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

[O-tac]

I predicted Smith would do this from the start. So tired of being ruled by an impulsive, Dunning Krueger, Facebook meme believing dumbass. How can AECOM even provide a proper report in 2 months when it took YEARS to get to where we are now?

Curious how it will be presented if it doesn’t fully confirm Smith and Dreeshat’s belief that 7th ave can actually handle more traffic.

 

[lemongrab]

My first thought yesterday was, is the city not overreacting a little bit? But then I though about it and I guess the Province did wake up from a nap and had a change of heart, and then did step on the City's toes by pulling funding and hiring the engineering firm they didn't hire overnight.

Second thought was, is there no pause button? Maybe there isn't.

What are the Green Line Board and other people working on the Green Line supposed to do until January. I mean, if you're the winning bidder what are you supposed to do sit around and wait for your competitor to tell you what to do?

I still don't have any idea what AECOM's scope of work is? A "new alignment" is so vague. C'mon MacVicar ask some follow ups or call the premier or minister's staff.

There was decent work done from Eau Claire to Shepard. Maybe AECOM is doing high level on Shepard to Seton and Grand Central Shitstorm to Downtown? It is not hard for the province to give us, the public, an idea of what is actually on the table here.

I'm really tired of the brainstorming of what could change leaking out throughout little individual briefings. Fuck off or tell us what you hired AECOM to do, through a non-competitive contract btw. Really all AECOM will be able to give them is napkin math so good luck to the province actually building anything for the price they give you.

I'm working through the council meeting and the answer on the 'pause' button didn't seem very well justified, but I think it'll be explained more later on.

I suspect the AECOM scope is something like 'figure out Elbow River to 7th Ave'. I think they mostly just want a link to their Grand Central Station.

I can imagine a crappy, but not totally insane plan that does this cheaply while retaining LF cars and connecting to the North. I'll try to draw it.

 

[EtoV]

What was the bidding/selection process for AECOM?
Or does Smith just have a friend there...

 

[trtcttc]

My first thought yesterday was, is the city not overreacting a little bit? But then I though about it and I guess the Province did wake up from a nap and had a change of heart, and then did step on the City's toes by pulling funding and hiring the engineering firm they didn't hire overnight.

Second thought was, is there no pause button? Maybe there isn't.

What are the Green Line Board and other people working on the Green Line supposed to do until January. I mean, if you're the winning bidder what are you supposed to do sit around and wait for your competitor to tell you what to do?

I still don't have any idea what AECOM's scope of work is? A "new alignment" is so vague. C'mon MacVicar ask some follow ups or call the premier or minister's staff.

There was decent work done from Eau Claire to Shepard. Maybe AECOM is doing high level on Shepard to Seton and Grand Central Shitstorm to Downtown? It is not hard for the province to give us, the public, an idea of what is actually on the table here.

I'm really tired of the brainstorming of what could change leaking out throughout little individual briefings. Fuck off or tell us what you hired AECOM to do, through a non-competitive contract btw. Really all AECOM will be able to give them is napkin math so good luck to the province actually building anything for the price they give you.

There's definitely a "pause" button but that will just add more costs that the city has to foot. And I think successive councils have just had it with the province. They paused for Kenney to do his review, and now paused again for the province to propose a new alignment at the 11th hour, when the plans have been public for YEARS. Instead of paying more for more uncertainty, I think council and many Calgarians are just done with throwing money at it only to be undercut by the province at the last minute. There's definitely some walkback by the province now that they realize the city is done with this and as unpopular as Gondek is, people will blame the province. As a right leaning person, this is just amateur governing and extremely disappointing.

Minister says no help coming for Calgary Green Line wind down

In a game of political brinksmanship, the Government of Alberta has said Calgary is on its own to cover wind-down costs for the now-dead Green Line project. The day after Calgary voted to begin the…

livewirecalgary.com

 

[ahuch]

There's definitely a "pause" button but that will just add more costs that the city has to foot. And I think successive councils have just had it with the province. They paused for Kenney to do his review, and now paused again for the province to propose a new alignment at the 11th hour, when the plans have been public for YEARS. Instead of paying more for more uncertainty, I think council and many Calgarians are just done with throwing money at it only to be undercut by the province at the last minute. There's definitely some walkback by the province now that they realize the city is done with this and as unpopular as Gondek is, people will blame the province. As a right leaning person, this is just amateur governing and extremely disappointing.

Minister says no help coming for Calgary Green Line wind down

In a game of political brinksmanship, the Government of Alberta has said Calgary is on its own to cover wind-down costs for the now-dead Green Line project. The day after Calgary voted to begin the…

livewirecalgary.com

In the presentation to council it was proposed as approximately a million dollars a day with zero certainty of anything. So it'd be burning another 50-100 million at a minimum.

 

[darwink]

I predicted Smith would do this from the start. So tired of being ruled by an impulsive, Dunning Krueger, Facebook meme believing dumbass. How can AECOM even provide a proper report in 2 months when it took YEARS to get to where we are now?

Curious how it will be presented if it doesn’t fully confirm Smith and Dreeshat’s belief that 7th ave can actually handle more traffic.

Use the existing reports as the basis for a new one. The alignment reports stretch from 2004 to today. Elevated is also super easy to cost compared to underground.

There were key findings along the way that narrowed the scope of options. It doesn't take much more than internalizing the concepts of transit geometry in Human Transport to exclude further interlining, or forcing transfers close but not close enough to your destination.

One of the benefits of making the green line faster was shifting current and future red line demand to the green line to push off the Red Line tunnel to 50 years from now. This is all public.

Think of this as a lit review, and then a brief consultants report.

 

[lemongrab]

Here's a bad drawing of a super cheap option. I don't like it. But if you really want to keep LF trains in the SE and connect them to the north someday once 8th Ave is built it keeps the option open (even though it's pretty stupid).

I meant to label the blue and burgundy as underpass.

There are better half-assed solutions, but this might be the cheapest of them all. I think I like it a little better than the Jim Gray elevated option to a similar spot. The one redeeming quality I see is that it keeps the 'do it right' option most open where you continue down the beltline and leave this underpass for a connector to serve the Grand Central Fantasy.

 

[outoftheice]

Good recap of how we got to where we are today although I feel it is being pretty generous to the UCP's actions over this last month. Also an interesting quote in there from a pre-UCP McIvor

How the Green Line went from foundational project to multibillion-dollar bust

Planning for Calgary's Green Line as we know it began in 2011 and came to an abrupt end this week when city council voted to stop work.

calgarysun.com