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

Best direction for the Green line at this point?

  • Go ahead with the current option of Eau Claire to Lynbrook and phase in extensions.

    Votes: 41 59.4%

  • Re-design the whole system

    Votes: 22 31.9%

  • Cancel it altogether

    Votes: 6 8.7%
  • Total voters
    69
ahuch said:
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.
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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.
 
MichaelS said:
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.
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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.
 
MichaelS said:
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.
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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.
 
Proposed alternate alignment for the Greenline from Jim Gray and Barry Lester:
everydaytourist.ca

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 everydaytourist.ca
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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.
 
MichaelS said:
Proposed alternate alignment for the Greenline from Jim Gray and Barry Lester:
everydaytourist.ca

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 everydaytourist.ca
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if Jim Gray cared about this city he would spend his time fundraising to save the YMCA that carries his name and would shut up about the damn green line route.

I’m not opposed to a Michael Bloomberg type rich guy mayoral run, but between Brett Wilson and Jim Gray, we have way too many cranky rich guys sticking their noses into municipal issues without the dedication to run for, win, and actually work at the job of being a mayor or councilor.
 
FriendlyDrunks said:
Well at least it is progress.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/green-line-lrt-city-council-province-1.6023036
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I doubt it. The province wants a line from Sheppard to Eau Claire to manage risk. That shorter line undermines the ridership projects by a lot, which undermines the business case. So the province comes back and says since ridership is only 2/3rds of expected compared to before, the project should only cost 2/3rds the amount. This is going to get worse before it gets better.
 
darwink said:
I doubt it. The province wants a line from Sheppard to Eau Claire to manage risk. That shorter line undermines the ridership projects by a lot, which undermines the business case. So the province comes back and says since ridership is only 2/3rds of expected compared to before, the project should only cost 2/3rds the amount. This is going to get worse before it gets better.
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Then why not keep dragging their feet on the technical issues? If the province has now finally given the okay on that - with councilors saying they aren't even sure what they really were in the first place - then why make this play instead?

I get the skepticism due to the wording of Eau Claire to Sheppard, but you figure the board and the councilors would think of this more of a red flag as a result, rather than Nenshi and Keating coming off fairly optimistic that the deal is finally gonna close.

If I'm to guess, I think because of how badly the UCP is polling right now, they're switching their play on this in an effort to build back support.
 
MichaelS said:
Proposed alternate alignment for the Greenline from Jim Gray and Barry Lester:
everydaytourist.ca

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 everydaytourist.ca
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Their plan would totally detract from the interesting streetscape that has been created at the Public Library site. It would obliterate the lovely plaza at the southwest corner of the Library and a train clunking by on an elevated line through that area would be a horrible sight! The only benefit I can see from this cockamamie plan is that RiverRun condos would be saved as well as Prince’s Island Park.
 
I feel like RiverRun condos being taken out is probably the biggest plus of the bridging over the Bow option 🤷🏻‍♂️
 
So I tried looking at a lot of the thread but 60 pages of reading could take a long time. So is funding the main delay right now or are there any other significant issues? I'm always fascinated with LRT construction regardless of what city it is in.
 
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