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

[badc0ffee]

If it's an elevated track on 10th Ave from 4 ST SE to 2 ST SW, that's very minimal impact to the Beltline.

If the line has to go west and can't stop directly at City Hall, and must be elevated, I agree that 10 Ave is a good option. It is relatively low traffic, and the streetscape is already largely a mix of parkades, empty lots, and utilities (and two apartment buildings, although fortunately one is on top of a very tall parkade). And the curve north to 2nd St SW could be done on what is currently a parking lot.

There's also some precedent for it - the West LRT is elevated just north of 10th Ave between 15 and 19 St SW. (Of course it's not elevated ON 10 Ave like this green line option would be).

 

[FCC1982]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1833994345554514268

Not only is it crazy that the premier doesn't mention downtown once in this clip, she also prioritizes the new event centre over her very own grand central station idea when she gives her answer. Is this entire thing really just about building a train from the 'burbs to the Flames games because it is kind of starting to seem that way and I am sure Jim Gray runs in the same circles as the people who own the Flames.

Oh boy - she’s even suggesting the resurrection of the Deerfoot valley for NC LRT - wasn’t that dismissed decades ago ?
But of course it ties into rail to YYC and the high speed rail corridor.

 

[FCC1982]

Silly thought but if we are planning underground shouldn't we make it more capable to use that for all the lines and make 7th ave for street cars kind of for specific D/T use only.

Or … return 7th to vehicle traffic … Gasp!

 

[ByeByeBaby]

This is how most urban rail systems work, you come in on one line, and may have to walk a block and then up or down to get to the other line. It does save a SIGNIFICANT amount of money, which is literally the entire goal. The intent is to get the maximum number of people into the downtown core, does it mean those people may have to connect onto another line, or grab a bus, YES, 100%. But we'd be achieving significant extra distance on the line, in exchange for an elevated component down a non-residential street, bordered by civic/education facilities. Ideal, maybe not, but a valuable tradeoff. Nobody is going to go for an elevated line in the beltline, servicing a neighborhood with minimal extended ridership, i would contend.

The maximum number of people will take transit into the downtown core if the whole trip to the place they want to go to is convenient, and the vast majority of places people want to go to are not east of City Hall. Nobody working at Eighth Avenue Place or Centennial Place will say "Hooray! I'm in the downtown core!" getting off their train east of City Hall; they'll say "Now how the heck do I get to my office?"

If you work somewhere in the middle of the downtown, say Banker's Hall and the train stops east of City Hall, you have the following options:
1). Walk all the way to work, 1 km -- about 15 minutes.
2). Take escalator or stairs to street level - 1 minute. Wait for the light at 7th Ave - 1-2 minutes. Wait for the next train - 1-2 minutes (in rush hour). Ride it one stop - 2-3 minutes. Walk 300m - about 5 minutes. Total: 10-13 minutes.

Adding in 10-15 minutes to someone's commute will reduce how attractive the transit alternative is. And yes, there's absolutely an argument that the cost savings is worth adding time to people's commutes (and reducing ridership).

But guess what? It doesn't matter where you add the 10-15 minutes to people's commute. The SETWAY busway plan that preceded the Green Line LRT idea envisioned a dedicated transitway to the southeast along the same route as the Green Line. The travel times for a trip all the way from Seton to downtown was 43 minutes by transitway, and 35 minutes by LRT. 8 minutes difference.

If the argument is that adding 10 minutes to the commute is worth the cost savings of the previous Gray proposal, there's an even stronger argument to not build LRT to the southeast but instead build the SETWAY, which adds 8 minutes to the commute, and would be a fraction of the cost of the Gray proposal.

 

[MichaelS]

Oh boy - she’s even suggesting the resurrection of the Deerfoot valley for NC LRT - wasn’t that dismissed decades ago ?
But of course it ties into rail to YYC and the high speed rail corridor.

No, it was dismissed with the election of Naheed Nenshi with the thorough analysis behind moving it to Centre Street of "because that is where the people are" with no consideration of what that move would cost. The 2009 Calgary Transportation Plan (sister document to the MDP) showed the future North Central LRT up the Nose Creek Valley.

 

[FriendlyDrunks]

Well she seems to want the original plan but also hates the original plan?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-premier-smith-says-she-wants-calgary-green-line-to-proceed-as-first-pitched-1.7320950

 

[Nawads]

Well she seems to want the original plan but also hates the original plan?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-premier-smith-says-she-wants-calgary-green-line-to-proceed-as-first-pitched-1.7320950

She wants the full 40km green line for less than 5 billion. But that was clearly never possible unless it was built over ten years ago.

Also, I see the UCP is saying that if the city tries to make the UCP take over the project they will kill it. They want the city to continue to run the project, have the biggest share of financing, and agree to some future plan that the UCp proposes otherwise they will cancel the project outright.

 

[darwink]

The Premier as always has some interesting ideas. Policy wishes, as they were.

