darwink
Senior Member
I think it would be quite the challenge to get to 96th, and build the centre city segment within the existing budget.
Green Line LRT | ?m | ?s | Calgary Transit
- Thread starter Surrealplaces
- Start date
darwink
Senior Member
Indeed.
A big thing for savings is having the 16th Ave station at grade which likely saves more than $100 million alone. That it creates a $250 million problem to solve later doesn't seem to matter.
outoftheice
Active Member
I find it interesting that back in the early 2000s, when Centre St carried more vehicle traffic than it does today, the City of Calgary was able to completely close the Centre St Bridge to traffic in order to refurbish it and yet the world didn't end. Now today, with fewer cars using Centre St and a much better public transit network, people insist that hundreds of millions of extra dollars must be spent burying the Green Line completely until north of 16th Ave. If Calgary survived the Centre St Bridge closure, I'm pretty sure Calgary will survive losing 2 lanes on Centre St. Even our most adamant public transit advocates can't seem to bring themselves to envision a world with fewer cars.
That doesn't square with the city implementing a reversible lane from 4 Ave S, over the bridge all the way to 20 Ave N, a couple of years later.
Like I said my understanding is the heavy traffic is concentrated between the bridge and 16th. So you are absolutely correct we won't miss the extra lanes, but only north of 16th. It seems a shame to spend so much money on a completely new bridge and still end up with a reduction in mobility, and a waste of our existing limited bridge lanes over the Bow. Maybe the city already knows this and that's one reason why the section north of Eau Claire is not proceeding right away.
I think the bridge was closed 1999-2000 but I don't remember if it was all lanes the whole time or not. There were certainly fewer buses on Centre St. then (compared to "today", as in 2019 pre-COVID).
Like I said my understanding is the heavy traffic is concentrated between the bridge and 16th. So you are absolutely correct we won't miss the extra lanes, but only north of 16th. It seems a shame to spend so much money on a completely new bridge and still end up with a reduction in mobility, and a waste of our existing limited bridge lanes over the Bow. Maybe the city already knows this and that's one reason why the section north of Eau Claire is not proceeding right away.
I think the bridge was closed 1999-2000 but I don't remember if it was all lanes the whole time or not. There were certainly fewer buses on Centre St. then (compared to "today", as in 2019 pre-COVID).
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accord1999
Active Member
Option B was that middle-ground option, but the lack of any savings even using the cheap option probably means that project cost estimates continued to go up far beyond what people had expected in the beginning of the project.
There are benefits to the non-car experience as well, the grade-separation gives the train a consistent travel time through that stretch and avoid any possibility of accidents somehow interfering with the route. And it would maintain road capacity for the many buses that run along Centre Street N if the Green Line doesn't build past 16th Ave for awhile.
The local pedestrian experience also suffers without the tunnel, the length of the train and stations means several E-W intersections are closed off and the need to minimize N-S congestion will probably mean long waits before getting a walk light to cross E-W.
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FCC1982
Active Member
Exactly - the pedestrian experience will suffer as well with street running LRT on Centre St.
CBBarnett
Senior Member
Other cities aren't nearly as lucky or successful at future-proofing corridors / land hoarding as Calgary. Almost every project they have done is like the Green Line's Centre Street alignment.
How do they manage the land issues when developing transit corridors? here's two North American examples from the past:
Toronto
It may surprise some people that Toronto's Line 2 Bloor Subway, doesn't go down Bloor street much at all for any of it's 25km length. Instead, it often is routed through the alley or nearest residential street off to the north of the main road. Why?
That routing reflects the politics and cost conditions of the time - in the 1960s, the business main street was prioritized over the community around. Utilities and pipes were going to be a mess to move under Bloor, so why bother trying to move them at high costs?
Toronto instead ripped up a row of businesses, homes and alleys just to the north. I would speculate that even when it built acquiring a row of houses is far cheaper than a row of main street shops.
Chicago
Chicago's Blue Line was built even earlier but came to the same conclusion. Rather than painfully and at high cost rip up the existing main street, they decided to just elevate the line in the nearest alley. The result is far fewer construction impacts, less expensive acquisitions than widening the main corridor.
Lessons for the Green Line
Both Toronto and Chicago's prioritized transit first with a clear, direct grade-separated right-of-way, but also recognized the trade-off on utilities impacts to the businesses on the main streets.
But they did something else too. Across the whole neighbourhood every lane is narrow, there's zero turning queue lanes, every corner is tight for cars. There's little parking anywhere to be seen. This lack of right-of-way to cars is product of the way we built communities back in the early and mid 1900s. But from a upcoming transit project perspective there's a lesson here.
The right-of-way challenges of Green Line on Centre is not due to the LRT, it's due to all these road infrastructure designs we are baking in. Wide lanes, preserving turns including many turning queue lanes into and out of the low density communities on nearly every block at the expense of wider sidewalks, future conflicts between trains and cars, and more complex signaling everywhere).
The LRT doesn't need to preserve any of those car movements, it actually is penalized by preserving them. The project is more complex and costly to acquire and plan all those odds and ends.
My critique about Green Line and all our transit projects seems is that on the spectrum between pure transit and pure car benefit, they seem to spend a ton of time catering to cars for all this small stuff.
The world won't end if drivers can't turn left on Centre Street on 10, 12, 16 Avenue - there areas will have an enormous transit capacity increase that is far greater in magnitude to any perceived loss that will improve local and regional mobility.
How do they manage the land issues when developing transit corridors? here's two North American examples from the past:
Toronto
It may surprise some people that Toronto's Line 2 Bloor Subway, doesn't go down Bloor street much at all for any of it's 25km length. Instead, it often is routed through the alley or nearest residential street off to the north of the main road. Why?
