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

[accord1999]

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.

But it's not being paid for now. Centre Street on paper does have many advantages, but if it's so good and North Calgary already having high transit ridership why did it lose out to the SE in 2017? And why has it consistently been on the bottom in terms of priority, with no work or land acquisition being done while the Green Line continues to spend almost without limits in the DT core and SE?

 

[kiggupiggu]

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


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

A one time saving of $1.8B, but now the train line doesn't go downtown, won't go to the north, and will overload the red and blue lines. You also need to take into account the long term costs of lower ridership on all three lines and the headache/costs of inevitably trying to fix it one day.

 

[ByeByeBaby]

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....

Commuter rail in the US is generally a massive failure in terms of ridership, excluding New York and arguably Chicago. (The C-Train has higher ridership than any US commuter rail system. It has 10x the ridership of Denver's commuter rail type lines; 20x of Washington, DC's commuter rail, 50x of Seattle's.) The main difference from a transit perspective between Calgary and New York is not that we don't have a station with "Grand Central" in the name.

If the argument is that we should build cheap and not as good, then we should build really cheap; not a billion dollar skyway ending on the fringes instead of a three billion dollar tunnel; 0.05 billion on road lanes, curbs and signals for BRT.

 

[Joborule]

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.

Tunneling is of the table, and honestly probably should've been way back once cost control started getting out of hand. This is a low floor train, do we really need to tunnel if viable alternatives are available that doesn't disrupt the quality of service?

The province likely wants to do an elevated line from the event centre to City Hall. I'm in agreement that it should be elevated also, but I think it would be better for it to be elevated going down 10 Ave and then north along 2 ST SW. Essentially the same route as the proposed underground alignment, but elevated instead. The costs for that should be significantly less still that you're getting a lot of savings, and can get the line pretty far south, while preserving the ability to extend to the north along Centre Street. So that's why I'm saying that beltline would still be an option until the parties involved say it can't be done.

 

[accord1999]

A one time saving of $1.8B, but now the train line doesn't go downtown, won't go to the north, and will overload the red and blue lines. You also need to take into account the long term costs of lower ridership on all three lines and the headache/costs of inevitably trying to fix it one day.

It was an estimated $1.8B savings in 2021, it's probably higher now given how much money was slated to be spent in DT. And the Green Line plan also wouldn't go north and would still require billions to get to Seton first.

Making cuts in the quality of an alignment because it simply costs too much has already happened before. The Bow to 16th Avenue section was originally tunneled but it became at-grade. The Green Line had no problems making that change then, despite the traffic chaos it would cause to vehicle and bus commuters because it simply couldn't afford it anymore. Why should this part be any different?

 

[Chinook Arch]

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.

It would be a mistake is because using Nose Creek turns the north leg into more of a commuter/go train type system.
Nobody would be able to walk to the stations. They’d have to drive to them or take buses to them.
I don’t believe travel time will be a problem. If it’s a street car running 50 km an hour, that’s still much better than today with the bus running 20 km an hour that we have right now.

I’m not saying running it up Centre Street would be perfect but to run it through nose Creek doesn’t really make sense to me it. It’s a rail line in the middle of nowhere that everybody has to drive to. There’s also no real potential to develop nodes around the station if they’re in nose Creek not near as much potential as there is along centre Street.

 

[DougB]

It would be a mistake is because using Nose Creek turns the north leg into more of a commuter/go train type system.
Nobody would be able to walk to the stations. They’d have to drive to them or take buses to them.
I don’t believe travel time will be a problem. If it’s a street car running 50 km an hour, that’s still much better than today with the bus running 20 km an hour that we have right now.

I’m not saying running it up Centre Street would be perfect but to run it through nose Creek doesn’t really make sense to me it. It’s a rail line in the middle of nowhere that everybody has to drive to. There’s also no real potential to develop nodes around the station if they’re in nose Creek not near as much potential as there is along centre Street.

Couldn't the entirety of Greenview Indutrial, Fox Hollow Golf Course and municipal Spring Gardens sites to redeveloped into tens of thousands of units. Could also addin the planned Midfield redevelopment.

LRT up Centre is a pipe dream. If the estimate to build 7 stations from Eau Claire to Lynwood, much of through easy to contruct freight rail corridors and industrial areas, is $7B what would a line up Centre cost? Probably $5B plus.

 

[Always_Biking]

I couldn’t agree more with Chinook arch. We don’t need to be building a go train for the people in Sage Hill.
Building a line through Nose Creek Valley doesn’t serve anybody except for the people at the far end of the city.

 

[AJX]

Couldn't the entirety of Greenview Indutrial, Fox Hollow Golf Course and municipal Spring Gardens sites to redeveloped into tens of thousands of units. Could also addin the planned Midfield redevelopment.

You could eventually develop those areas into TOD’s but they already have existing businesses and uses. It would be easier to develop TOD‘s along centre Street and the TODs would be 100% more desirable than Greenview industrial and Springland Gardens.
More importantly, there are already people living near Centre Street.

