov/Feds for funding, etc)

A key step whenever any project runs into major issues should be a very zoomed out review of "what are we really trying to do here". It usually isn't the answer, but I've personally experienced it several times (albeit much smaller projects) where 'that option we narrowly decided against a long time ago is actually the best option based on all of the information we have today. So let's do that instead'. It really seems like this never really happened, because of both valid and silly reasons.

 

[badc0ffee]

Not that anybody asked, but here's what I would have built instead of this:

• Phase 1
  • Use the existing LRT vehicle type for the SE green line.
  • Make the SE green line branch off 7 Ave, and take 4 St E to go under the CP tracks.
  • This means the red, blue and SE green lines would share 7 Avenue, which is not good long-term, but that leads us to:
• Phase 2
  • Red line tunnel under 8 Ave (this would be shallower than the proposed green line tunnel that has to go under both the red line tunnel and CP tracks)
• Phase 3
  • Build a completely different line to go north - THAT line can use the low floor vehicles, and would need its own MSF somewhere in the north. It could use a reinforced Centre St bridge, enter a tunnel at 2 or 3 Ave S, and dead-end at 7 Ave to provide transfers to the blue and SE green lines, and a short pedestrian tunnel to the red line under 8 Ave.
    • 16 Ave N station would certainly need to be in a short tunnel

Alternatively we could do phase 3 first (3 -> 1 -> 2).

 

[O-tac]

I happened to be driving Ogden road today to the Beltline. Seeing the area in Lynnwood / Millican Flats where the station is going is even crazier than I remembered or saw on Google maps. It’s in the middle of nowhere with no houses or businesses beside it. Even residents within eyesight of the station would need to walk up and down a large hill and across a massive empty field to connect to it. As for business access there’s a road, a ditch and a fence blocking you from even getting to CP’s HQ. This cannot be anything except the first step to start construction before immediately moving to get the extension done.

I also noticed the signs warning of impending Greenline construction on the fence to what would be the Shepard maintenance facility beside 52nd are now gone.

 

[lemongrab]

Here's another wacky idea that has a ton of problems, but could've been okay:

1. After crossing the Bow River it heads due west along Highfield Crescent, where it crosses 11 St and then uses the abandoned tracks ROW all the way to 1st St and 42 Ave SE.

2. It's a bit clumsy here, but connect it to the redline just south or north of the 39 Ave station. South of the station is below grade, or you'd have to fly over the station and join to the north.

3. Shares red line until 8th Ave tunnel, which is expanded as necessary to be the terminus.


This would be about 3km of new track west of the Bow River, but it should be quite simple until the last part.

Compared to the most difficult 7km as currently planned from the Bow River to Eau Claire, which also has to get over heavy rail and the Elbow River. 'Highfield' station would be about 1km SW of the current plan. 4 fewer stations (26th, Ramsay, 4th St (losing the provincial funding in this so-called reality we live in), and Eau Claire).

How much further south would that get us?

 

[badc0ffee]

I like it, but yeah, we need the 4 St SE station, and would miss out on service to Inglewood/Ramsay, which are both a big draw and have future potential.

 

[jhappy77]

Here's what I would do to mitigate costs downtown.

Guessing it's too late to go this route? But if y'all think there's any chance otherwise I would happily send this to every city councillor.

 

[badc0ffee]

Guessing it's too late to go this route? But if y'all think there's any chance otherwise I would happily send this to every city councillor.

The issues I see there have to do with the distance required to get to proper tunnel depth. Your tunnel would have to go under the underpass at 1 St SE and the train wouldn't be able to get to the surface by 2 St SE, which means it would have to stay at depth (2 St SE also has an underpass). Perhaps it could surface just west of 4 St SE.

 

[kempes_78]

I'm just going to comment on the strange fact that you created this account recently just to post these kinds of cryptic messages of outrage and opposition. You've posted like 10 times in this thread to say basically the same thing.

Stating an opinion!

