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

[CalgaryTiger]

Calgary decided to gamble

Or did they just want to do the hard part first and thought the extensions could be done continuously over time? The gamble was the extensions, I don't think they saw the hard part as a funding gamble (it obviously had other risks).

What I don't get is the blindside, the change of tune seemed to come out of nowhere. That's why I think the city is so thrown. I wonder what happened at the province... I assume someone against the city approved Green Line called Danielle and told her to shut it down. Gray? The province is a partner in transit but they have exactly zero experience in developing transit, so it is a bit rich for them to swerve into that lane. AECOM wouldn't say no, and who knows what they're getting paid for this work?!

The Green Line process was not straight forward but I'd argue it was closer to actually being built (they knew what they would get for money they had), whatever you want to say about Eau Claire to Milican. Getting cold feet at the alter happens but this isn't that, something happened.

 

[O-tac]

I’ll tell you what happened. Danielle Smith happened. She’s petty, Machiavellian and completely unreliable.

 

[Ramsayite]

Or they determined, like many many other Calgarians...we need a Green Line, but not 9km for $6B. It likely isn't as political as some are making it out to be

It's absolutely as political as claimed; failing to see that only demonstrates your own political biases and/or political illiteracy.

More enlightened centrist BS

 

[CalgaryTiger]

Can we all agree Dreeshan is being setup as a fall guy?

If it goes well Danielle will parade around like Caesar if it doesn't we'll see Dreeshan's head on a stake.

 

[badc0ffee]

I know the UCP want to win political votes by serving communities deep in SE Calgary, but it's an unnecessary political move. These are safe UCP ridings. They would do better to build a Centre Street north LRT, where the battleground seats are.

It plays well with fiscal conservatives all over the province as they get to step in and stop runaway spending. Also they're blaming this on Nenshi, who they will face off against in the next election.

 

[outoftheice]

I think even people in support of the project recognize its problems, and know the council's process on this project was poor. But the time to ask for reviews of elevated alignment was 2020/2021. It's the same party in power no less. As a government, you can't reset every decision made by previous administrations, even if you don't agree.

I'll be even more generous than that and say the time to ask for reviews of the alignment were this spring when the Green Line team began meeting with the province to describe to them the direction this was all going.

Better yet, maybe the province could have just opened their wallets a bit wider and ridden in to be there heros and we could have built a line that included the downtown tunnels AND got us to Shepard.

The fact they didn't choose either option and flip flopped last minute after an op-ed was published in the Herald by Jim Gray that mirrored an opinion piece by Rick Bell published around the same time tells me this was 100% political. My guess Dreeshen is in so far over his head on this that he had absolutely no idea he was blowing up the project when he sent that letter.

A glimpse of what might of been:

 

[outoftheice]

Good clip on the reality of the situation Council was facing. These folks recommended a wind-down despite knowing it was going to cost them their jobs. With all the political rhetoric out there on this project, the Green Line project team showed some remarkable professional character and spoke truth to power despite immense personal cost and the media has almost entirely ignored it which is disappointing.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1836825598788005960

 

[Ramsayite]

Let's not forget that this provincial government just announced 8 billion dollars in capital funding for school development. Not that it's a bad thing, but it's pretty obvious that there are no real policy-driven constraints on where the province can firehose capital. They've chosen to dump capital where it is politically expedient on the one hand, and withdraw funding where it is politically expedient on the other.

In other words, the decision to abstain from further capital funding on the green line (which might have extended it) is very much as political as the decision to spend money right now on school construction. These decisions are strategy driven, not policy driven.

Literally just months ago the government was turning down capital requests from school boards to build schools. It's all entirely on a whim. There was no news of this in the budget when it was released . But now teachers are beginning their bargaining process and they can rightly point to insane class sizes and the lowest per student funding in the country. This government is about to get roasted in the bargaining process. Dumping a bunch of capital funding into school starts is a good way to distract the general public and attempt to rebut the claim that we underfund our schools. Of course, capital funding is completely different than operational funding, and building a bunch of schools doesn't change per-student funding, but it's enough to bend the general consensus and set up a campaign (and bargaining) strategy: when someone points to the least funding in the country for schools, the UCP can point to their capital spending firehose.

But that fire hose of capital is not directed in a thoughtful or coordinated way, It's entirely reactive. That's what happened with the green line, that's what's happening with school funding, and it's happening on literally every file under this government.

 

[accord1999]

Or did they just want to do the hard part first and thought the extensions could be done continuously over time? The gamble was the extensions, I don't think they saw the hard part as a funding gamble (it obviously had other risks).

At some point you can't have the hard part continuously eat up all the funding so you can't do any other part and have no immediate benefit.

And they've been using this excuse since 2017. What they should have saw was "doing less with more" as the gamble.

