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

[UrbanWarrior]

I feel her request is pretty fair, it's 50% of funding for the next ~15 to 20 years. That's not that bad considering the scope of the project. The backbone of our BRT network is already complete, and no other rapid transit currently proposed. The next line I could see happening would be the Purple Line from downtown to Forest Lawn/Chestermere (likely interlined with Green Line up to Inglewood/High Field), but I don't even see that being seriously proposed until the 2030s anyways. We could see that line being extended down 11 Avenue underground, under the CPR tracks, and eventually to Bowness. Again though, that is many many years away.

With the Canadian Infrastructure Bank already investigating the YYC - Rockies fixed link, including an express service (every 20 min) between YYC and downtown, a C-Train rail link to the airport is unnecessary.

 

[Joborule]

That is what I have thought from the beginning of the troubles. Nix the crossing until it can be fully studied, and just build at least to Mahogany Station.


@outoftheice That would be great. I would love to see this debate and hopefully speak at council. I spoke at council in favour of Courtyard 33 with fervour as part of an assignment in one of my classes. This would be so easy to speak for.

I definitely think that no matter what, there should be a bridge crossing at Bow River and at grade alignment for Centre Street from the beginning since it's obviously going to be significantly cheaper than a subway that's not really necessary; functionally, economically and environmentally. It will cause for the line to be extended out in both directions quicker.

At this point if there can be agreement with the province to at least do Eau Claire to Shepard and so the project is at least full steam ahead and will be completed this decade, do it. I get why they would want to get the costly bit done now in getting to at least 16th Ave, but that station is largely going to be pointless. Better to just do the crossing at the same time as a significant northern expansion for the next phase if it comes down to that.

 

[darwink]

And I'm sure most councillors have transit projects in their wards that they would like to get funding for as well. But Gondek must be frustrated at the slow pace of Stage 1 and the RouteAhead team continuing to ignore the request to rank future stages of the Green Line.

Gondek didn't really help along the way though - at one point she even suggested reverting the entire project back to BRT, which I am sure helped greatly to build provincial confidence. This project has barely moved over the life of this council - the only positive steps seem to be when they finally adopted best practices and took control out of council's hands and into an appointed board, something that should have happened much longer ago.

 

[UrbanWarrior]

I definitely think that no matter what, there should be a bridge crossing at Bow River and at grade alignment for Centre Street from the beginning since it's obviously going to be significantly cheaper than a subway that's not really necessary; functionally, economically and environmentally. It will cause for the line to be extended out in both directions quicker.

At this point if there can be agreement with the province to at least do Eau Claire to Shepard and so the project is at least full steam ahead and will be completed this decade, do it. I get why they would want to get the costly bit done now in getting to at least 16th Ave, but that station is largely going to be pointless. Better to just do the crossing at the same time as a significant northern expansion for the next phase if it comes down to that.

Yeah I have given up on the Centre Street subway, my hopes have been quashed. I just hate the way the train switches from the bridge onto the Centre Street Bridge, but I understand there is really no other way. I just would rather them push the Bow River Crossing to phase two instead of having it as part of what is to be opened in 2026/27. Have the crossing as phase 2A up to 16th and phase 2B from 16 to McKnight or Beddington, and south to Seton.

 

[outoftheice]

I think many members of council were alarmed that Gondek would move a motion arising based on a confidential report. Also council binding the hands of future councils is (not even the next council, this is now talking about money that stretches into the 2030s!) a bit ummm. Not great. I doubt it will pass.

One point for consideration: the only reason we have a Green Line is because Council did this very thing in 2015. They dedicated 30 years of tax room towards the Green Line.

I would concede your point if they were taking 100% of the funding but this still leaves half the money on the table for projects like the Blue Line extension and airport link while still managing to complete the largest infrastructure project on the city's wish list. Remember this is only for provincial and federal funding that's already dedicated to transit so there's not much else future Councils can use it for so I don't know how much this really ties their hands.
.

 

[darwink]

Very different for specific things (a greenline sinking fund basically from city revenue) to other levels of government, when the city doesn't have any control over what gets funded by other levels of governments.

 

[Silence&Motion]

The more I see this project stagnate, the more I think that there's no way it will get done without the Province taking it on as a major priority. At least, that's my impression from seeing LRT development in Ontario. Once the McGuinty government made transit a priority, it set in motion a process that has resulted in several new LRT lines either completed or under construction across four cities (Toronto, Ottawa, Mississauga, and Kitchener-Waterloo). Municipal governments just do not have the resources or the centralized political power needed to ram through expensive, complex public works projects.

 

[darwink]

^ West LRT in the end was what, $1.4 billion?

 

[accord1999]

The more I see this project stagnate, the more I think that there's no way it will get done without the Province taking it on as a major priority. At least, that's my impression from seeing LRT development in Ontario. Once the McGuinty government made transit a priority, it set in motion a process that has resulted in several new LRT lines either completed or under construction across four cities (Toronto, Ottawa, Mississauga, and Kitchener-Waterloo). Municipal governments just do not have the resources or the centralized political power needed to ram through expensive, complex public works projects.

