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

Go Elevated or try for Underground?

  • Work with the province and go with the Elevated option

    Votes: 42 79.2%

  • Try another approach and go for Underground option

    Votes: 7 13.2%

  • Cancel it altogether

    Votes: 1 1.9%

  • Go with a BRT solution

    Votes: 3 5.7%
  • Total voters
    53
darwink said:
totally fine with 2nd being a woonerf.
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My idea (and completely unrealistic never going to happen) situation for that area around 2nd Street and 7th Ave would be for 2nd street to terminate between 8th Ave and 6th avenue. The Bow Parkade to be demolished, Brookfield finishes the Atrium on Brookfield Place, and they turn the area where the future second Brookfield building would go, the street entrance to the underground LRT station, and the area around where the 2nd Canadian Place building was supposed to go into a Plaza/Park area until it’s developed further.
 
MissingMiddle said:
Sure it's not new, but it's sparking a discussion around eliminating lanes in the CBD. Here's the traffic volume per day in 2019:

View attachment 295591


Notice how most streets are between 15k-25k vehicles per day. Here's some capacity figures from traffic engineering:

View attachment 295592
It shows that our streets downtown are largely too wide for the capacity they see. Also note the capacity figures are 2-way and many streets downtown are 1-way.

TLDR: eliminate as many lanes as necessary to make the green line happen, we have the space.
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Thanks for this image. Based on this, is there a particular reason why the greenline has to be underground in the beltline? The whole point of the low floor LRV is for it to be integrated with the streets itself. I wonder how much cost savings would come from not having it go underground until 2nd ST SW. If it's a significant amount, I wonder if this could make the north leg go further past 16 AV N then? Because I do agree with the Alberta government that it is pointless for the greenline to end there simply to just make future extensions easier financially.

The projected 11,000 ridership day one I find incredibly hard to believe since I can't imagine those needing to get downtown are going to be transferring from the MAX Orange at Centre ST to do so. If you're near the LRT lines, you're taking those in, and if by 16th itself, the north-south buses along that road are already going downtown. I don't think Centre & 16th will have a strong enough draw to make it a destination at that point either. So where are they getting those numbers from?
 
I cannot put into word how much I hate the idea of having the line terminate at grade in Eau Claire, then building a bridge overtop of PIP. It's ludicrous IMO.
 
Joborule said:
is there a particular reason why the greenline has to be underground in the beltline?
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It makes the green line a bit faster, but the main reason is protecting traffic from impact.

A rule of thumb to think about scale of costs: each underground station costs $100 million. Each surface station costs $5 million.

Every station is different though. An underground station serving an arena is going to cost more than that as the platforms would need to be larger. And since underground you are talking about volume, you grow in cubes. Plus in squares.
 
Joborule said:
The projected 11,000 ridership day one I find incredibly hard to believe since I can't imagine those needing to get downtown are going to be transferring from the MAX Orange at Centre ST to do so. If you're near the LRT lines, you're taking those in, and if by 16th itself, the north-south buses along that road are already going downtown. I don't think Centre & 16th will have a strong enough draw to make it a destination at that point either. So where are they getting those numbers from?
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IMO, I think they are getting these optimistic numbers because they need it to be that high in order to help justify the Green Line in general. Even with 11K at 16th, projected ridership is already pretty mediocre (55-65K/day) given the $5B capital and >$40M operating costs.
 
Maybe it is just the cynic in me but I don't foresee any level of ridership on the LRT in Calgary that could possibly justify underground stations in the downtown. ... certainly not to the tune of $100 million per station. The demand for public transit in and out of downtown really has to be studied as part of a new reality check. The question has to be asked ... Will downtown Calgary be the same 'mecca' for jobs that it has been pre-recession and pre-pandemic?
The Green line plan is based on increasing ridership in and out of downtown well into the future, not on what ridership levels are or were. It could take 5-10 years to fill the vacant office space that we have today. Vacant office space = job loss = fewer people taking the LRT. Filling existing office space would only get the number people working downtown to where it was at peak ... when was that.. maybe 2013-4?
I know, some people will say there are other reasons to take the LRT into downtown .. hockey games, concerts, theater, festivals etc. ... but to me you don't fork out the $ billion or so, for social or leisure activity needs. That decision has to be made on the strength of a high volume of business traffic Mon-Fri. If you don't have that, then how can you justify spending that kind of money. IMHO it should not include the cost of expensive underground stations or tunnels.
 
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darwink said:
It makes the green line a bit faster, but the main reason is protecting traffic from impact.
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I get that, but with these low floor LRV's that are going to be integrated with the street moreso than the high floors, will it really need that level of protection? The proposed alignment is committed to the northern leg to essentially be just a transit only lane all the way along Centre Street/Harvest Hills BV for many km's. So what's there to be gained by making it underground in the beltline area when it's likely well suited to perform at-grade within that area?

We already have high-floor trains go through the busier downtown core, and have no intention of changing that even with the red line being buried. And although those one's do run into issues of traffic/pedestrians incidents as a result, it's possible the low floor trains may lead to less incidents because it's more immersive with the road design itself? It's basically a glorified streetcar, and they're intended to be used in these compact urban areas I believe.

I feel that if they're looking to be as budget conscious as possible, rethinking the beltline segment to be at grade could have enough savings that they can get more out of the line as a result then for the first phase.
 
Not crossing Macleod at grade is entirely about traffic capacity. Sorry should have been more clear. If you prioritize the green line with at grade crossings capacity would be degraded greatly. The interference is very different when LRT is traveling the same direction as most traffic flow instead of crossing it.

One of the difficulties if you’re targeting ridership is going at grade in the Beltline does hurt ridership if you don’t prioritize LRT, and in general it will make the system slow forever.

The math does work to be elevated in the Beltline to transition to a tunnel for going under the CPR though.
 
With today's announcement of $15 billion in new transit funding across the country, I expect within the next year or two we will hear something about the second phase of the Green Line. I'd imagine that will be the entire SE segment and the NC up to McKnight. Who knows though.
 
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