Green Line LRT | ?m | ?s | Calgary Transit
- Thread starter Surrealplaces
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outoftheice
Active Member
Doesn't seem like the UCP is very serious in getting this built given Council has been clear for the last month that they need to have meetings to get their questions answered to try and find a path forward.
lemongrab
Active Member
Just seems like posturing from the city to solidify the scapegoat. Which is fair enough, I guess, but almost certainly not going to salvage anything for this project.
To go back to the Dec 19 letter from Gondek to province https://mayorgondek.ca/mayor-gondek-and-councillors-demong-and-chabot-call-on-province-to-resume-green-line-discussions/ :
So they want the meeting to discuss cost overruns, which the province has already denied. Of course at this point you can't trust a word the province says...even if you get some concessions from them I don't see how you can trust them, either.
I chuckle a bit at their demand for even greater transparency on details (incl financial) to share with the public. While the city is generally better in terms of transparency, they never really provided similar details to the public at any point in this whole process - particularly in advance of major scope changes.
So while this posturing is an understandable exercise in futility, I hope it isn't the only thing the city is doing right now
From the cbc article:
There's really no reason to question the federal funding for an elevated alignment. But this isn't a direct quote, so perhaps there is some chance that the city is asking the feds about: a) hail-mary for more funding for the tunnel, and/or b) if they can still do fund matching for even further reduced scope if the province backs out or they exceed budget (Shepard-4th or BRT).
HudsonA08
New Member
I think the city is just following the province choice in arguing this through the media instead of in private.
doughflow
New Member
I can easily see the UCP delaying with the threat of 25% tariff's on the horizon.
Albertasaurus
Active Member
With the Feds now a lame-duck government already being seen as fiscally incompetent following their underestimating the deficit by $20 billion, and with no realistic chance of winning any seats in Alberta, I don't expect they'll see any advantage in giving the city any more than has already been pledged. And there's nothing for them to lose if the whole project gets cancelled, unfortunately.
darwink
Senior Member
Recognizing that you lost a lawsuit and then calculating the value of losses you are exposed to by that precedent is the opposite of incompetence. It would be incompetent to cover that up, have that liability live in the shadows of the notes section for years or decades.
So, as has been explained many times over, federal funds flow on a per capita basis, and get assigned to projects largely by the provinces. There is no find money from the 2015-2026 period and raise the budget. There can be do another project from 2027-3037.
It is a lot less political than people act like it is.
All it does is reduce the deficit, which you also seem to care about.
darwink
Senior Member
They see their Greenline as part of the mountain-convention-airport tourism economic plan, which is a foreign currency earner not subject to tariffs.
Dārayavauš
Active Member
I agree completely on this. Gondek is not really serious about getting this project built at all, she is just trying to campaign against the UCP for her re-election. Plus when they shortened at the last minute last summer to create a train to nowhere project, I really lost all hope in the City being able to build anything anymore.
Just build the bloody thing. Elevated will not cost nearly as much as underground.
lemongrab
Active Member
The big question is whether that is actually more important to them than using it as a wedge issue against Nenshi. Sadly I don't think we'll like the answer - at least at the decision making level of Smith/Dreeshen
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
The messaging from the mayor is weird on this, a skilled politician would be able to use the fact that the elevated portion is only a 5% plan and spin that as an opportunity to make the remaining 95% something that will work for them. Essentially, accept that the tunnel is dead and take the money and run to your skilled bid winner and do the other 95% of the work required.
darwink
Senior Member
Its both.
Dārayavauš
Active Member
More interested in getting re-elected than building Transit to help Calgarians and Calgary.
randomnerd
New Member
Some poorly-organized thoughts from a long-time lurker who lives and works in a different quadrant of the city --
From an end-product perspective, a tunneled system downtown would probably be best in no small part because waiting for infrequent trains indoors will be a lot more pleasant than waiting for them outdoors on a cold winter day. If we make the experience pleasant then more people will choose to use the service and more cars will be taken off the road etc. So ideally we'd want to build the best possible system. If we're being pragmatic, though, cost needs to be a consideration since we all have to pay for it somehow. I think we could build an elevated system that would be perfectly fine, if not ideal. The heavily truncated line proposed recently was clearly not going to be useful to very many people as it was.
The trouble, I think, is that we have a "plan" for an elevated downtown system that parachuted in at the eleventh hour, and it is at best a bit half-baked. Again, it's entirely possible that we could build a good elevated system but as many have pointed out above the details will matter, and those details are simply missing from the AECOM report. Intuitively, it makes sense that an elevated system would cost less than a tunneled one, but it's kind of impossible to know exactly what that cost is without resolving the details, and any hypothetical savings are already spent in this plan on increasing track miles in the suburbs.
So the city is put in a position where it can essentially either choose to build a half-baked plan they've been handed and assume all responsibility for cost overruns or build nothing. But they need to choose now. As a Calgary taxpayer it probably doesn't make much difference because I'm effectively paying the overruns either in municipal or provincial taxes. Basically all the political in-fighting does for me is make it more expensive overall because of inflation, and makes us all wait longer to see any benefit from all of this.
