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

Go Elevated or try for Underground?

  • Work with the province and go with the Elevated option

    Votes: 8 72.7%

  • Try another approach and go for Underground option

    Votes: 2 18.2%

  • Cancel it altogether

    Votes: 1 9.1%
  • Total voters
    11
Alex_YYC said:
What a clusterfuck this whole thing has been, with plenty of blame to go around.

The question now is do we do a redesign from the stampede grounds through downtown which would most likely be an elevated option?
Or, do we hang in there and wait a couple of years until the UCP is booted out of office and try this again?

I was originally against the elevated option, but now I’m thinking this is the most logical way to get this done the green line from Victoria Park South can stay the same. All we would do is change the downtown section to elevated and take another run at it.
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I don’t know why the elevated option was not preferred. It will clearly be much cheaper than underground, and Albertans are notoriously cheap.

Plus it’ll be nice to get our own skytrain.
 
MichaelS said:
If politicians can admit (which means take blame for the lost decade and $Billion spent) that they actually don't know more than the professional transit planners, maybe we will get back to that initial vision, but I think it will take an election that completely removes anyone who has been involved in this so far.
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[QUOTE="MichaelS, post: 2123220, ...ign, planning and financial advice? [/QUOTE]
 
Ramsayite said:
The error was the assumption that the province under the UCP could ever be a good faith partner. Whoops.
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Well Calgary’s plan honestly turned into a joke. I’m entirely unsurprised that the province pulled funding.

It truly was the definition of a train to nowhere. It serviced nobody, and I doubt it would get anywhere near the 30k ridership that the city was projecting.

It makes more sense from a financial and service stand point, to extend the Red Line to 210 Ave and the Blue Line further North. Both extensions would get better ridership than those joke of a Green Line the city decided to go with.
 
kempes_78 said:
Megaprojects: several stakeholders with limited knowledge of how to develop the design and construction process. Was a risk and reward contract the correct medium? Will the current design be bought out by the City or the Province or will a new design be commissioned? Are the consultants on the project pre-screened before being taken on board as they provide advice - design, planning, financial?
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If they end up elevating the line through Downtown and share 7th avenue with the other two lines, I wonder if the plans for Eau Claire will end up being shelved or pared down? And the townhouse owners at Eau Claire are probably doing an inside cheer!
 
YYCguy said:
If they end up elevating the line through Downtown and share 7th avenue with the other two lines, I wonder if the plans for Eau Claire will end up being shelved or pared down? And the townhouse owners at Eau Claire are probably doing an inside cheer!
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Eau Claire is getting redeveloped at some point. Those townhouses will definitely be demolished, it’s just a matter of when.

I don’t think the alignment would change though? It’s just be elevated. It’ll only intersect with 7th Ave or maybe share for a block or two.
 
If you want to know why Doug Ford cares about building transit out to Toronto's suburbs, this is what they look like:

1725585839138.png
 
badc0ffee said:
This was scrapped by Ford in favour of a subway extension because light rail was a "war on cars".
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Ford has his faults but to say this was purely a provincial decision is wrong. City council voted for this in 2016, two years before he came to power.
Silence&Motion said:
If you want to know why Doug Ford cares about building transit out to Toronto's suburbs, this is what they look like:

View attachment 594220
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You’d be glad to hear the Ontario line runs from Don Valley East (61- Liberal) to Exhibition (65-NDP) and the entire line serves non-PC represented areas.

There’s plenty to criticize Ontario PC and the UCP as well that there’s no need to make up criticism because they fit a conservative caricature
 
Tunnel depth seems like a really big driver of costs...I know they've mentioned cut and cover a lot, but it looks like that was only going to be from Eau Claire to ~7th (and deep cut and cover by that point), with the rest being bored (https://www.calgary.ca/green-line/construction/tunnel-and-underground-stations.html)

The boring seems to be based on three assumptions: gotta go deeper than the red line tunnel at 11th ave, gotta go deep under the future 8th avenue tunnel, and gotta be deep under the parking sprial/CP tracks. But what if we didn't have to go deep at all?