I think the Province in general over the years has supported transit projects pretty well. Even for the Green Line, the City's share of funding ($50M/year for capital, $24M/year for financing) came from education property tax room vacated by the Province. Along with the direct contribution to the Green Line (and Edmonton's Valley Line), that's a substantial amount of money.

But the real problem is perhaps the Green Line (and North American rail construction in general) has become too expensive. Does it really make sense for a metro of 1.5 million people to build a transit line, even if it goes all 40 km and carries 140K riders/day, for $8.5+B (assuming $2.4B to reach Panorama and $1B to Seton)? Even if you get Alberta and Canada to pay for 67% or 75% of it, as there's only one taxpayer in the end, is there enough benefit to transit and mobility? What's the price tag where the Green Line no longer makes sense?

 

[ahuch]

But the real problem is perhaps the Green Line (and North American rail construction in general) has become too expensive. Does it really make sense for a metro of 1.5 million people to build a transit line, even if it goes all 40 km and carries 140K riders/day, for $8.5+B (assuming $2.4B to reach Panorama and $1B to Seton)? Even if you get Alberta and Canada to pay for 67% or 75% of it, as there's only one taxpayer in the end, is there enough benefit to transit and mobility? What's the price tag where the Green Line no longer makes sense?

I'm pretty uneducated on the subject, but I think if you were to include the alternatives the math becomes clear. It's not like transit is a secluded decision, if you don't build transit you end up with strained roadways which results in lost productivity, more expensive goods transportation, negative externalities (pollution, unhappy citizens) and then you layer on top how expensive roadway construction can be. Most of the roads stuff falls on the city, but fixing Deerfoot is pricy and the province is dragging it's feet on that as well.

 

[MichaelS]

I'm pretty uneducated on the subject, but I think if you were to include the alternatives the math becomes clear. It's not like transit is a secluded decision, if you don't build transit you end up with strained roadways which results in lost productivity, more expensive goods transportation, negative externalities (pollution, unhappy citizens) and then you layer on top how expensive roadway construction can be. Most of the roads stuff falls on the city, but fixing Deerfoot is pricy and the province is dragging it's feet on that as well.

What about alternate methods of transit (BRT, as was the original plan for the SE)? Agree, lots of factors to be considered, that don't seem to be being looked at anymore, regardless of constant scope/price change on the Greenline plans.

 

[ahuch]

What about alternate methods of transit (BRT, as was the original plan for the SE)? Agree, lots of factors to be considered, that don't seem to be being looked at anymore, regardless of constant scope/price change on the Greenline plans.

Good point - I think BRT is a human behavior thing... At least speaking for me, I live walking distance to a proposed Green Line Station and I'd likely use it.. but if it went BRT I'd probably be much more hesitant, even with a shared ROW. I know it's irrational but that's my mindset going into it. For what it's worth, I typically drive everywhere so I'm not a primary transit user.

 

[CBBarnett]

What about alternate methods of transit (BRT, as was the original plan for the SE)? Agree, lots of factors to be considered, that don't seem to be being looked at anymore, regardless of constant scope/price change on the Greenline plans.

I was always curious why they kept the stations so large. The Centre Street surface ones are close to 150m long once you include all the ramps and everything, according to the diagrams. Seems like one assumption that was kept despite wild scope/price changes and pivots is this desire to have big, long trains and therefore big long stations including room for expansion. This is very peak-oriented transit thinking where we design things for the absolute maximum possible demand. Calgary's existing LRT is 100m platforms with that peak-oriented thinking.

Many successful systems that are expanding elsewhere are leaning into the "light metro" design of short but frequent trains - either automated or manual - so they can save all this capital cost for big tunnels, big stations, big trains, big maintenance facilities. Vancouver's Skytrain and Montreal's REM project are the obvious nearby examples but many others are found in Europe and elsewhere. Vancouver's system has platforms between 50m for Canada Line and 80m elsewhere and I think REM is around that 80-100m length. Short but frequent trains also make all day transit service more affordable and realistic for people to use, tying into the trend of less conventional 9-5 workforce.

The big critique of the light metro approach of short but frequent trains, is that if the system isn't automated and grade separated you can't get your frequency to acceptable levels to compensate for short trains. Someone will point out the overcrowding issues on the Canada Line as a result of their scaled-down design choices, but we should be so lucky - the train actually was built and serves 100,000+ people a day! To take a political angle on it, that's a whole lot of transit-supportive voters that were created to help advocate for future funding and system expansions.

I think the Greenline got caught up on the idea that "we are only going to build this once, so we must get it right." attitude regarding station design and capacity, helping push costs up and ironically threatening the project's viability.

 

[MichaelS]

Proposed alternate alignment for the Greenline from Jim Gray and Barry Lester:

Gray & Lester: Propose New Green Line Alignment for Downtown Calgary — Every Day Tourist

Calgary professionals sent a letter to Calgary Mayor Nenshi asking Council to reconsider the proposed transit alignment of the Green Line that would save 1.8B.

everydaytourist.ca

 

[darwink]

Misses the centre of downtown, makes the existing system worse. I wish they had spent a weekend reading Human Transit before this. The Greenline isn't perfect, but this proposal solves one problem (sand valley) while creating many more.