My fear, though, is that I can completely understand why council would choose to build nothing considering the options they've been given. To do otherwise they assume a lot of risk that the inevitable cost overruns are used as ammunition by the UCP candidate in the next municipal election. If they build nothing, the story is a pretty simple one -- "The Green Line was cancelled because the provincial government pulled funding". It would take a fair amount of political courage to move forward with the elevated plan with all the uncertainty around it, and if they do I would worry that we will _not_ end up with a "good" elevated system. The city will be motivated to choose the cheapest option when figuring out all of the unresolved details in order to avoid cost overruns that they're fully on the hook for. Stations nicely integrated with the plus-15 network seem unlikely to make the cut.
To me, the entire planning process for this project (for a variety of reasons I'm sure) has been backwards for a very long time. Instead of "what do we need? Okay, how much will it cost? Okay, how can we fund this?" it was "well, we have this much money. What can we get for that price?". This has led to all kinds of strange decisions, and some unhelpful behaviour from government where various orders of government act surprised when delays happen but the budget is held as a non-negotiable constant. Years of delay are obviously going to have a cost impact during a high-inflation period. If the budget is held as a constant your remaining levers are quality reduction or scope reduction. I find it strange when people act like this is surprising.
Maybe I'm crazy.
Thoughts?
From an end-product perspective, a tunneled system downtown would probably be best in no small part because waiting for infrequent trains indoors will be a lot more pleasant than waiting for them outdoors on a cold winter day. If we make the experience pleasant then more people will choose to use the service and more cars will be taken off the road etc. So ideally we'd want to build the best possible system. If we're being pragmatic, though, cost needs to be a consideration since we all have to pay for it somehow. I think we could build an elevated system that would be perfectly fine, if not ideal. The heavily truncated line proposed recently was clearly not going to be useful to very many people as it was.
The trouble, I think, is that we have a "plan" for an elevated downtown system that parachuted in at the eleventh hour, and it is at best a bit half-baked. Again, it's entirely possible that we could build a good elevated system but as many have pointed out above the details will matter, and those details are simply missing from the AECOM report. Intuitively, it makes sense that an elevated system would cost less than a tunneled one, but it's kind of impossible to know exactly what that cost is without resolving the details, and any hypothetical savings are already spent in this plan on increasing track miles in the suburbs.
So the city is put in a position where it can essentially either choose to build a half-baked plan they've been handed and assume all responsibility for cost overruns or build nothing. But they need to choose now. As a Calgary taxpayer it probably doesn't make much difference because I'm effectively paying the overruns either in municipal or provincial taxes. Basically all the political in-fighting does for me is make it more expensive overall because of inflation, and makes us all wait longer to see any benefit from all of this.
My fear, though, is that I can completely understand why council would choose to build nothing considering the options they've been given. To do otherwise they assume a lot of risk that the inevitable cost overruns are used as ammunition by the UCP candidate in the next municipal election. If they build nothing, the story is a pretty simple one -- "The Green Line was cancelled because the provincial government pulled funding". It would take a fair amount of political courage to move forward with the elevated plan with all the uncertainty around it, and if they do I would worry that we will _not_ end up with a "good" elevated system. The city will be motivated to choose the cheapest option when figuring out all of the unresolved details in order to avoid cost overruns that they're fully on the hook for. Stations nicely integrated with the plus-15 network seem unlikely to make the cut.
To me, the entire planning process for this project (for a variety of reasons I'm sure) has been backwards for a very long time. Instead of "what do we need? Okay, how much will it cost? Okay, how can we fund this?" it was "well, we have this much money. What can we get for that price?". This has led to all kinds of strange decisions, and some unhelpful behaviour from government where various orders of government act surprised when delays happen but the budget is held as a non-negotiable constant. Years of delay are obviously going to have a cost impact during a high-inflation period. If the budget is held as a constant your remaining levers are quality reduction or scope reduction. I find it strange when people act like this is surprising.
Maybe I'm crazy.
Thoughts?
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
The city does seem very nervous about assuming the risk, rightfully so, and your point about the cheapest option winning out because of that risk could be accurate but I think they would want to do the least risky things and cheapest. That still could leave us with a line that isn't that good and we're stuck with for a long time. What they have to ask themselves, is that better than no line at all.
See if the city can get the province to the table to get their answers about what they need to adopt. Time to drop the assumption of risk talk as there's no way the province wants any part of that.
It was like this in the beginning but the math was horrible and that has essentially sunk the project since then. Ever decision has been beholden to napkin math from the 00's. I'm sure the city asked for more money along the way, when they didn't get it, they shrunk the scope. So in hindsight you can say they should've walked away until there was more money but for whatever reason they sold themselves on the scope still being fine. Turns out it wasn't fine and here we are.
See if the city can get the province to the table to get their answers about what they need to adopt. Time to drop the assumption of risk talk as there's no way the province wants any part of that.