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

Go Elevated or try for Underground?

  • Work with the province and go with the Elevated option

    Votes: 25 71.4%

  • Try another approach and go for Underground option

    Votes: 7 20.0%

  • Cancel it altogether

    Votes: 1 2.9%

  • Go with a BRT solution

    Votes: 2 5.7%
  • Total voters
    35
CalgaryTiger said:
I don't see much point in taking people from east beltline to west beltline and vice versa. I do think that walk will be a deal breaker for many. It seems outrageous to say that but in practice people will not do it.


Scope change is a lot easier than a whole new RFP. I agree, take the money and start 4th to Shepard. Downtown isn't shovel ready so the city can go back to their private partner and turn the crayon drawing into a 60% design. That's 2, maybe 3 years away and 60% gets you to a much more certain funding number that you can take to your public partners. Two years of 4th to Shepard work and you can also let the 60% underground and 60% elevated designs compete on their merits.

When I step back I see this as anything but certain. We've had so many false starts on the Green Line where it was a sure thing until it wasn't. This is just another one of those. Adopt the alignment and then when you have the real numbers give a go or no go.


With the city redoing Stephen Ave the shallow 8th Ave tunnel is decades away if it every happens. With coming blue and red line extensions, I do wonder what other options exist. Maybe you do tear up 8th, maybe you go deeper than cut and over under 8th. Or may once we're all use to elevated trains downtown the grade separation required for red/blue may come in the form of a elevated blueline down 7th (red line/library tunnel means its easier to grade separate blue at 4th Street SE to 9th Street SW).
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There's offices down to 8st at least, maybe some further west I'm not aware of. Going all the way to sunalta might be overkill, but it's cheap simple to do and a logical endpoint for a leg of a busway.
It also wouldn't take much to extend the +15 network to 10av, either above or below the CPR tracks.

But if using 10av as a busway is seen as a show stopper, another option would be using the planned 6st se underpass to get the SE buses up to 7av.

That would of course require burying red line instead.. But it would probably still be cheaper to bury red line and build the busway to Seton than building the latest GL plan as is.
 
ByeByeBaby said:
View attachment 620123

Yeah, it doesn't look great. And the heights of the track are probably too high. (which actually reduces the visual impact of the tracks.) But what do you think it would look like? Obviously, for a mere $2.5M we can't expect AECOM to do renderings, but I think there is some onus on the proponent to provide some indication of what the plan is or might look like, especially in a complicated, constrained urban environment.

But the existing elevated LRT track in Calgary is on a viaduct 35 feet wide, and 10th Street is only 45 feet wide curb to curb; what do you think it could look like? Where should the supports go? There';s not enough room on the sidewalks and the City has a commitment to prioritize the pedestrian. There could be columns on either side in the parking lanes, which would take up a substantial portion of the parking and be a real hazard at intersections, or they could go in the median, which would work if we dropped one parking lane entirely.

The Sunalta LRT station is 85 feet wide at the access point; it's only 75 feet across 10th St from building to building. I think that fitting 85 feet of station into a 75 foot wide space probably requires more than handwaving, and a "surely it can't be that bad".
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An elevated train gives passengers a good view of the city. It's kind of silly to elevate a tram, but whatever...it is what it is.

I don't think it's a big deal if a couple parking stalls on 10th Ave get chewed up every 20' for the elevated guideway columns. 10th Ave. isn't a shining beacon of what a beautiful walkable street should look like. If two columns on either side of the street where installed, it wouldn't be the end of the world.


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InfrastructureEnthusiast said:
There's offices down to 8st at least, maybe some further west I'm not aware of. Going all the way to sunalta might be overkill, but it's cheap simple to do and a logical endpoint for a leg of a busway.
It also wouldn't take much to extend the +15 network to 10av, either above or below the CPR tracks.

But if using 10av as a busway is seen as a show stopper, another option would be using the planned 6st se underpass to get the SE buses up to 7av.

That would of course require burying red line instead.. But it would probably still be cheaper to bury red line and build the busway to Seton than building the latest GL plan as is.
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I'm still on team busway, too. I think you just figure out a full BRT solution for the heart of downtown that also serves yellow/purple/301/etc. Tons of options for that, but I'd look at 1st SW as transit only N-S connection and then 6th and probably 9th. Or maybe its 6th and 10th/11th

And of course the critical path of opening a BRT is much shorter and simpler than the LRT, and you don't even need this figured out perfectly before you launch service. I wonder if platform heights as currently designed would work for the rest of the SE ROW?

I'm sure nobody wants to own the decision to downgrade to busses, but I wonder if it might actually be more popular at this point than we'd expect?
 