- run at grade along 11th Ave, but extend the underpasses on each Macleod Tr south by about 150 meters each (like how the 4th Street underpass also goes under 9th Ave). 1 lane would stay at grade to turn onto 11th Ave, but 2-3 lanes would become trenched, and can be sold as road improvements.

- shallow cut & cover* along 1 St SW (modifying existing underpass) - running at the same grade as the 8th Ave tunnel. Perhaps not ideal to have lines intersecting and it creates a critical failure point, but it's not impossible to do

* getting a little crazy here, but I've always thought 1st St SW would be an excellent pedestrian only street (ideally from 8th Ave to 17th)...what if you didn't even have to fully cover it (at least not to be load bearing for a roadway)? Probably makes things like HVAC and station access points cheaper/easier

- There are a handful of small storefronts on 1st that would be hugely impacted/compensated by this disruption (one of the benefits of 2nd St is there are essentially zero store fronts or critical building entrances...though I'd argue that also just means its an office wasteland). Based on cursory research this is still a way cheaper approach than boring (and dealing with those storefronts could probably have been more economical than expropriating a bunch of condos in the midst of a housing crisis...


I'm sure there are a bunch of drawbacks to this, but it gets you down to 1 underground station (7th Ave) and facilitates surface stations in beltline and north downtown, and opens the option to more easily run at grade over Centre St bridge.The vehicle lanes lost in this on 1st and 11th are pretty well used, but ultimately they are both redundant
 
The dust has settled and this government remains as petty and vindictive as ever. The thought of another surface line through downtown is just absurd. We are nearing 60,000 people living downtown and another 100,000+ working. We don't need another surface line and 7th Ave is already maxed out, or close to it.
 
Dārayavauš said:
Well Calgary’s plan honestly turned into a joke. I’m entirely unsurprised that the province pulled funding.

It truly was the definition of a train to nowhere. It serviced nobody, and I doubt it would get anywhere near the 30k ridership that the city was projecting.

It makes more sense from a financial and service stand point, to extend the Red Line to 210 Ave and the Blue Line further North. Both extensions would get better ridership than those joke of a Green Line the city decided to go with.
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Maybe this is not the right kind of thinking but I thought about this like the beginning of Stoney Trail on the east side of the city. Sure it was a freeway to nowhere when the first section was done but as the different sections were built out it made sense. This was horribly sold to other orders of government and to the people of Calgary.

In the end the boring is too much. Too much risk of unknowns, and just too much money because of that risk. Lemon has some interesting ideas but the conflict with the 8th Ave subway cannot be brushed off.

Surface in the Beltline is the way to go, I agree that 1st Street SW should be how you get into downtown but do you go under the tracks via a redone underpass or over the tracks?

Caveat's are:
You need to be at surface or above 9th Ave and at surface or above 8th/Stephen Ave and since you can't go below, you definitely need to be above 7th Ave and the other C-Trains.
I don't see how it is possible to climb quick enough out of an underpass and over 8th Ave let alone 9th Ave.
Keep in mind the car traffic that would be delayed by a surface crossing of 9th Ave is likely a non-starter.

In conclusion, you have to elevate the line over the tracks and keep it elevated through the downtown to 3rd Ave There you can either keep it elevated and go up 1st Street and cross the bow on your own bridge or cut across the surface parking lots at 3rd Ave, bring the line back to the surface and cross the bow river on Centre Street Bridge.

I don't really see another good option unless the 8th Ave subway is abandoned or their willing to go deeper on the 8th Ave subway at 1st Street. The city (I mean, Province) needs to decide how important the 8th Ave subway is to them. If it is, I think if you do lemon's idea of a subway out of the 1st Street underpass and future proof the 1st Street and 8th Ave connection by digging what would be required for 8th Ave subway to go under the train going up 1st Street. Hell, you're about to redo Stephen Ave, maybe pause that and couple it with this. Now might be the time to do the 8th Ave and 1st Street subway.
 
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Has any city built an elevated transit system downtown recently? I'm curious what the streetscape under them is like. Everyone knows the classic Chicago and Brooklyn streets, has it improved since?
 
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