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

I'm anxious to see the Green Line get built, but the pause isn't making me nervous, as I believe it's getting built one way or another. I don't see any harm (other than the general delay) of revisiting some aspects. for $5 Billion we might as well get our ducks in a row.

Surrealplaces said:
Seeing as the Eau Market re-do project is dead, maybe the station could be the catalyst for redevelopment? Instead of Eau Claire market it becomes Eau Claire Station. Retail, residential and some office, but with a station...if the station has to be above ground, that might be the best way to turn the situation around.
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Eau Claire Station has kind of a nice ring to it. Maybe this is just the type of use that would make actually make Eau Claire work as a node and public space.
 
My concern is if this isn't started under the current council, then the next one will nickel and dime it and we will have another half assed system that runs at grade. Or even worse, it gets shelved for another 20 years in the name of saving tax dollars.
 
Fortunately, the LRVs will be ordered, the contract issued for at least the SE surface section. The path dependency will be strong to push through.
 
Pause or revisit? A pause is okay, but I don't want them to revisit the whole project, as they have spent a lot of time on it already. Pausing to look at the tunnel vs bridge over the Bow is okay, given the issue with the soil that wasn't known the original plan.

Cowtown said:
I'm anxious to see the Green Line get built, but the pause isn't making me nervous, as I believe it's getting built one way or another. I don't see any harm (other than the general delay) of revisiting some aspects. for $5 Billion we might as well get our ducks in a row.
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What exactly does "pause" mean? I have to admit, I'm interpreting Woolley's announcement as nothing more than political grandstanding in anticipation for future run for mayor. His announcement is just full of platitudes about "measuring twice and cutting once", and a bunch of "fiscal conservative" baloney about the project being "a burden to tax payers". Some of the reasons he gives for "pausing" are crazy: because they need to better integrate the line with the non-existent new Flames area, and because he's worried it will delay an LRT connection to the airport (why do we want that again?).

I voted for the guy, but he's coming across as a huge flake.

Again, if I had something more concrete to go on than just the term "pause" I'd have a better sense of how to evaluate these statements. On it's own, Woolley's announcement just seems to undermine the project for the sake of scoring cheap political points.
 
Why do we want an LRT connection to the airport? because it's a great idea and will provide easier access to the city for people arriving at YYC. I took the skytrain downtown from YVR and it was fantastic! much cheaper and faster than a taxi or Uber.

I don't see how this line will impact the Airport connection, this stays on the wrong side of Deerfoot. The Airport connection should have been done on the Blue Line.
 
Mountain Man said:
Why do we want an LRT connection to the airport? because it's a great idea and will provide easier access to the city for people arriving at YYC. I took the skytrain downtown from YVR and it was fantastic! much cheaper and faster than a taxi or Uber.

I don't see how this line will impact the Airport connection, this stays on the wrong side of Deerfoot. The Airport connection should have been done on the Blue Line.
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I think an airport connection is a nice-to-have, but should it be prioritized over extensions/connections that may serve more Calgarians who ultimately pay for the infrastructure?
 
Mountain Man said:
Why do we want an LRT connection to the airport? because it's a great idea and will provide easier access to the city for people arriving at YYC. I took the skytrain downtown from YVR and it was fantastic! much cheaper and faster than a taxi or Uber.

I don't see how this line will impact the Airport connection, this stays on the wrong side of Deerfoot. The Airport connection should have been done on the Blue Line.
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I don't remember where or who, but someone on this board made a really strong case against an Airport LRT connection. IIRC, they argued that even in cities like YYZ and YVR where car travel is expensive and slow, airport lines still struggle to attract high levels of ridership. And an LRT connection to YYC (from either the Blue or Green line) would likely be much, much slower than taking a car (or perhaps even a bus). I might be remembering this wrong, but I think the bottom line was that if we were thinking in terms of maximizing ridership, there were many other expansions that should be prioritized over the airport.
 
Silence&Motion said:
I don't remember where or who, but someone on this board made a really strong case against an Airport LRT connection. IIRC, they argued that even in cities like YYZ and YVR where car travel is expensive and slow, airport lines still struggle to attract high levels of ridership. And an LRT connection to YYC (from either the Blue or Green line) would likely be much, much slower than taking a car (or perhaps even a bus). I might be remembering this wrong, but I think the bottom line was that if we were thinking in terms of maximizing ridership, there were many other expansions that should be prioritized over the airport.
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May have been me at one point in time. And yes, funding this out of the normal transport pot in competition with other projects on a 1 to 1 basis is a bad idea. But there are other ways, which I explain below in a long post not about green line things, but about airport transit things, so I put it in spoiler tags.