 

[Tothewest]

A one time saving of $1.8B, but now the train line doesn't go downtown, won't go to the north, and will overload the red and blue lines. You also need to take into account the long term costs of lower ridership on all three lines and the headache/costs of inevitably trying to fix it one day.

The only details we know at this point is what they ARENT doing, which is tunneling. Everything else is pure speculation, including how it will get to downtown, and how people will transfer from there.

I couldn’t agree more with Chinook arch. We don’t need to be building a go train for the people in Sage Hill.
Building a line through Nose Creek Valley doesn’t serve anybody except for the people at the far end of the city.

The north central green line is probably decades and decades away at best, and possibly completely unaffordable. So we're left with an option that has an soon to be Airport Line that may be only 3-5 years away on that alignment, would adding 2-3 stops in the valley not make some sense? The $250M cost to build those stations may be a good spend for the 50 year interim. Probably 80% of users at LRT stops north of 16th, south of Macleod, and west of Sarcee drive or take a bus anyway to the stations, they don't walk, so this wouldn't be that different

 

[accord1999]

I’m not saying running it up Centre Street would be perfect but to run it through nose Creek doesn’t really make sense to me it. It’s a rail line in the middle of nowhere that everybody has to drive to. There’s also no real potential to develop nodes around the station if they’re in nose Creek not near as much potential as there is along centre Street.

Have you looked at some of the parts of the SE? It also runs through the middle of places that few people live that everybody has to drive to and from. But for some reason, that's never a big deal for it. Meanwhile NC LRT has do both high transit ridership, have every station be within range of substantial population, go through every possible spot for TOD and re-development but is also given the lowest priority and no funding.

I couldn’t agree more with Chinook arch. We don’t need to be building a go train for the people in Sage Hill.
Building a line through Nose Creek Valley doesn’t serve anybody except for the people at the far end of the city.

It works the exact same as the SE LRT. It has to go through a portion of transit wasteland in order to reach further suburbs with commuters. It even works better than the SE because by taking off these northern commuters from the existing DT heading bus routes, it also improves the experience of transit users living south of Beddington Trail because the buses won't be as overloaded anymore. How many morning 301s are already crowded by the time they reach Beddington and Huntington?

And with Calgary's rapid growth, the far north has become substantial in its own right with some of the most populated communities in the entire city, and Carrington, Livingston, and Lewiston being developed to add tens of thousands of new residents. The theoretical 144th Avenue station area that was empty field 10 years has already seen its surroundings developed.

 

[badc0ffee]

Isn't Centre St N far less risky for tunnelling than downtown? It's up out of the river valley, well above the water table, so tracks could enter the escarpment, stay level in the tunnel, and then emerge just north of 20 Ave or something, sort of like the LRT bridge in Edmonton. Or, is it just tunnelling in general we have to avoid?

 

[Beltline_B]

I agree with what others have said about the train going to the deep SE, it runs through areas with low population, and if it were up to me, I would have the southeast leg go as far as Quarry Park and end there initially.
The difference with the SE compared to Nose Creek is at the middle vein of the south (which is somewhat comparable to Calgary’s north central vein) is already covered by the redline, so in order to get to the SE which has been growing a lot they need to and extend a line out to it or use the existing red line and have a spur ti the SE but that’s a whole other story.
As far as the north central goes, I believe Nose Creek would be a mistake. Central Street makes more sense and yes, it would be more costly, but we’re doing this for the future. I’d rather do what makes sense even if it costs more.

 

[MichaelS]

It would be a mistake is because using Nose Creek turns the north leg into more of a commuter/go train type system.
Nobody would be able to walk to the stations. They’d have to drive to them or take buses to them.
I don’t believe travel time will be a problem. If it’s a street car running 50 km an hour, that’s still much better than today with the bus running 20 km an hour that we have right now.

I’m not saying running it up Centre Street would be perfect but to run it through nose Creek doesn’t really make sense to me it. It’s a rail line in the middle of nowhere that everybody has to drive to. There’s also no real potential to develop nodes around the station if they’re in nose Creek not near as much potential as there is along centre Street.

So in other words, it would have the same characteristics as our current LRT lines, which lead to us having the most successful LRT system in North America (apart from maybe NYC), where operating it actually generated a profit, allowing us to offer even better bus service for the rest of the network? Yeah... good thing we decided not to replicate that model.....

And if generating TOD is one of the key criteria of this whole program, wouldn't it just be easier for the City to put a "for sale" sign up on 50% of our park and ride lots, and encourage TOD that way? We would capture thousands and thousands of units in potential TOD, without having to spend a dime on a new train.

 

[accord1999]

Isn't Centre St N far less risky for tunnelling than downtown? It's up out of the river valley, well above the water table, so tracks could enter the escarpment, stay level in the tunnel, and then emerge just north of 20 Ave or something, sort of like the LRT bridge in Edmonton. Or, is it just tunnelling in general we have to avoid?

That's the section of tunnel they already cut in 2020. There's more details in my post at #2510.