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

[DougB]

The cities didn't recieve extra special funding as part of the olympics, but certainly the cities felt confidence which enabled the politics to support investment.

Calgary benefited from surreptitious circumstances. The NW line was the priority after the S line, but was held up due to NIMBY issues in Kensington. As the provincial money was still on the table, the City rapidly pivoted to the NE line. The competence was in the City being able to turn around approval, engineering and construction of that line in less than 3 years. After the NE line opened, the NW line had to be built with mostly City money to meet the deadline for the Olympics. Both the NE and NW lines benefited from an economic downturn that drove down construction costs.

 

[DougB]

Exactly. Which is why this city-led process is so terrible. In order to keep everyone on the same page, you need some mega-event. Mass transit has been treated like some special prize that provincial and federal politicians roll out during elections, when it should be treated like basic infrastructure that just needs to be continually expanded in line with a growing population. In Ontario, the establishment of Metrolinx was a big step forward. It expanded the Ministry of Transportation's mandate beyond highways and drivers' licenses to include the planning and development of public transit. (Note that in the 1990s even GO Transit had been downloaded to the municipalities.) As a result, several LRT lines were built (Kitchener, Ottawa, two lines close to completion in Toronto).

However, for the first part of its existence, Metrolinx was still very passive, letting municipalities propose and design transit lines. They just stood by and let Rob Ford trash an LRT plan that took years to develop and had funding in place. Ottawa's LRT, which did get built but has run into significant problems, reveals how terrible it is to have decision making powers scattered across so many different organizations and agencies, including city councils, mayors' offices, municipal transit authorities, and private construction consortiums. In the end, decision-making power over transit planning needs to lie with the ultimate source of political (and financial) power, which is the provincial government. With the Ontario Line, as well as the significant improvements to the GO system, Metrolinx is finally taking the lead in transit development. Municipal governments basically just need to fall in line, which is maybe not so great from a democratic standpoint, but works so much better from a logistical standpoint.

Alberta (especially Calgary) is a different situation than other Canadian cities as municipal government is nowhere near as fragmented. More provincial involvement or regional agencies would be steps backward.

 

[CBBarnett]

Alberta (especially Calgary) is a different situation than other Canadian cities as municipal government is nowhere near as fragmented. More provincial involvement or regional agencies would be steps backward.

Especially if the provincial bodies are ideologically opposed to public transit. Calgary and Edmonton both have problems delivering quality transit, but I don't think the most pressing issue is lack of provincial involvement.

Ontario is an interesting case. After a painfully long process spanning decades, Ontario is starting to demonstrate that all political ideologies can support transit - effective transit is more of a utility that any modern province and city needs to function than just a nice-to-have social service. All it took was a century of booming growth and exhaustion with the crippling congestion of a vote-rich, fragmented, 7-million person mega-region to bring to bring everyone to the same table. They are now starting to unwind some mistakes that downloading transit responsibilities to a fragmented municipal level caused by assuming responsibility again in some issues that only the province can really resolve (like regional integration and network development). Ontario seems to be on the right track, but they took one of the longest route possible to get there.

If Ontario took an inefficient route to get there - Alberta doesn't even share the same factors or context. For the past 50+ years, the political game has always been to split the city vote and win the rural to achieve power. This splits the most likely pro-transit vote, often placated by giving $$$ to the cities to figure transit out themselves rather than stand behind transit more intentional at the province level. It's a pure downloading of responsibility for transit to lower municipalities. This downloading has worked alright for the bigger cities with the capacity to figure this stuff out - but with ongoing issues about predictable funding, operating costs given cities limited powers to raise funds. Major transit is still dependent on the occasional planetary alignment of a federal-provincial-municipal funding availability triggered usually by election cycle rather than demand.

A side-effect of Alberta downloading transit to the cities, means the provincial government never developed any internal administrative or political capacity to even think about transit. The province has no transit operating arm (like BC Transit for smaller cities), no regional transit initiatives they lead, nor any experience with building rail or public transit. Alberta's infrastructure department remains solely focused on highway expansion, happily plugging away with unneeded highway expansions in low-demand areas.

Another result of provincial absence in the transit space - any intercity/regional transit program is really only possible for to municipalities that can align interests and fund a good portion themselves (hard to do) or left up to private sales pitches to figure out everything such as the Calgary-Banff project (very hard to do). Things like corridor land assembly or cost sharing is much trickier without an overseeing body that is literally by design positioned to coordinate the fragmented local stuff - refusing to coodinate the framented local stuff.

TL;DR - big cities are fine in Alberta without provincial meddling in transit. Regional transit and small municipalities will have a near-impossible time without provincial involvement in transit.

 

[Silence&Motion]

Alberta (especially Calgary) is a different situation than other Canadian cities as municipal government is nowhere near as fragmented. More provincial involvement or regional agencies would be steps backward.