CalgaryTiger said:
The $ lost with a move to busway on contracts for the rail cars, LRT contract and work already done would be too high for anyone to champion this.
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Sunk cost fallacy.

Pay cancellation fee. Or re-sell them. Or take delivery and get your ass in gear for the north.

We know we've spent about $2B. There is $3B funding to be unlocked, but we can only count on half of that. If you can get the feds on board, this is actually the best Fuck-you move possible. "we are only building a BRT because the UCP is so unreasonable". I wonder how much money the city itself would have to spend, assuming they get the full amount from the feds?

And then make it clear that building future transit infrastructure is impossible with a UCP gov't.
 
HudsonA08 said:
You are replacing the view of a parking lot and train yard with a raised train and getting a stop right outside your door. I don't think the developer here will have any issues with the elevated line here. I would prefer the train to what is there currently.
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Most renters of those bought units would feel the opposite though. A huge percentage of people don’t want a train passing their condo windows every 7 minutes. It’ll affect rents, impacting precalculated returns on investment.
 
CBBarnett said:

City says province's cost estimate for Green Line LRT falls $1.3B short​

Revised alignment would cost $7.5B, instead of $6.2B, according to news release.
https://www.cbc.ca/lite/story/1.7413385
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Ooph. This doesn't make me feel any better about the city's stub line, either.

So...how does Eau Claire-Shepard with a tunnel cost $300M less than 7th-Shepard elevated? WTF?
 
CalgaryTiger said:
1% has to go to "art"

livewirecalgary.com

Calgary to mull province's latest Green Line alignment - LiveWire Calgary

Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek said that the province’s recent handling of the Green Line project announcement has put them in a tight spot in terms of transparency and concern over risk sharing. The mayor, along with Green Line working group members and Couns. Andre Chabot and Peter Demong, said it...
livewirecalgary.com livewirecalgary.com

Back in September, Calgary city council drafted a set of guidelines the new plan would have to meet before it would sign off on a new deal.

That included the feds still helping fund, a commitment to a north-south spine from 160 Avenue N to Seton (nope), a station immediately south of the Bow River to accommodate the spine (nope), a bridge design (nope), connections in the Beltline (yes), use of low-floor cars (yes) and responsibility for delivery and risk for the province (nope).

Mayor Gondek said they would rely heavily on those guidelines as they decide on this new path.

“Just as we were patient for three months with the provincial government while they took their time to come back to the table, and they took over the new alignment for the replacement of the green line, we need them to give us time to understand the costs, the risks and the proposed alignment,” she said.

The city got very little of what it asked for. And even Chabot is throwing his hands up.

Jakob Fushtey, chair of the Calgary Transit Riders Association, said that they’ve reviewed the plan and said are encouraged to see that it resembles what would have been achieved with tunneling. Eliminating tunneling hopefully reduces constructions timelines and risk, he said.

“Regarding the projected $1B+ cost savings, we share others’ skepticism,” wrote Fushtey, in a direct message response.

“Once we factor in delays, additional utility work, and potential Plus 15 integration costs (beyond simply going over them), the actual savings may be less substantial.”

Since this is the option that’s been presented, Fushtey hopes that Calgary city council will unite to support the alignment.

“We can’t let perfect be the enemy of progress – Calgary has already waited too long for the Green Line,” Fushtey said.

Fushtey makes the point I think we're all at, if this is as good as the funding will get us, this is what we need to do.

I'm still confused about the next steps, I guess the city is waiting for the province to answer their questions about cost overuns: Gondek said, "we’re still waiting on the provincial government to state that they will take on the financial risk for this new project." I'm pretty sure Danielle has said they are not taking on any of the financial risk, I guess Gondek wants it on letterhead. So, the question to council seems to be, does council adopt the province's alignment and accept the financial risk of the alignment? Maybe council accepts the study as information and will want to take the break to figure out next steps.

To @darwink's point the council feel like they have impostor syndrome because they can't do what they normally do and act as a open body. They want to go out to the public, hold hearings but honestly what is it worth, they cannot satisfy everyone.
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I stand corrected. So $75,000,000 for public art. That's enough blue rings to make it a tunnel.
 
If sunlight/aesthetics are such a concern for an elevated line, would a steel truss rather than reinforced concrete guideway structure be an option? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder as far as whether it would be any more aesthetically appealing, but it definitely would allow a lot more sunlight down to street level. Perhaps a dumb idea, as I can't think of anywhere else this has been implemented on such a large scale. Perhaps corrosion would become a concern, making it more favorable for somewhere like Vegas and not here.

I'm just spitballing at this point. Evidently, no level of government in this country knows what they're doing at the moment. Agree they should just start building the simpler sections and pray that the next iteration of governments have some fresh eyes/ideas.

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