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

Go Elevated or try for Underground?

  • Work with the province and go with the Elevated option

    Votes: 51 76.1%

  • Try another approach and go for Underground option

    Votes: 13 19.4%

  • Cancel it altogether

    Votes: 1 1.5%

  • Go with a BRT solution

    Votes: 2 3.0%
  • Total voters
    67
randomnerd said:
Thoughts?
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The elevated route is not as poorly thought out as you might think. There are many alternatives, but they all have fatal flaws, whether due to a lack of connectivity to the future north line, property acquisition costs, impacts to the CPKC line, conflicts with the red line tunnel, or impacts to transit service on both the red and blue lines.

We don't need to go back to the drawing board on this. Please, no.
 
Sorry. I should have been more clear. I think the new route is probably fine (it's quite similar to the tunnel route after all). My concern is that the costing seems like it's not much better than napkin math, and the proposal from what I've seen doesn't address questions like "how should the guideway interact with the street and the plus-15s and so on along the route?" The answers to those sorts of questions could potentially drive a lot of cost that may make the napkin math quite wrong.

badc0ffee said:
We don't need to go back to the drawing board on this. Please, no.
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Agree 100%. What I would like to see as a taxpayer is for all orders of govenrnment involved to stop playing stupid political games, accept that it's now 2025 and costs have increased since the project is now starting later and inflation is a thing that exists, and that budgets need to be adjusted accordingly. I want them to work together constructively to get going on this adjusted alignment with a system that, while maybe not ideal is at least high quality. All the "take it or leave it" talk just leads to more delays that end up costing me more in the end.

I'm not confident that will happen given the current political climate, however.
 
randomnerd said:
Sorry. I should have been more clear. I think the new route is probably fine (it's quite similar to the tunnel route after all). My concern is that the costing seems like it's not much better than napkin math, and the proposal from what I've seen doesn't address questions like "how should the guideway interact with the street and the plus-15s and so on along the route?" The answers to those sorts of questions could potentially drive a lot of cost that may make the napkin math quite wrong.
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The report answers this a little bit (though it seems the +15 integration in the report was pretty sloppy), but the only way to get more clarity is more design work. The province and AECOM aren't sitting on answers to these specific questions the city seems to be asking them. The city should actually have a better idea of these things than the province, IF the city actually gave elevated a fair shake ~9 years ago and developed a good faith elevated option (which would identify some of the big inherent challenges/drawbacks, but also have a preliminary idea for how to mitigate them). But as we too often see with non-preferred options, the final publicly available reporting tends to emphasize the challenges while ignoring possible mitigations.


A big thing overlooked in the city's plan is that grade-change transitions have the most detrimental impact to the public realm and create dead zones. There is a chicken/egg thing where a lot of these dead zones don't seem so bad, because they are tucked up against a car-sewer-stroad like Macleod or 16th or Bow Tr or Memorial...but those were mostly self-fulfilled prophecies.

Transition to underground is arguably better than to elevated (red line along Macleod Tr, or Hounsfield Hts to go under 16th), but fewer transition zones is best of all. (lots of examples of elevated transition zones: Bow River crossings, Blue line @ Millenium Park, red line up the hill to SAIT, etc)

Some sort of transition is inevitable near Olympic Way. Elevated is mitigated by being right beside the heavy rail tracks (a hostile barrier in themselves), but the tunnel would have seen it on 11 Ave (unclear exactly where since they changed 4 St station to surface level).

But then in Eau Claire we would have had a double whammy going from underground to elevated, whereas a continuous elevated option is actually a lot less disruptive. Going to surface along Centre St would also likely mean transition zones near 16th.

So on the whole I'm not convinced the tunnelled alignment is significantly less disruptive to the public realm (and none of it is the end of the world either way)
 
thecivilengineer said:

MSN

www.msn.com
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Don't worry this isn't phishing...

“It will be an update from administration to members of council, as well as our working group being able to talk to our colleagues about what we have learned,” Mayor Jyoti Gondek told reporters Friday.

Transportation and Economic Corridors Minister Devin Dreeshen said last week that Alberta’s $1.53-billion commitment to the revised Green Line “has not changed” and is set in regulation. But he reiterated the province wants an answer from the city “this month” on whether it will pursue the alternative downtown alignment.

“This timeline is critical to keeping the project on track and avoiding further delays,” Dreeshen’s office told Postmedia on Thursday. “A decision by the end of the month would ensure sufficient time for submission to the federal government.”

Dreeshen was referring to the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program (ICIP), a $33-billion funding program that is coming to an end this year. The final deadline for ICIP applications is March 31.

Gondek said:

“We know that with government being prorogued, there’s not going to be enough time for them to come back and make a Treasury Board decision before that March 31 deadline comes, which is when the money disappears if it is not allocated to the Green Line project,” she said.

“Those are decisions that the federal government has to make and they’re not actively sitting right now. The provincial government can certainly influence them and I know that they’re having those conversations.”

So news is admin is updating council, working group is updating council. Dreeshen wants an answer this month on whether they will "pursue the alternative downtown alignment". Federal money is a bit of an unknown. but the province and city are trying to get answers.

I think if you're the city you pass a motion this month that gives you a wide berth on pursuing the alternative downtown alignment. It will be celebrated like every other false start but really nothing should be celebrated until some proper ground is being broken. The other 95% of the "alternative downtown alignment will take years but at least work can be done from 4th to Shepard in the meantime.
 