What I don't get is the blindside, the change of tune seemed to come out of nowhere. That's why I think the city is so thrown. I wonder what happened at the province... I assume someone against the city approved Green Line called Danielle and told her to shut it down. Gray? The province is a partner in transit but they have exactly zero experience in developing transit, so it is a bit rich for them to swerve into that lane. AECOM wouldn't say no, and who knows what they're getting paid for this work?!

I was surprised that Alberta commented so quickly. Canada was more of a wait and see.

 

[O-tac]

I can’t find the clip, but Dreeshan made a comment in the spring or early summer about how the province is funding the Deerfoot upgrades from Anderson to Glenmore, and how it’s reducing commuter times. He insinuated there was less of a need for the Greenline because of that.

 

[lemongrab]

I'll be even more generous than that and say the time to ask for reviews of the alignment were this spring when the Green Line team began meeting with the province to describe to them the direction this was all going.

Better yet, maybe the province could have just opened their wallets a bit wider and ridden in to be there heros and we could have built a line that included the downtown tunnels AND got us to Shepard.

The fact they didn't choose either option and flip flopped last minute after an op-ed was published in the Herald by Jim Gray that mirrored an opinion piece by Rick Bell published around the same time tells me this was 100% political. My guess Dreeshen is in so far over his head on this that he had absolutely no idea he was blowing up the project when he sent that letter.

A glimpse of what might of been:

View attachment 597369View attachment 597370View attachment 597371

I'm sure a big part of the answer is to take the Cost Reductions listed with a heavy grain of salt (reduced compared to the theoretical gold standard we probably never would have chosen?), but it makes the numbers even harder to square.

In 2020 the steer report told us the best choice was 16th to Shephard for $4.9B, which included:

16th Ave
9th Ave
Bow River Bridge
Eau Claire underground
7th Ave underground
Centre Street underground ($300M saved)
4th St SE underground ($400M saved)
Ramsay
26 Ave
Highfield
Lynnwood
Odgen
South Park
Quarry Park
Douglas Glen
Shephard Station
Shephard MSF (replaced with smaller [temporary?] MSF)
A bunch of LRVs
North BRT Improvements* (these are still happening but the costs have almost certainly been pulled out of the GL as it is explicitly outside the GLB mandate; perhaps it is the $80M called City Capital Costs)
$1B in other Value Engineering/contract strategy

Despite the cuts above, it was still $1.7B short of the budgeted $4.9B + unspecified money for land (some, but not all of this would have been retained as a useful asset). So $6.6B + land for everything not crossed off above.

But as contemplated in the 2020 steer report, it would have been $8.3B to do Eau Claire to Lynnwood + $850M?? (off top of my head - is that what they said was needed to get to Shephard?) + $____?? for Bow River bridge, 9th, and 16th...let's call that another $850M which gets us to a round $10B to get the selected 2020 option A2, but still excluding land or North BRT improvements.


Now we know a lot of shit has happened in the last 4 years...but the steer report still should have accounted for normal inflation, right? It would have anticipated spending across the 2020s to achieve the project (but no doubt overly optimistic on timelines). Inflation is an undeniable culprit, but shirley the delta between expected and actual BCPI doesn't account for being off by 100%...

 

[outoftheice]

The next chapter in the saga begins. Can't see why the province would say no to this but I never thought the province would do what they did either...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1836934127872008651

Letter from the Twitter pic that doesn't display in the embedded tweet:

 

[O-tac]

Thankfully there is some openness there. If the the Province still insists on the 7th Ave alignment I hope the city will counter with stopping it at 4th St.

 

[Nawads]

I Don't get how Smith/Dresden can keep saying they didn't want to waste taxpayer money on the current greenline. But at the same time cancel a project in which over a billion dollars (up to 2 billion now with cancellation costs) will go to waste, how is that not way more wasteful of taxpayer money getting nothing in return???

 

[CalgaryTiger]

The next chapter in the saga begins. Can't see why the province would say no to this but I never thought the province would do what they did either...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1836934127872008651

Letter from the Twitter pic that doesn't display in the embedded tweet:

View attachment 597439

As someone else said, these conversations should've been happening behind closed doors in the spring.

If they both came out in July and said, "we're going ahead with final planning on 4th Street to Shepard. We also need to see if all options have been exhausted for the part beyond 4th Street, that decision will come by the end of the year."

People would've been all "a train to nowhere?!" but all the City and Province would've had to say is, "no, this isn't the end product, we don't want to delay Shepard to 4th Street while we make sure we're building the best line for our money in the downtown. The final decision on that part will come by the end of the year."

The problem is that for a long time this hasn't been a partnership between the City and Province. Since the end of August they both have wanted to get a very public bite out of the other. The letter is sensible and without rhetoric, hopefully the puppet in the red hat can exercise the same self control.