Anyways, I think the Premier has even odds on not being Premier by the time the next budget roles around. Things are WAY worse internally in the party, and in the government, than is filtering out into the media.

 

[Chinook Arch]

No, it was dismissed with the election of Naheed Nenshi with the thorough analysis behind moving it to Centre Street of "because that is where the people are" with no consideration of what that move would cost. The 2009 Calgary Transportation Plan (sister document to the MDP) showed the future North Central LRT up the Nose Creek Valley.

It’s true, there wasn’t much consideration on the cost, but IMO building the line through the Nose Creek Valley would be a huge mistake. Better to pay extra money now and have it done properly, building it where the people are.

 

[lemongrab]

I counter that it's not clear cut that beltline is completely off the table. The province is going to do their own assessment, and come back to the city with their proposal. But until the province says that beltline is a no-go, can't cut that option off completely, since it's the alignment that I feel makes the most sense in servicing downtown, which shouldn't be disregarded.

Now to be clear, the Jim Gray concept isn't the worst idea, and if it's the chosen one, it's okay. But that proposal has significant drawbacks in forcing high transfer demand on City Hall station from the jump. We can't be thinking of what the best option is today, we should be forward thinking in what the best option is for tomorrow, when the ultimate build out of the green line is completed. If we're just exclusively thinking about this from the SR LRT point of view, then the terminus of the line at City Hall makes a lot of logical sense. But if this line is going to to extend to North Central, then there are significant compromises on the customer service experience for everyone involved, including Red Line and Blue Line users. If you're coming from the North, and your destination is in the core of downtown, instead of getting dropped off in the middle of downtown like you currently are with the high ridership routes that go down Centre Street currently, you're now being dropped off at City Hall, and forced to transfer to get closer to your destination. If customers have to do that, it actually would discourage the use of the train, as many would prefer to just use the more straight forward bus routes to get nearby where they're going.

The problem is the existential risk posed to the whole buildout from delivering an expensive boondoggle. "Just another $3B will make this useless LRT useful!" kinda resembles "one more lane, bro!".

Perhaps its useless hindsight, but rewind to 2015 and ask ourselves what we'd prefer:

1. Stage 1 of a BRT opening by 2020 and ROW fully built out from 4 St to Seton by say 2028. Probably some progress LRT north and/or upgrade SE to LRT circa ~2060

vs.

2. LRT Lynnwood-Eau Claire by 2033, Shephard by 2036, Seton by 2043. Probably no real LRT progress to the north

(at this point 2033 seems optimistic for a first train, but maybe 10 years is too long for further build out...)

But guess what? It doesn't matter where you add the 10-15 minutes to people's commute. The SETWAY busway plan that preceded the Green Line LRT idea envisioned a dedicated transitway to the southeast along the same route as the Green Line. The travel times for a trip all the way from Seton to downtown was 43 minutes by transitway, and 35 minutes by LRT. 8 minutes difference.

If the argument is that adding 10 minutes to the commute is worth the cost savings of the previous Gray proposal, there's an even stronger argument to not build LRT to the southeast but instead build the SETWAY, which adds 8 minutes to the commute, and would be a fraction of the cost of the Gray proposal.

And that 8 minute difference is only to one specified point (2nd & 7th). If your destination is east of Macleod then getting off BRT near City Hall is probably ~equivalent to LRT to 2nd and backtracking. If your destination is west of 4th St, then BRT is probably a few minutes slower compared to LRT to 2nd (depending on how far west the BRT actually ran - MaxPurple loops back at 1st St SW...).

And then we could also ask whether more could/should be done on 6th/9th Aves to expedite the [then] 3 BRT routes running them.

 

[kiggupiggu]

Green Line cost escalations draw further scrutiny by Alberta government

Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek said the Alberta government’s insistence there will be no further funding help for the Green Line isn’t anything new. The mayor responded to questions on the $5.5 billion…

livewirecalgary.com

I saw there was actually some numbers in this old article:
“It says that, it’s that area that’s going down to Eau Claire, and the alternative, an elevated line from the Event Center to City Hall hub would avoid the costly tunnels, would only cost $200 million, which would save about 1.8 billion,” the Premier told reporters.


To me, it doesn't seem like that much to just build it right.

 

[MichaelS]

It’s true, there wasn’t much consideration on the cost, but IMO building the line through the Nose Creek Valley would be a huge mistake. Better to pay extra money now and have it done properly, building it where the people are.

Why would it be a huge mistake? And, what does "done properly" mean for Centre Street? Is it an at-grade neighbourhood oriented streetcar, that runs at a maximum of 50km / hour between stations? Thus, making travel time so long, none of the hundreds of thousands of residents in north central Calgary would consider it a viable alternative for their commute? Or, does it mean the train runs at 80 km/h in order to provide competitive travel times? If it is the 80km/h option, is it tunnelled all the way to Beddington at a cost of $100 billion dollars? Or, does it also run at grade, thus creating a terrible experience (noise, danger, etc...) on what is also planned to be an important urban high street?