Especially if the provincial bodies are ideologically opposed to public transit. Calgary and Edmonton both have problems delivering quality transit, but I don't think the most pressing is lack of provincial involvement...
TL;DR - big cities are fine in Alberta without provincial meddling in transit.

If the province is ideologically opposed to transit, then transit is dead in the water no matter what the governance and funding arrangements. That's the point. The province is the real power here. It is the only level of government that can build transit on its own. Not the feds. Not the cities. In that sense the province is always meddling in transit since it exercises a veto power that no other level of government has.

Contrast that with the ridiculousness of the Ottawa process, where the *provincially-enforced* inquiry has revealed that one of the major problems was the mayor's office haphazardly issuing orders over WhatsApp. The mayor's office has no real power, no budget, no logistical capacity to actually oversee a multi-billion-dollar construction project.

The city-led process is like a corporation (the province) giving a few billion dollars to a group of middle-managers (city council), appointing one of them as "leader" (the mayor) only in a symbolic sense with very little direct control over the other managers, and then telling them: "go figure out how to raise twice the amount of money we gave you and design the whole project yourselves from scratch". Oh, and to make matters worse, several of the managers will get replaced every 4 years by people who have had no involvement with the project and in fact may be aiming to destroy it. Finally, if the corporation decides at any minute that it doesn't like where the project is going, or a new CEO is appointed who just doesn't like the project, it can shut the whole thing down at a moment's notice.

A side-effect of Alberta downloading transit to the cities, means the provincial government never developed any internal administrative or political capacity to even think about transit. The province has no transit operating arm (like BC Transit for smaller cities), no regional transit initiatives they lead, nor any experience with building rail or public transit. Alberta's infrastructure department remains solely focused on highway expansion, happily plugging away with unneeded highway expansions in low-demand areas.

The level of institutional inertia that drives provinces to continually build unneeded highways on autopilot mode is exactly what we need for public transit. Building organizational capacity and inertia is the best defence against the ideological swings that come with changes in government.

Remember that Ontario also did not have anyone in charge of public transit until it created Metrolinx. The GO system was downloaded to municipalities in the 1990s.

 

[MissingMiddle]

"Critical Project Milestone"

Green Line Phase 1 RFP released to qualified applicants:
-Bow Transit Connectors (Barnard Constructors of Canada LP, Flatiron Constructors Canada Ltd, and WSP Canada Inc)
-City Link Partners (Aecon Infrastructure Management Inc, Dragados Canada Inc, Acciona Infrastructure Canada Inc, Parsons Inc, and AECOM Canada Ltd)

From the website:

One of the two proponents will be selected in early 2023 as the Development Partner. Following the selection and prior to entering into a final Project Agreement, a 12-month Development Phase will allow for collaboration, design progression, and better understanding of risks, costs and schedule.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1574446202699288576

 

[UrbanWarrior]

Holy Christ is this thing ever delayed. So the “design development phase” won’t even be done til 2024? What a joke. I was always the biggest proponent of this project, but holy shit. Ottawa - a city smaller than us with a smaller tax base - has built an entire LRT system since this was proposed, and already has the 2nd phase under construction, including an airport link. By 2025 their system will be just over 5 km longer than ours (65 km) and same number of stations, having only been built in 15 years essentially. Not to mention fully grade-separated. Ridiculous.

 

[darwink]

Holy Christ is this thing ever delayed. So the “design development phase” won’t even be done til 2024? What a joke. I was always the biggest proponent of this project, but holy shit. Ottawa - a city smaller than us with a smaller tax base - has built an entire LRT system since this was proposed, and already has the 2nd phase under construction, including an airport link. By 2025 their system will be just over 5 km longer than ours (65 km) and same number of stations, having only been built in 15 years essentially. Not to mention fully grade-separated. Ridiculous.

What you can do with your ROW already fully built save for a tunnel built through quick good geology for tunneling (and they still had the sinkhole!)

Ottawa having the sinkhole, and Seattle hitting the mass with their tunnel machine, both delivered through fixed cost P3s, basically meant that Calgary would have to pay way more to transfer risk, and take way more time to mitigate risk.

 

[MissingMiddle]

Ottawa - a city smaller than us with a smaller tax base - has built an entire LRT system since this was proposed, and already has the 2nd phase under construction, including an airport link. By 2025 their system will be just over 5 km longer than ours (65 km) and same number of stations, having only been built in 15 years essentially. Not to mention fully grade-separated. Ridiculous.

I wouldn't label the O-Train as a success, there's literally an ongoing public inquiry about the repeated derailments and system failures: www.ottawalrtpublicinquiry.ca/. Also, Ottawa-Gatineau is functionally one city with a population of 1.42M, Calgary is listed at 1.58M for the same year - or an 11% difference, which is pretty meaningless.

Nevertheless, the Green Line is taking forever. It doesn't even say "Design Completion" or tender/bid, literally just "design progression" and "understanding risks." I doubt Green Line Phase 1 will be operational before 2030.

