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
RIP green line. With the recent removal of sensible donation limits on municipal campaigns, they know the amount of money that will flow to conservative councillors and a mayor that will vote down the Green Line so the UCP can pretend they didn’t do everything they could to kill the project. The UCP not giving any answers to the city will continue the delay so they and there pals kill the green line after the next municipal election. https://livewirecalgary.com/2020/11/21/calgary-campaign-finance-it-will-be-an-election-of-the-pacs/
 
In fairness, here is the minister's response (below). As someone with involvement in this project, I think it's a bit rich for the City to deflect blame to the province for the state of the Green Line. The entire thing has been managed atrociously from the start by City staff and they have only themselves to blame for letting the schedule drag to this point. Construction should have been started prior to the NDP leaving office.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1336469848365264896
 
With the consultant they hired, it is pretty obvious the province is second guessing not going the full P3 route. Which then runs into: can a P3 procurement be successful in 2020 with a high risk tunnel after other P3 consortia have lost hundreds of millions on bad bets on risky tunnels. Which then runs into: a fixed cost P3 is going to have an exorbitant risk premium. Which then comes full circle: a high price due to contracting strategy.

I have a bad feeling the province is stuck in a infinite loop due to not understanding the nuts and bolts of contracting strategy, and then due to that they keep asking questions that we already have answers for.
 
darwink said:
They still have concerns. If they have concerns about the city's ability, take over the entire thing infrastructure ontario or partnerships BC style.
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And Quebec. I'm all for a provincial government running transit and transit projects - there's plenty of reasons why a provincial role could benefit the big cities, procurement and delivery if they are done right. Many places do this.

The only difference with Alberta is you have an anti-urban populist government with a strong rural perspective, zero transit project experience and minimal demonstration of effective cost control or procurement procedures of their own. A rational place has transit as a a-political tool to support economic growth and mobility that transcends political dogma or is at least supported cross-spectrum to varying degrees. Haven't seen many examples of that recently on transit or any other file.

With this Provincial bunch I wouldn't be surprised if the real reason for delays is if they either:
  • want a slow death of the project (so they never said no but it just drags and wait for popular support to wane and lose interest)
  • want to change Council and replace with puppets so Council can say no in 2021 (supporter by the Province's open-season election funding changes and plebiscite attempts)
  • want to change the scope/procurement so they can find ways to push construction contracts to their donor's / lobbyist companies
Obviously - if my jaded perspective on a provincial slow play comes true - that's not how you build an effective transit system. Nothing says "moving at the speed of business" like bogging down your biggest city's, biggest infrastructure project with more uncertainty.
 
CBBarnett said:
And Quebec. I'm all for a provincial government running transit and transit projects - there's plenty of reasons why a provincial role could benefit the big cities, procurement and delivery if they are done right. Many places do this.

The only difference with Alberta is you have an anti-urban populist government with a strong rural perspective, zero transit project experience and minimal demonstration of effective cost control or procurement procedures of their own. A rational place has transit as a a-political tool to support economic growth and mobility that transcends political dogma or is at least supported cross-spectrum to varying degrees. Haven't seen many examples of that recently on transit or any other file.

With this Provincial bunch I wouldn't be surprised if the real reason for delays is if they either:
  • want a slow death of the project (so they never said no but it just drags and wait for popular support to wane and lose interest)
  • want to change Council and replace with puppets so Council can say no in 2021 (supporter by the Province's open-season election funding changes and plebiscite attempts)
  • want to change the scope/procurement so they can find ways to push construction contracts to their donor's / lobbyist companies
Obviously - if my jaded perspective on a provincial slow play comes true - that's not how you build an effective transit system. Nothing says "moving at the speed of business" like bogging down your biggest city's, biggest infrastructure project with more uncertainty.
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Does the City do this with the Greenline? Given the line we are getting, with the budget we have to spend, that will result in an additional $40 million a year hit to city budgets, should Council still be championing the Greenline? Would we not get much better bang for the buck by extending the Blue Line north? Or, the Red Line south? Or, better building and funding of the MAX network? Just saying, while the Province does seem to be doing some foot dragging, it is not like the City has been going at this with a completely objective lens either.
 
MichaelS said:
Does the City do this with the Greenline? Given the line we are getting, with the budget we have to spend, that will result in an additional $40 million a year hit to city budgets, should Council still be championing the Greenline? Would we not get much better bang for the buck by extending the Blue Line north? Or, the Red Line south? Or, better building and funding of the MAX network? Just saying, while the Province does seem to be doing some foot dragging, it is not like the City has been going at this with a completely objective lens either.
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Oh completely agree - it's politics all the way up and down. The City made plenty of mistakes throughout the process in the same way. Two layers of politics/political processes - both subject to changing whims of politicians.

With the city at least it all started with a prioritization process and options. Route Ahead is a strong approach to start - the challenge is all in that political layer.

Here's a relevant slide from a interesting transportation planner to follow, David Cooper out of Toronto I think, source here:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1338468437597810688
 
One other issue with having the province take over transit projects is that the cities are still responsible for growth planning and their overall transportation network and a large disconnect between the project the province wants to build and the city needs to build can quickly occur. Look at the disaster of a project replacing the Scarborough RT has become in Ontario. It's not exactly something we should be aiming for.
 
outoftheice said:
One other issue with having the province take over transit projects is that the cities are still responsible for growth planning and their overall transportation network and a large disconnect between the project the province wants to build and the city needs to build can quickly occur. Look at the disaster of a project replacing the Scarborough RT has become in Ontario. It's not exactly something we should be aiming for.
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Toronto shouldn't be the goal, they are an example of what not to do. The Provincial / City interplay on the Greenline is an Alberta version, with the added touch of one party not clear they even believe in transit in the first place.

The two places (in Canada) that do it better are Montreal and Vancouver, both have provincial involvement to different degrees. Whether or not provincial involvement plays a positive or negative role is debatable, but their success in executing transit project is less debatable. While neither city has solved North America's weird transit cost escalation problem, where transit projects here cost 2 - 5x more per kilometre than Asia or Europe, they at least get the planning right: building transit where it should go at a high level of quality.
 
CBBarnett said:
Toronto shouldn't be the goal, they are an example of what not to do. The Provincial / City interplay on the Greenline is an Alberta version, with the added touch of one party not clear they even believe in transit in the first place.

The two places (in Canada) that do it better are Montreal and Vancouver, both have provincial involvement to different degrees. Whether or not provincial involvement plays a positive or negative role is debatable, but their success in executing transit project is less debatable. While neither city has solved North America's weird transit cost escalation problem, where transit projects here cost 2 - 5x more per kilometre than Asia or Europe, they at least get the planning right: building transit where it should go at a high level of quality.
Click to expand...

Actually the REM projects, and the Canada Line have both been only slightly above the global median cost.
 
A bit of a long read but a great blog post by Cllr Shane Keating that addresses the recent Green Line controversy and the comments made by Minister Ric McIver. Sounds to me like the City of Calgary has done its homework and is ready to start building if only the province will let them...

 
From the radio interview with the Minister the hold is the city not seeking a fixed price contract and not proceeding simultaneously with both phases. Sigh.
 
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