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

An interesting CBC article where a reporter walks the southeast Green Line alignment and finds... not a lot, really.

The key takeaways boil down to this.

  • Like any city, Calgary has some ugly 'back of house' scenery.
  • Besides helping Calgarians get around, a new train line will let people to see a different side of their town.
  • Construction of this portion of the Green Line will affect some homeless people and wildlife
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Well, Kenney's cancelled the Green Line; 8 of the 10 ridings it passed through elected UCP MLAs.

The city was supposed to receive $555 million for the planned LRT over the next four years. Nenshi, seemingly incredulous, told reporters it will now receive $75 million.

$75 million is useless in building a piece of infrastructure, it's like someone offering you twenty bucks to help buy a house. And this is for the entire term of the UCP government, after which they presumably hope to be reelected, and then not fund the Green Line again.

I assume the feds will take their matching money back, too. (Remind me, Kenney's been critical of Ottawa sending too much money to Alberta, right?)
 
This is good news. The project is so off the rails that funding it now would be foolish. Best to wait for a new City council. The federal money is likely gone regardless.
 
The provincial funding hasn't disappeared, it's been delayed. They will receive $75M next year and the rest will come in 2022 iirc. The feds will still be funding their portion, nothing's changed in that regard. The plan is for the federal money to get the project through the first couple of years, with the provincial money coming in at a later stage.
 
DougB said:
This is good news. The project is so off the rails that funding it now would be foolish. Best to wait for a new City council. The federal money is likely gone regardless.
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ByeByeBaby said:
Well, Kenney's cancelled the Green Line; 8 of the 10 ridings it passed through elected UCP MLAs.

The city was supposed to receive $555 million for the planned LRT over the next four years. Nenshi, seemingly incredulous, told reporters it will now receive $75 million.

$75 million is useless in building a piece of infrastructure, it's like someone offering you twenty bucks to help buy a house. And this is for the entire term of the UCP government, after which they presumably hope to be reelected, and then not fund the Green Line again.

I assume the feds will take their matching money back, too. (Remind me, Kenney's been critical of Ottawa sending too much money to Alberta, right?)
Click to expand...
It is important to think of this project in context - The funding was always over at least 10 years anyways. Money can be spent without grants flowing. Matching can flow without cash in hand. In P3 projects, costs to the public sector can be profiled to be in line with available funds.

Sure, it would be better to have money earlier. But is it a death blow? No. Is it even a black eye? No.
 
It seems pretty clear in hindsight that the UCP has been sending its cronies like Jim Gray to start questioning the Green Line in order to provide political cover for the province to withdraw (or "delay") funding after they promised to maintain support for the project during the election campaign.

I fear that Trudeau's re-election means that most Calgarians will now blindly support the UCP no matter how badly they screw us over in the next four years.
 
Silence&Motion said:
It seems pretty clear in hindsight that the UCP has been sending its cronies like Jim Gray to start questioning the Green Line in order to provide political cover for the province to withdraw (or "delay") funding after they promised to maintain support for the project during the election campaign.

I fear that Trudeau's re-election means that most Calgarians will now blindly support the UCP no matter how badly they screw us over in the next four years.
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wow,so wrong.
 
Silence&Motion said:
It seems pretty clear in hindsight that the UCP has been sending its cronies like Jim Gray to start questioning the Green Line in order to provide political cover for the province to withdraw (or "delay") funding after they promised to maintain support for the project during the election campaign.
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This might have merit if the City hadn't also admitted the problems with downtown at the same time; the latest in a string of budget overruns, delays and missed promises.
 
Silence&Motion said:
It seems pretty clear in hindsight that the UCP has been sending its cronies like Jim Gray to start questioning the Green Line in order to provide political cover for the province to withdraw (or "delay") funding after they promised to maintain support for the project during the election campaign.

I fear that Trudeau's re-election means that most Calgarians will now blindly support the UCP no matter how badly they screw us over in the next four years.
Click to expand...
This all might be rather convenient for Council, as they can now blame Kenny all the ills of the greenline. The reality is, there was no agreed to downtown alignment. The new option was to be unveiled in January. However, based on how well this Council gets along, I doubt there would have been any strong consensus, especially given the lack of engagement that has taken place on this new alignment so far (halfway through the 4 months to do it, and I am not sure if there has been any).

The City also stated they would not issue the RFP for the phase from 4th Street SE to Shepard in January as initially scheduled if there was no downtown alignment agreed to. So, even if provincial funding were maintained, I doubt the schedule would have been, as there would be a need to delay the RFP while they tried to sort out the downtown alignment.
 
The delayed funding is very disappointing to say the least.

One of the things I missed about the NDP government is how they pandered to Calgary voters. In the 2015 provincial election, Calgary elected MLA's from 4 different parties, while Edmonton only elected NDP MLA's. In several Calgary ridings the races were extremely close. IIRC, the NDP candidate in Calgary-Glenmore won by 10 votes. This outcome made Calgary a 'swing' city. Everyone was trying to win Calgary's vote for 2019. However, In 2019 we only sent 3 NDP MLA's to the legislature. I think if Calgary had sent 7 more NDP MLA's to the legislature, the UCP would have thought twice about delaying the Greenline funding.

en.wikipedia.org

2015 Alberta general election - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

en.wikipedia.org

2019 Alberta general election - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
What gets me the most irritated in all this is the $100 million+ in Deerfoot Trail upgrades. Shows how educated the UCP are in urban planning. Id rather see $100 million more into the Green Line which would help alleviate traffic from Deerfoot more than adding extra lanes. They can add as many lanes as they want, it'll end up facing the same fate as Mcknight Blvd, more traffic!
 
It's totally maddening. The UCP also INCREASED funding for the ring road and cut funds for the LRT system generally (on top of the cut funds for the Green Line).
 
Silence&Motion said:
It's totally maddening. The UCP also INCREASED funding for the ring road and cut funds for the LRT system generally (on top of the cut funds for the Green Line).
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I think this is a misnomer - not 100%, but I believe it is just going towards already planned construction. It isn’t new money it is just that the year added to the budget is more than the year removed from the budget.

Amatuer reading and interpretation of the budget is not recommended! Even us who dive into it regularly can regularly get it wrong.
 
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