That routing reflects the politics and cost conditions of the time - in the 1960s, the business main street was prioritized over the community around. Utilities and pipes were going to be a mess to move under Bloor, so why bother trying to move them at high costs?
Toronto instead ripped up a row of businesses, homes and alleys just to the north. I would speculate that even when it built acquiring a row of houses is far cheaper than a row of main street shops.
Chicago
Chicago's Blue Line was built even earlier but came to the same conclusion. Rather than painfully and at high cost rip up the existing main street, they decided to just elevate the line in the nearest alley. The result is far fewer construction impacts, less expensive acquisitions than widening the main corridor.
Lessons for the Green Line
Both Toronto and Chicago's prioritized transit first with a clear, direct grade-separated right-of-way, but also recognized the trade-off on utilities impacts to the businesses on the main streets.
But they did something else too. Across the whole neighbourhood every lane is narrow, there's zero turning queue lanes, every corner is tight for cars. There's little parking anywhere to be seen. This lack of right-of-way to cars is product of the way we built communities back in the early and mid 1900s. But from a upcoming transit project perspective there's a lesson here.
The right-of-way challenges of Green Line on Centre is not due to the LRT, it's due to all these road infrastructure designs we are baking in. Wide lanes, preserving turns including many turning queue lanes into and out of the low density communities on nearly every block at the expense of wider sidewalks, future conflicts between trains and cars, and more complex signaling everywhere).
The LRT doesn't need to preserve any of those car movements, it actually is penalized by preserving them. The project is more complex and costly to acquire and plan all those odds and ends.
My critique about Green Line and all our transit projects seems is that on the spectrum between pure transit and pure car benefit, they seem to spend a ton of time catering to cars for all this small stuff.
The world won't end if drivers can't turn left on Centre Street on 10, 12, 16 Avenue - there areas will have an enormous transit capacity increase that is far greater in magnitude to any perceived loss that will improve local and regional mobility.
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
Why not just have people do three right turns if they're so desperate to cross Centre there. In general, there is almost nothing more dangerous than a left turn for everyone involved (driver, cyclist, pedestrian).
lemongrab
Active Member
But that's the beauty of it...you don't have to build the centre city segment...at least not yet, or maybe ever as it is currently conceived.
Rant alert.
North LRT + SE BRT (Option B4) came in at $3.8B, compared to $4.9B for the option selected (A2).
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjqztbPzqX9AhVQIzQIHVweAJIQFnoECBMQAQ&url=https://pub-calgary.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=133237&usg=AOvVaw0FCgo-8Y6pDcedLTfBuTVr
There are a million things in that report that I question (because I'm just a dude who likes to play Sim-City), but I'll limit my rant to their concluding paragraphs comparing the options:
This is fair enough, though it's rooted in the assumption that the north line would need to terminate around Centre St and 6th Ave. We'd have a spare $1.1B to change that if we really want to. As for the delays, it sure seems the SE wasn't exactly shovel-ready, either.
This may have been true at one time, but downtown's centre of gravity certainly seems to have shifted a block or two east. Or, as I said above, change it.
This line cracks me up. The document does briefly reference the bus resources required beyond the south terminus in option A2, but the scale is vastly different. And yet again, you could simply use the $1.1B to extend 1 station further to North Pointe and you'll capture everything south of Stoney.
Right...but what about the immediate viability of a BRT service in the north? This sentence acknowledges that the SE doesn't even exceed BRT capacity at the present.
This is really what it boils down to. We made a bunch of bad promises and we're afraid to break one of them, even though it makes common sense and we've already broken several other promises (deep underground tunnel, underground Centre St, stage 1 length, etc) and the world hasn't ended. As far as project readiness, going SE BRT would actually give us something tangible much much sooner.
It would take another long rant to break down how they compare these 6 themes, but the obvious one is Cost+value. They score A2 ($4.9) a 3/4. B4 ($3.8B, that effectively serves a ~40km corridor) scores 2/4.
That billion bucks could go a long way to fixing the few nitpicks they have on B4, or to serving other transit priorities. I just think we're getting awful value here, and it's really going to hinder us from developing other projects.
darwink
Senior Member
I don't disagree that the fixation on the downtown tunnel as concieved has hurt the value proposition.
What I do disagree with is the assumption that the North Central LRT is an obvious slam dunk over and above other investments. I think it fits many peoples vision of what transit should be more, so it generates more support.
As for the option costs less: removing 4 underground stations sure would reduce costs to build. It also locks the project into being a one way line for a very long time.
What I do disagree with is the assumption that the North Central LRT is an obvious slam dunk over and above other investments. I think it fits many peoples vision of what transit should be more, so it generates more support.
As for the option costs less: removing 4 underground stations sure would reduce costs to build. It also locks the project into being a one way line for a very long time.
Colinfill
Active Member
That's not true. I remember the reversible lanes on Centre Street as a kid, which pre-dated the Bridge closure in 2001.
Google tells me that the bridge closed from 1999-2000, and the HOV lane was put in September 2000 (see page 16), under Transit Ridership.
This fits my memory having worked various places downtown since the late 90s. But I suppose I could be off by a year or two.
This fits my memory having worked various places downtown since the late 90s. But I suppose I could be off by a year or two.
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darwink
Senior Member
The HOV lane is a different thing than the lane reversal. The lane reversal shows up in aerial photos in the 1970s. Herald says 1976:
The automatic system replaced a manual system that extended from downtown to the north end of the bridge, starting in 1969.
Cool, I had no idea.
lemongrab
Active Member
What investments do you think would be better? (genuinely curious)