It takes real thought/nuance and an honest conversation of cost/benefit to make this decision. Hence why the extremely superficial decision made by politicians has blown up in our face.

 

[darwink]

A city hall hub is short sighted.

Not protecting enough on centre st would also be a mistake. but if you're willing to insure the wrath of NIMBYs' 60 km/h works just fine on the design.

I think elevated would also work just fine on Centre St. But people seem to care more about aesthetics than either function or cost.

 

[Tothewest]

I counter that it's not clear cut that beltline is completely off the table. The province is going to do their own assessment, and come back to the city with their proposal. But until the province says that beltline is a no-go, can't cut that option off completely, since it's the alignment that I feel makes the most sense in servicing downtown, which shouldn't be disregarded.

There isn't going to be tunnelling though, which takes the option of 11th right off the table, so what other options would there be? The provinces goal is to get people to the event centre, likely the city's cost on where to go from there, assuming no tunneling.

The maximum number of people will take transit into the downtown core if the whole trip to the place they want to go to is convenient, and the vast majority of places people want to go to are not east of City Hall. Nobody working at Eighth Avenue Place or Centennial Place will say "Hooray! I'm in the downtown core!" getting off their train east of City Hall; they'll say "Now how the heck do I get to my office?"

If you work somewhere in the middle of the downtown, say Banker's Hall and the train stops east of City Hall, you have the following options:
1). Walk all the way to work, 1 km -- about 15 minutes.
2). Take escalator or stairs to street level - 1 minute. Wait for the light at 7th Ave - 1-2 minutes. Wait for the next train - 1-2 minutes (in rush hour). Ride it one stop - 2-3 minutes. Walk 300m - about 5 minutes. Total: 10-13 minutes.

Adding in 10-15 minutes to someone's commute will reduce how attractive the transit alternative is. And yes, there's absolutely an argument that the cost savings is worth adding time to people's commutes (and reducing ridership).

But guess what? It doesn't matter where you add the 10-15 minutes to people's commute. The SETWAY busway plan that preceded the Green Line LRT idea envisioned a dedicated transitway to the southeast along the same route as the Green Line. The travel times for a trip all the way from Seton to downtown was 43 minutes by transitway, and 35 minutes by LRT. 8 minutes difference.

If the argument is that adding 10 minutes to the commute is worth the cost savings of the previous Gray proposal, there's an even stronger argument to not build LRT to the southeast but instead build the SETWAY, which adds 8 minutes to the commute, and would be a fraction of the cost of the Gray proposal.

The reasons people take LRT are far larger than just, "is my walk 5 or 10 min from the train". No battling traffic, finding parking, paying for parking, buying gas. It's not necessarily the goal of these trains to put you within 4 blocks of your work. Take any commuter rail line in the US, they all spur in from the suburbs to that city's "grand central", literally only only one stop in the downtown, it's then up to the user to use bus or light rail if their walk is too far. This really isn't that different, and in a perfect world with rational costs yah it would be great to take it down centre street, but it certainly isnt the obligation of every resident of Calgary to fund a $2B++ added cost for 4 subway stops to make things a bit easier for 1/6th of the city. It's going to take looking at this different, maybe a BRT loop in the downtown, adding the 4th rail cars, station modifications on 7th....

 

[Tothewest]

Green Line cost escalations draw further scrutiny by Alberta government

Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek said the Alberta government’s insistence there will be no further funding help for the Green Line isn’t anything new. The mayor responded to questions on the $5.5 billion…

livewirecalgary.com

I saw there was actually some numbers in this old article:
“It says that, it’s that area that’s going down to Eau Claire, and the alternative, an elevated line from the Event Center to City Hall hub would avoid the costly tunnels, would only cost $200 million, which would save about 1.8 billion,” the Premier told reporters.


To me, it doesn't seem like that much to just build it right.

$1.8B is a massive savings, massive. A savings that will extend the benefit to MANY more people

Why would it be a huge mistake? And, what does "done properly" mean for Centre Street? Is it an at-grade neighbourhood oriented streetcar, that runs at a maximum of 50km / hour between stations? Thus, making travel time so long, none of the hundreds of thousands of residents in north central Calgary would consider it a viable alternative for their commute? Or, does it mean the train runs at 80 km/h in order to provide competitive travel times? If it is the 80km/h option, is it tunnelled all the way to Beddington at a cost of $100 billion dollars? Or, does it also run at grade, thus creating a terrible experience (noise, danger, etc...) on what is also planned to be an important urban high street?

It takes real thought/nuance and an honest conversation of cost/benefit to make this decision. Hence why the extremely superficial decision made by politicians has blown up in our face.

This is a great point...there seems to be a lingering perspective that plan "A", usually the most costly, is always the preferred model. Well guess what, with costs now, unless you want to sink the city into irrecoverable debt while building out LRT, we would be wise to explore existing infrastructure and locations for those that live the furthest away, and possibly look at BRT lanes for people who live within 3-4km of downtown. As mentioned in my above post, this is how commuter rail works in the US