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

[accord1999]

You have clearly never driven Deerfoot in the far SE before in rush hour.

I wouldn't necessarily expect the Green Line to replace that many car trips; their estimate is about the equivalent of 6000 cars.

And is that more important than resolving the overcrowded buses of the Centre Street N corrdor?

What exactly is your idea of a better value line?

Greg Morrow suggested splitting the lines:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1195528512918048769

Another option is to go back to high-floor trains, and have the NC swing west and come into downtown using the same bridge as the NW line. From that direction, 7th Avenue has plenty of capacity if train scheduling is adjusted.

Other options would be to go proper BRT for both. After all, the primary reason the Green Line upgraded to LRT was because of Centre Street N.

These are better options than building a line that still needs billions of dollar to be useful, with an era of austerity with the UCP Government and a big chunk of City finances already tied up for the next 25 years just to pay for Stage 1.

The North Central line is also of great importance. Unfortunately the SE is by far the most isolated quadrant of the city and requires better transit connectivity.

And that's the problem, the Green Line tried to do too much and the City badly underestimated the costs and the Green Line is now gutted to where it's of very limited benefit given its high capital and operating costs. And a lot of the Deep SE's problem is simple geography, it is just very far from downtown. Nobody would think of building an LRT in the near future to Livingston/Carrington but it's actually no farther to downtown by track than Shepard.

 

[darwink]

The problem with every solution is that they all require a downtown tunnel (or removing significant downtown road capacity) to not be phenomenally bad. To solve the problem takes money. There isn’t a magical solution that is good, on the 2012 value budget, and has a long length. We can only have two.

 

[Colinfill]

Isn't the 7th avenue transit corridor already full with just the red and blue line? Imagine adding the green line through it as well. We would just be delaying the inevitable, which is a tunnel through downtown.

 

[accord1999]

Isn't the 7th avenue transit corridor already full with just the red and blue line? Imagine adding the green line through it as well. We would just be delaying the inevitable, which is a tunnel through downtown.

It's full in the East direction with the very high ridership South and high ridership NE. But from the other direction, you just have the high ridership NW and medium ridership West. With careful scheduling of the trains, there should be enough capacity for one more high ridership line (NC) coming in from the west. Instead of the Nose Creek alignment shown in the figure (which was always flawed since in entered downtown from the far busier direction), something like a 10th Ave W alignment. The peak hour ridership of the NC, NW and W nearly match the peak hour ridership of the S and NE.

https://www.calgarytransit.com/sites/default/files/reports/downtown_final_report.pdf

 

[UrbanWarrior]

That is the worst of all possible options short of not building it at all. Sorry if that's somehow offensive.... but holy good god that would be just terrible. Three lines using 7 Avenue. I'd actually probably rather them just not building it for decades until they can smarten the f*ck up and build it correctly. We need to stop building as a city of 750 000 and start acting like the city of 2 million that we will be by the late 2020s/early 2030s.

 

[accord1999]

That is the worst of all possible options short of not building it at all. Sorry if that's somehow offensive.... but holy good god that would be just terrible. Three lines using 7 Avenue.

During the peak AM rush, there's no change in the Eastern direction, you'll still have the same number of trains coming in as we do now. The difference will be that you'll also have ~22 full trains coming from the Western direction, maximizing the passenger capacity of 7th Ave from both direction instead of just from the east.

I'd actually probably rather them just not building it for decades until they can smarten the f*ck up and build it correctly.

It's not a matter of smarts, it's a matter of money.

We need to stop building as a city of 750 000 and start acting like the city of 2 million that we will be by the late 2020s/early 2030s.

And the problem is such a line would cost $9B+, enough to cripple the City. Pragmatic decisions with LRT have worked well for the City in the past; grandiose plans have led to white elephants in the US.

With the current staging, we have the line that goes in the opposite direction of the primary mass of ridership in the NC (the area that supposedly needed rail in the middle-term), and a crippled river crossing and will cost $40M/year in new operating costs. I feel that this is not the best use of the $5B of funding that the City has.

 

[O-tac]

And the problem is such a line would cost $9B+, enough to cripple the City. Pragmatic decisions with LRT have worked well for the City in the past; grandiose plans have led to white elephants in the US.
.

Would you consider the at grade intersection lrt crossings in the NE a good outcome? It's a gongshow and completely representative of this city's penny smart pound foolish attitude in the past.

 

[Social Justice]

The City should take the opportunity to reboot the Green Line and use the UCP Government as cover. It's clear that the $8-$9B Green Line version 1 is far too expensive to build and they should go back and see what the most useful line is possible for the $4.5-$5B they do have.

I find it hard to believe the cost has increased to 8-9 billion. It seems ridiculously high.

Can't the city find modest cost savings? Instead of tunnel boring using a cut and cover method? Just build it from Eau Claire to Shepard? or utilize the Centre Street bridge?

 

[darwink]

$8-9 billion for the full length. The long tunnel, underground stations, and a few more SE grade separations. adds maybe a billion bucks. The north grade separations, expanding intersections to still have left turns, right hand turns, and a through lane adds dollars to that segment, as does some utility relocation which I think was massively underestimated or missed in initial estimates. Almost all of the cost increases are to make impact on traffic less.