Mountain Man said:
Why do we want an LRT connection to the airport? because it's a great idea and will provide easier access to the city for people arriving at YYC. I took the skytrain downtown from YVR and it was fantastic! much cheaper and faster than a taxi or Uber.

I don't see how this line will impact the Airport connection, this stays on the wrong side of Deerfoot. The Airport connection should have been done on the Blue Line.
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Colinfill said:
I think an airport connection is a nice-to-have, but should it be prioritized over extensions/connections that may serve more Calgarians who ultimately pay for the infrastructure?
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Yeah, I have contradictory thoughts on this one. 1, airports are not great as trip generators.

This is for passengers, and is old, from 2008:
194036

And for Canada, from the open house boards:
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Vancouver at 16%. Toronto, generously at 8%. Vancouver that number also includes staff remote parking, general staff and access to a mall, so the number would be lower. Toronto it includes staff, and in Toronto trips, so the number would be lower than its approximately 8%.

For travellers, a big portion for non regular travellers arrive and depart via friends and family drop off. Business travel, except for rush hour service from downtown or companies refusing to reimburse parking or cabs, I bet you capture a small number. Maybe 10 per cent of those. For those airport jobs of 46,000, how many are at the terminal that don't need to go somewhere else first, or don't have free or cheap parking, and never have to get to the airport outside of even extended transit hours? Not nearly as many.

I bet Calgary with a Blue Line only connection could capture around 6%. With Blue and Green, maybe you push 10% under current conditions.

2, the plan they have worked up so far is quite good. Short trains, frequent service is the way to go for airports. Not being a spur means it won't make the Green and Blue lines worse. Since spurs necessitate lower frequency, the forced transfer could even be said to have a negative time value, as the transfer time would be less than the average wait time for a spur train. The total travel time from downtown, without a initial waiting time via the blue line would be around 40 minutes, not bad, but slower than a cab. Where they propose stops could lead to significant other trip generation for things like offsite parking, offsite rental car, commercial and industrial, and network connectivity.
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3, Don't get me wrong, I think it could be very advantageous: building this in addition to the planned northern greenline would be great, and with a train for Banff, would really help sell Calgary as a large convention destination and as an easy place to visit without a car. Now, is it worth $1 billion bucks? I'd have to see a very advantageous grant stack for that to happen.

A off the top of my head proposal, with rough math using a toy cash generated calculator:
  • A Calgary area hotel tax of $2 a night would generate about $155 million (how much we could borrow today, based on the revenue) over 30 years (growth 2%, cost of capital 5%),
  • An add fare of $5 for arriving or leaving the terminal maybe (starting at 6,000 pax a day, growth 5%, cost of capital 5%) another $330 million,
  • $1 on the airport improvement fee, starting at 20 million a year, growing by 5%, cost of capital 5%, another $600 million.
All of a sudden that $1 billion looks like a small number to invest in this project! With buy in from the tourism sector and the airport, the project looks much more viable, even at lets say $1.5 billion, when in effect users/potential users are paying more than 50%. Of course, this isn't taking into account operating and maintenance costs.
 
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This Human Transit blog has lots of relevant comments on the brewing Greenline debates or an Airport v. Red Line tunnel discussion.

https://humantransit.org/2019/07/portland-facing-the-east-west-chokepoint.html

It's a long post but what rings most true, is the comments around what the writer is describing as the "core-periphery debate". The Greenline's core section is being criticized due to to the difficulty and cost and a perception that "we get less track" because it's been so expensive to go through downtown to an area already serviced to some extent. But the core section is the only part everyone needs and everyone benefits from and is crucial to do right. It's a classic problem seen in many cities with their transit infrastructure that tends to favour outward expansion vs. capacity and quality of service increases.
 
Also airports are like subways to the sea. https://humantransit.org/2009/12/on-subways-to-the-sea.html

“Ultimately, lots of people love the idea of a subway to the sea for the same reason they like the idea of a subway to the airport — because they can imagine using it occasionally. This can yield a disconnect between the political popularity of a service and its actual ridership potential.”
 
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