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

darwink said:
I maintain that right now the NC has adequate access. Until recently, the NC was not considered for investment even in the medium term (which is now by 2050!). Because restructuring the bus network could drastically increase capacity and reduce overloads. That we chose to not force people to transfer to achieve this is a political decision.
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Do you have an example of what they could do. All I can think is that they create express route for the north of Beddington Trail communities that directly go to downtown using Deerfoot to bypass Centre Street altogether. Otherwise, the pitch for the Green Line as a LRT seems to indicate that they could not increase bus capacity to meet expected future demand.

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As for the problem we are in right now. I think we were collectively hasty, and our politicians more so, in rejecting keeping an elevated alignment in play. We narrowed our decision tree too early, and for reasons that don't really matter (pleas by the downtown association and tower owners).
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The planners really hated that option from the start, giving it a score of 0 and supposedly not even cheap, unlike the nearly as bad Option E that the Green Line is now forced to use because it's run out of money.

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Their evaluation was wrong. It might not be cheap, but it doesn’t have the same risk, and it would be cheaper. There was also the other side of the analysis included in financial sustainability: an assumption that an elevated line would destroy the property value of commercial towers. TBH that has already happened all on its own, and I think that isn’t an accurate analysis.
 
This youtube channel does good summary work on transit projects across Canada. I think this Canada Line video is relevant now that the whole project is in jeopardy once again:


In summary, the argument is that Canada Line is a great model to follow, simply by focusing on very good service quality and cutting costs on everything else possible, notably the station size and the train capacity. The goal should be to be a overcrowded success, rather than a future-proofed mega train that looks expensive for what you get.

Back to the Greenline, the problem is only a small amount about transit technology and route design cultural biases that the video references. Either an elevated, tunneled or at-grade system could work fine if designed right - and I think how they finalized the route was the right balance given the biases in this city to like long trains and assume all at-grade trains will look like 36 Street NE rather than any tram network in France. I think there is some real value in exploring the light metro style of design, but there are other designs that solve our transit problems if we want them to be solved and can get over ourselves. It's not always clear that is the case (e.g. every transit project requires right-of-way expansion because the goal is actually to preserve automotive capacity in the corridor).

But the bigger problem is not a design one. Far more consequential is the political problem of having a sizeable faction of the province's political system not understanding the value of cities or public transit altogether, especially in a changing global economy. To appease this intractable group - which thinks they are arguing about design but really don't understand why we would build a train in the first place and are happy to through as much fear, uncertainty and doubt at the project until it collapses under it's own contradictions - requires design compromises that mean the project won't work anyways.

Appeasing the groups of politicians and rich Calgarians rallying against transit means that whatever will be built will be cheap in all the wrong ways, and expensive in all the wrong ways. It's a mistake we have made before.
 
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darwink said:
I maintain that right now the NC has adequate access. Until recently, the NC was not considered for investment even in the medium term (which is now by 2050!). Because restructuring the bus network could drastically increase capacity and reduce overloads. That we chose to not force people to transfer to achieve this is a political decision.

The SE has been considered for higher order transit since at least 1995. Probably earlier considering the corridor provisions in McKenzie. It is just that the red line and the downtown interline reached capacity earlier than anticipated, so the city started planning to connect the SE corridor directly instead of as a red line spur.
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The investment schedule you're talking about excluded the Green Line and extensions; if the NC wasn't considered for investment even in the medium term, neither was the SE.

But gosh, the SE has had higher order transit planned for 25 years! Oh look, here's that 53 year old CALTS plan:

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I don't think that who was promised transit first is actually a very good argument in principle, but it really isn't a strong argument for the SE.
 
Yeah. The NE didn’t exist. Neither did the SE. The deep SE didn’t have a reason to exist until Lougheed screwed with Deerfoot in the 70s/80s. The SW ended at 26th Ave and 37th street. Plus it was all heavy rail. Stations at the Holy Cross Hospital, two stations for the two halves of pre merger Chinook, an extra station at Briar Hill/Banff Trail and between Chinook and Heritage. All grade spectated. Wild times.
 
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I'm not sure I understand why we don't just run it at grade? It's not like there's a shortage of roadways.

Of course the best long-term solution is to just underground it, but its risky, expensive, and investing in long-term public infrastructure is for some reason not a priority in Alberta.
 
Why not tunnelled?
 
Not sure if this has been mentioned in here before, so apologies if this has already been discussed.

Just a general comment I have rather than anything informative. Had a random thought of the Green Line's 7 Avenue station. Since that would be essentially be the central transfer point for all three of the LRT lines in the future (including Red Line Stephen Ave Subway), it made me think that westbound transfers would have to be from 1st Street Station, which is a block away.

I thought it would be ideal to make 3rd Street Station a double sided station to make transfers more direct, and wonder if there was any consideration to do so. Turns out from this report, there was/is when they redid the 7th Ave stations.


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I wonder when construction for the Green Line in downtown starts, if building this WB 3rd Street Station would be included.
 
I believe the issue was that they didn’t believe buses couldn’t pass each other reliably on the station block. I am not sure how many buses are left on 7th though.
 
darwink said:
I believe the issue was that they didn’t believe buses couldn’t pass each other reliably on the station block. I am not sure how many buses are left on 7th though.
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None. Calgary Transit (based on what I know) has an initiative to not run buses down 7th Ave anymore. All the routes that did use it have been rerouted through the downtown area, and cross the tracks instead - primarily at 1st St SW.
 
UrbanWarrior said:
Too bad. It's better to build for the future rather than running scared from building an effective system.
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I completely agree, we should focus on better long-term investments. Unfortunately it's still Alberta and that's the argument the people opposing the tunnels, including the UCP, are using.
 
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