 

[goodcitywhenfinished]

At this point I think we should just go back to the drawing board and make the green line a light metro like REM or Skytrain. We should not be spending this much money on a glorified streetcar that will have to wait at red lights.

Its not like its coming anytime soon.

 

[whatchyyc]

At this point I think we should just go back to the drawing board and make the green line a light metro like REM or Skytrain. We should not be spending this much money on a glorified streetcar that will have to wait at red lights.

Its not like its coming anytime soon.

Well all of stage 1 is basically standard ctrain with exclusive RoW and full priority

 

[Mountain Man]

Just build the damn thing already!!

 

[UrbanWarrior]

I wouldn't label the O-Train as a success, there's literally an ongoing public inquiry about the repeated derailments and system failures: www.ottawalrtpublicinquiry.ca/. Also, Ottawa-Gatineau is functionally one city with a population of 1.42M, Calgary is listed at 1.58M for the same year - or an 11% difference, which is pretty meaningless.

Nevertheless, the Green Line is taking forever. It doesn't even say "Design Completion" or tender/bid, literally just "design progression" and "understanding risks." I doubt Green Line Phase 1 will be operational before 2030.

Yeah I have heard about the considerable difficulties the OTrain has had. I wouldn’t really say 11% is inconsequential though, keeping in mind that we were smaller than them for our entire history until like 6 years ago. But yeah, still pretty embarrassing that our system expansion is going so slow.

 

[CalgaryTiger]

I think this really speaks to the idea that someone had to take train building away from cities. From my memory a lot of the delay was the, "what type of line, what's the alignment, how much do we build?" debate at city hall (councilors and bureaucrats). Why those who are so unskilled in building trains thought they should talk so much about it is maddening.

Get ready to pull your hair out...

March 2013 a councilor had come up with a clever name for the busway to the southeast and was beginning to shop changing it to a LRT, meanwhile other councilors were trying to get a clever name for a busway to the north to catch on.

In May 2015, TWO YEARS LATER! Keating smelt blood in the water for changing the busway to a LRT. While some guy named Nenshi thought: "There is however also an operational issue and that is: will enough people use it to justify that enormous cost? And we're pretty sure that enough people will use it right up front on the north portion of the Green Line because people are already really using transit, but the south portion will need time to grow."

Over 9 years of talking about a LRT, shovels in the ground maybe by spring 2024 (11 years since March 2013) and by the time its operating it will be closer to spring 2030 (17 years since March 2013). This is all assuming negotiations go well once they make their choice on who's building it and go through that year of show and tell.

To be positive, I assume in the 2025 election (if the coalition holds on that long) the Liberals and Conservatives will be falling over themselves to promise funding for a Green Line extension. Will that extension be to the north or south? "We're going to let the Albertrain (provincial train-building arm created following 2023 provincial election) team make that decision based on their expertise"... A guy can dream.

 

[goodcitywhenfinished]

I think this really speaks to the idea that someone had to take train building away from cities. From my memory a lot of the delay was the, "what type of line, what's the alignment, how much do we build?" debate at city hall (councilors and bureaucrats). Why those who are so unskilled in building trains thought they should talk so much about it is maddening.

Get ready to pull your hair out...

March 2013 a councilor had come up with a clever name for the busway to the southeast and was beginning to shop changing it to a LRT, meanwhile other councilors were trying to get a clever name for a busway to the north to catch on.

In May 2015, TWO YEARS LATER! Keating smelt blood in the water for changing the busway to a LRT. While some guy named Nenshi thought: "There is however also an operational issue and that is: will enough people use it to justify that enormous cost? And we're pretty sure that enough people will use it right up front on the north portion of the Green Line because people are already really using transit, but the south portion will need time to grow."

Over 9 years of talking about a LRT, shovels in the ground maybe by spring 2024 (11 years since March 2013) and by the time its operating it will be closer to spring 2030 (17 years since March 2013). This is all assuming negotiations go well once they make their choice on who's building it and go through that year of show and tell.

To be positive, I assume in the 2025 election (if the coalition holds on that long) the Liberals and Conservatives will be falling over themselves to promise funding for a Green Line extension. Will that extension be to the north or south? "We're going to let the Albertrain (provincial train-building arm created following 2023 provincial election) team make that decision based on their expertise"... A guy can dream.

Keep in mind that's 2030 just for phase 1 build-out. Add on another 6 years for the river crossing to 16th. At this rate It will be 2040 at the earliest before stage 2 is operational. Unbelievable.

Edmonton has better prospects with their current system expansion which is way more aggressive and actually delivering projects in the next few years to meet future needs. In Calgary we will be delivering transit in 2040 to address demands from 2015.

 

[darwink]

the Liberals and Conservatives will be falling over themselves to promise funding for a Green Line extension

The funds for the first section are in the 2016-2026 infrastructure agreement. Soon can start to promise funds from the next agreement.

Hence why I think it is pretty much a sure thing we will get to 64th in the North and McKenzie Towne in the South by ~10 years from today.