 

[Red Star]

Not that anybody asked, but here's what I would have built instead of this:

• Phase 1
  • Use the existing LRT vehicle type for the SE green line.
  • Make the SE green line branch off 7 Ave, and take 4 St E to go under the CP tracks.
  • This means the red, blue and SE green lines would share 7 Avenue, which is not good long-term, but that leads us to:
• Phase 2
  • Red line tunnel under 8 Ave (this would be shallower than the proposed green line tunnel that has to go under both the red line tunnel and CP tracks)
• Phase 3
  • Build a completely different line to go north - THAT line can use the low floor vehicles, and would need its own MSF somewhere in the north. It could use a reinforced Centre St bridge, enter a tunnel at 2 or 3 Ave S, and dead-end at 7 Ave to provide transfers to the blue and SE green lines, and a short pedestrian tunnel to the red line under 8 Ave.
    • 16 Ave N station would certainly need to be in a short tunnel

Alternatively we could do phase 3 first (3 -> 1 -> 2).

You proposal would be a massive cost savings. I only see two problems:

1. 7th Ave. in downtown is already at full C-train capacity.
2. South of Shepard, a high-floor C-train doesn't really work so full as there are lots of at-grade crossings and high-floor stations don't integrate into the existing streetscapes so well. Also, high-floor C-train stations increase the overall cost.

 

[badc0ffee]

7th Ave. in downtown is already at full C-train capacity.

I was thinking that the double blow of oil post-2014 and WFH post-Covid would have changed this, but maybe I'm wrong, in which case we would need to build the red line tunnel before the SE green line (which sounds politically untenable, but then, my proposal isn't real anyway

South of Shepard, a high-floor C-train doesn't really work so full as there are lots of at-grade crossings and high-floor stations don't integrate into the existing streetscapes so well. Also, high-floor C-train stations increase the overall cost.

That is fair, especially in Seton. But I think it would work on the stations along the reserved ROW next to 52 St (McKenzie Towne, Auburn Bay, etc), at least as well as it works in the far NE stations like Martindale.

 

[darwink]

You proposal would be a massive cost savings. I only see two problems:

1. 7th Ave. in downtown is already at full C-train capacity.
2. South of Shepard, a high-floor C-train doesn't really work so full as there are lots of at-grade crossings and high-floor stations don't integrate into the existing streetscapes so well. Also, high-floor C-train stations increase the overall cost.

The original intention was a red line spur which exclusively served Douglas Glen and south. In the 90s when low floor trains were a curiosity. #2 is totally bogus

The cost difference is really small when you look at the project. The 'integration' is even pretty minimal.

What we do know is for 25 years, new systems elsewhere were getting fancy new low floor cars. Simultaneous to that construction, millions went into street scape improvements. Much like street scape improvements when the 17th Ave SE BRT was built. Simultaneously we replaced the stations on 7th Ave with modern ones, and rebuilt the street and electrical infrastructure.

All that conflated and of course we would like to spend less (but never do a true tradeoff analysis if low floor means longer trains which means bigger underground stations which means MUCH MORE cost, and given that low floor trains cost more to maintain and more to procure, just maybe the station cost isn't what matters!).

 

[outoftheice]

Can we talk about how this was the plan for the now deferred Centre St station? You ride a subway in Europe and in order to do so you walk down a short staircase to the platform. Here in Calgary we were apparently planning a massive underground station with elevators, escalators, and a mezzanine level and we pat ourselves on the back that eliminating it will save $400 million? Maybe we should bring the station back and build it realistically instead of as some university ideal fantasy project. This station is supposed to serve 2,000 riders per day!!! (Renderings from the Green Line website)

 

[darwink]

The problem was tunnel depth to get around the Red Line Tunnel. That compounded with not crossing Macleod at grade drove so many design decisions.

If elevated was on the table, plenty of different options could be considered.

Alas.

 

[badc0ffee]

Here in Calgary we were apparently planning a massive underground station with elevators, escalators, and a mezzanine level and we pat ourselves on the back that eliminating it will save $400 million?

I agree about the mezzanine. It looks like those crazy oversized stations in Edmonton, like Bay and Corona.

But we have to have an elevator (assuming a centre platform) or two for accessibility.