Then we have the march of time which has increased costs, changing business conditions that has reduced the appetite for risk transfer for tunnels, and the city decision not to use one massive contract which transfers around where profits need to be made from life cycle optimization to the construction phase, and you have your cost increase.

 

[accord1999]

Would you consider the at grade intersection lrt crossings in the NE a good outcome? It's a gongshow and completely representative of this city's penny smart pound foolish attitude in the past.

Versus the NE line being stuck Marlborough for 20 years? Without limitless resources these are the tough choices. The previous LRT lines have been compromised in order to increase their reach but ended up being among the most successful light rail lines in North America.

I find it hard to believe the cost has increased to 8-9 billion. It seems ridiculously high.

It's ~$5B for Stage 1, $2.4B from 16th Avenue to North Pointe, and up to $1B for Shepard-Seton. A far cry from 2015 when the full line was expected to be $4.5-$5B

Can't the city find modest cost savings? Instead of tunnel boring using a cut and cover method?

They're already doing that for downtown just to stay on budget. Without the recent changes, it would probably have costed another $1B.

 

[CBBarnett]

This would be a dramatic shift this late in the game of the Greenline saga. But couldn't we just buy the Canada Line design / contracts off of Translink in Vancouver? I get that local tunnelling and conditions are different - and this is mostly a joke post - but why not?

From the highly critical article:
Canada Line is a model example of a poorly-designed, under-built toy train
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/canada-line-skytrain


I get their criticism but here's the details.
- 2.6 to 3.0B to build (2020 dollars)
- 150,000 passengers a day
- Fully grade separated and automated
- 19km long, 15 stations (8 underground, 7 elevated)
- 10,000 pphpd capacity before stations need to be expanded (this is the main critique of the article as this is too little capacity and not enough future-proofing)

	Canada Line	Greenline (Stage 1)
Cost	2.5 - 4.0B (2020 dollars, depending on the inflation rate)	4.9B (estimated)
Ridership	150,000 per day (~80,000 per day estimated at opening)	60,000 - 65,000 per day (estimated)
Length	19km	20km
Grade separation	100%	Most intersections
Tunnels	~8.5 km	4 km
Above Grade	~9 km	1 km
Total Stations	15	14
Ground Level Stations	1	8
Elevated Stations	7	2
Underground Stations	8	4
Automated	Yes	No
Capacity	10,000 pphpd (requires new cars)	? (demand estimated at 5,800 SE; 6,000 NC)

So while the article slams the Canada Line as a "toy train" and what not to do (small stations, tiny platforms, limited expansion capabilities) it can't be argued that the line isn't an amazingly successful project, transforming Vancouver and the connection the city has to the world and surrounding regions the past decade. Given our redevelopment context and potential, would it be the wrong scale for us?The Greenline is being built in a far less dense context in all sections except the core, and has very limited ridership-generating destinations unlike Vancouver's context. Surely that capacity would be sufficient for decades barring an unforeseen level of growth. Not to mention operating savings from full automation.

Of course, conditions are very different (i.e. tunnelling etc.)- but I think the project designers of the Canada Line can teach us something. Some would say the obvious: future proof your critical infrastructure so you can grow into it. I take that another way: by going super effective but ruthlessly cheap and downsized in hindsight, they delivered a slam dunk train system that is so competitive it's attracted 2x the ridership it expected. Hundreds of thousands of new riders clamour to politicians to upgrade transit as ridership continues to increase and be further integrated into the region's daily life.

I'd take that trade-off of cheap(er), undersized - but ultra-effective and truly competitive - transit any day. We can attract the next tranche of funding for a relief line down the road.

 

[darwink]

Most complaints about the Canada Line are off base, and come from an anti P3 prejudice which optimized the design to the route and didn’t use the sky train tech. Any capacity issues are due to not having enough train cars, and the design capacity (ppdph) of the Canada Line is higher than the current ppdph of the main sky train line iirc. That being said we would probably need to have a different risk sharing arrangement for the tunnel to get a full project fixed price. A life cycle analysis of the operating costs of the green line would be good though. An automated system could pay for the obviously higher costs-maybe. And maybe we could save a bunch of money by going elevated on centre street north if people saw the big benefits of automation and we had much smaller station footprints.

All that being said... we probably would need to start back at the beginning and that would mean dropping our committed funding.

 

[Chowda7]

Bridge types added to Calgary Green Line public consultations - LiveWire Calgary

Impacts on the environment, Calgary parks and area connectivity are primary considerations for the type of bridge that will cross the Bow River as part of the Green Line LRT project. Last week, the city met with bridge architects to examine the bridge types that were suited for the major...

livewirecalgary.com

 

[October]

Hate them all, especially the suspension bridge concept, if that in-particular gets built it will ruin the views from the Bluff. If I'm being forced to pick one I feel that the trestle will be the most visually appealing.

 

[UrbanWarrior]

Interesting perspective. I hate the trestle and plain bridges the most, and I like the suspension bridge the most. A nice modern signature could could be a good juxtaposition between that and the Centre street bridge. Thank god city bylaw is that no new pylons can be punched into the river, so the plain options likely won't be accepted. Though some improvements could be made to the trestle design to make it both somewhat aesthetically appealing and make it across the river in one span.