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livewirecalgary.com

Green Line discussions progressing, Mayor Gondek says - LiveWire Calgary

Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek said it's absolutely possible for the province and City to approve a Green Line alignment by the end of January.
livewirecalgary.com livewirecalgary.com

Discussions with the Alberta government are progressing and Mayor Jyoti Gondek is confident they’ll be able to make a decision on Calgary’s southeast transit line in the near future.

Mayor Gondek also said that she was happy to hear that Alberta Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen was able to talk with the federal government about funding.

“They will need to see a business case. We are working with the provincial government to put a business case together,” she said.

“We continue to be concerned that there is risk involved,” she said.

“Any time you have a project of this size, the risk is something that needs to be carefully assessed and analyzed and mitigated, and that’s what we are asking the province to do with us.”

Mayor Gondek said they’ve received more clarity from the province on some of their outstanding questions. Those have been answered through the working group and a liaison working between the two government administrations. She said any questions they had were going directly to the province.

“We are working very well together to try to come up with a solution,” she said.

This has got to be the most encouraging update on the Green Line in years. To this point it has been cutting the line, doing more with less, etc. Feels like we might actually be getting somewhere.
 
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Colour me cynical, but I hope you’re right. Evan Spencer not seeking a second term gives me some optimism as his main goal seemed to be getting the Greenline constructed. Despite the toxic environment I don’t think he would quit unless he thought it was progressing and or wanted to free himself from outside pressure to vote in favour of it despite risks.
 
Very cool of LWC to include the full 125 FOIP documents for download. This article seems to focus mostly on late August, but the FOIP seems to include a bunch of emails from July and earlier - before the city amputated the line. Might be some interesting stuff in there.


From the Jan 18 article;
“At the meeting this afternoon, the City of Calgary was resistant to considering other alignments. They highlighted the sunk costs, feasibility from a technical perspective, and legal liability of shifting the downtown underground alignment,” Stewart wrote.
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Pretty damning but unsurprising admission.


“The Mayor also raised the review that the province did of the Green Line back in 2020 and then the review of the above grade solution proposed by the [REDACTED due to no response]. Basically, they pointed out that the province reviewed alternate alignments previously and did not raise any issues that have not already been dealt with.”
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I think it's important to note what the province accepted in 2020 was 16th-Shepard for ~$5.6B (IIRC). But that previous decision becomes completely irrelevant when the proposal changed to EC-Lynnwod for $6.3B

Quinton’s response to that email chain was in part commentary on the Q&A, but also an updated map that more closely aligned to the City of Calgary approved option.
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This is probably a small point, but my sense from this is that the initial provincial idea may not have been 2nd St (Steve Allan alignment? Or AECOM envisioned something else from their GCS work?). I wonder if the city's legal liability concerns with Eau Claire were a big factor in the change?


I think it's worth noting that all of the emails cited in the article came from provincial bureaucrats (not politicians - although clearly some political direction at times). We know Dreeshen spoke way too soon affirming the funding after the city's amputation; I'm curious what the provincial review process actually is? I think it's quite possible that bureaucrat(s) initiated all of this (in service of their mandate from ministers). I speculate that the city's July 30 plan had to go across various desks for approval (e.g. Robert Quinton, Executive Director for Strategic Procurement and Grants referenced several times in the article), and flags were raised about value, and also missed opportunities related to the regional rail plans (ie. AECOM told them we would have loved to do _____ if the green line were elevated through the station, etc)
 
lemongrab said:
Steve Allan alignment
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I think this is it. Chatted with a member of the group at length in 2021, and they clearly hadn’t thought about it as a capacity problem, only as a lines on map problem (if the lines touch it means a perfect connection with no penalty and there is always capacity to make the connection).
 
darwink said:
I think this is it. Chatted with a member of the group at length in 2021, and they clearly hadn’t thought about it as a capacity problem, only as a lines on map problem (if the lines touch it means a perfect connection with no penalty and there is always capacity to make the connection).
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There just doesn't seem to be much smoke from that camp lately...kinda like they gave up a few years ago? But I may be off on that?

Seems like a lot more smoke around the regional rail stuff. From the FOIP, it seems Dreeshen had a "desired alignment of the GL" by mid July. The question is if/how much of that was shared with the city in the preceding weeks/months?I suspect both these "other discussions" and the city/GLB salvage process were evolving concurrently; the province probably hinted where they wanted to go, but didn't have things nailed down well enough to provide clear guidance/direction.


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There's a whole bunch more to unpack on the "waiver" letter the city wanted...and this new info helps explain why it was such a weird letter. I don't think it was a grand conspiracy based on the number of people involved - it seems there were at least a half dozen bureaucrats who helped craft it, all knowing it would likely lead to a future monkeywrench if the city went down the wrong track. Which all suggests to me it was related to the passenger rail plan that they were all involved in, as opposed to the likes of Gray/Allan finally getting in the right ear at the right time. But who knows, if you dig deep enough maybe those dots all still connect.

But I think. this also points to another issue: how the city managed its relationship with the province throughout this project...not just on the political side, but also the bureaucratic side. Should one of these high ranking bureaucrats been invited to sit on the GLB? That's a whole can of worms and I can understand why its a scary proposition; but OTOH I think you need the intellectually honesty to recognize that fear might be rooted in exposing your weak project fundamentals...just a bit of a musing and maybe I'm missing an obvious reason its impractical. But with better provincial relationships I doubt the city gets blindsided by an intentionally worthless "waiver" letter It would also be a baby step towards the idea of provincial management and financial responsibility for this kind of project.
 
Tbh the Minister’s office should have known what a comfort letter meant to the city and not sent one. That the DM’s office checked with legal and flagged this heavily implies the Department knew they were doing dirty but I doubt the implications really settled in for the Minister.
 
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