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

Go Elevated or try for Underground?

  • Work with the province and go with the Elevated option

    Votes: 27 75.0%

  • Try another approach and go for Underground option

    Votes: 6 16.7%

  • Cancel it altogether

    Votes: 1 2.8%

  • Go with a BRT solution

    Votes: 2 5.6%
  • Total voters
    36
badc0ffee said:
I would have thought the NC line north of Beddington Trail would have the least uncertainty and lowest cost because the corridor already exists. The land was set aside and never developed.
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North of west Nose Creek is reasonably good. The Beddington Centre intersection has a lot of pipes underneath and south of that intersection is consistently bad. Next to 52nd is better, but not perfect. Different standards for different sections.
 
Surrealplaces said:
I don't believe it would have to go to Panorama to be considered done properly, at least not off the beginning.I'd be happy with it going to Beddington and Panorama as an added extension. This particular line is also funded by the feds and the province, whereas other RouteAhead initiatives aren't, so I'd like to see the city take advantage now and be done with it. The city is only going to get bigger, and we'll have to pay for transit in some way or another. Is the Green Line the most efficient way? It's debatable of course, but once it's built it would be easier for the city to leverage down the road. I look at the Red line and imagine how Calgary would be today if the city didn't it back when they did. It's taken a long time, but we're finally starting to reap some rewards from it.
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In my experience, the majority of ridership on the 301 (the most direct bus-route predecessor to the north Green Line) goes directly between downtown and North Pointe Terminal (Panorama) so to cut it short at Beddington is rather inconvenient. Sure they’re doing a similar thing currently by ending the southeast end at Shepard instead of McKenzie Towne Terminal, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best way to maximize the usefulness of the line.
 
Transit Apologist said:
In my experience, the majority of ridership on the 301 (the most direct bus-route predecessor to the north Green Line) goes directly between downtown and North Pointe Terminal (Panorama) so to cut it short at Beddington is rather inconvenient. Sure they’re doing a similar thing currently by ending the southeast end at Shepard instead of McKenzie Towne Terminal, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best way to maximize the usefulness of the line.
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If the green line was to stop at Beddington then route 3 would be the most direct predecessor at least for NC to downtown. If I’m not mistaken there are more buses on route 3 than the 301.
I think the green line to Beddington is fine. Like the NW line they can add extensions later.
There’s a better opportunity to increase ridership from Beddington to DT as density along the line increases, but the only way to increase ridership north of Beddington is by extensions and even then you’re only extending to many who are already travelling to the Beddington station.
 
Transit Apologist said:
In my experience, the majority of ridership on the 301 (the most direct bus-route predecessor to the north Green Line) goes directly between downtown and North Pointe Terminal (Panorama) so to cut it short at Beddington is rather inconvenient. Sure they’re doing a similar thing currently by ending the southeast end at Shepard instead of McKenzie Towne Terminal, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best way to maximize the usefulness of the line.
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64th is the major north terminal, and delivers travel time savings for the people forced transferring there. It is the Goldielocks north expansion, unless there is a true windfall in transit funding over 2027-2036.
 
badc0ffee said:
Do you mean 78th?
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Nope. While the 2017 plans have Beddington Station having a large bus bay station, 64th is the first north station where there is land availability and the road network to support a large bus bay station. This is reflected in the LRT ridership projections that have expanding from 64th to Beddington to only generate 3900 incremental riders, while expanding from 40th to 64th generates 19,000 incremental riders.

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I'm really hoping that the malls are redeveloped when the C-train does finally reach Beddington. It'd be nice if we got a specialist tower for all the lab services, clinics, and dentists that make up the majority of the tenants in both malls and redeveloped the malls so the businesses are all adjacent to centre street and all the parking is along Beddington Blvd.
 
Over the years, the 3 has had service cuts and the 301 has had service increases -- the right thing to do, IMO. When the 301 started, (Sept. 2004) it had 6 buses an hour in the peak, and only 2 an hour in the offpeak. The 3 meanwhile had 10 buses an hour in the peak, and 6 in the offpeak. Today, the 301 has 10 in the peak and 5 in the offpeak, while the 3 has 8 in the peak, and 4 in the offpeak.

A lot of the service on the corridor in the peaks is express buses serving the communities north of Beddington Trail as well as Sandstone/Hidden Valley. I was today years old when I learned that they technically stop at the same stops as the 301. When the Green Line gets to 64th, those (inefficient) express buses will be killed and folded into standard feeder service, one of the other reasons for the big ridership jump. The same thing will happen at Shepard; there's a bundle of express routes serving Greater Douglasdale that will be converted into feeder buses.

Here's the peak service on Centre Street:
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When the Green Line reaches Beddington, you might as well reroute a lot of the northern feeder routes to terminate at Beddington instead of North Pointe too.
 
jhappy77 said:
When the Green Line reaches Beddington, you might as well reroute a lot of the northern feeder routes to terminate at Beddington instead of North Pointe too.
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Beddington will never have enough bus bays for North Pointe routes plus the routes that will use it anyway, and many more successful North Pointe routes (8, 100, 124) will lose efficiency by being forced to travel an extra ~30 blocks south. It would be better to keep the 301 as a short-term measure, perhaps short-turning at Beddington instead of going all the way to downtown, until the line can be extended. This measure would be similar to the former route 461, which connected South Health Campus to the 23/302 before they could be extended further on 52 Street.
 
Here’s a concept for an alternative downtown green line alignment. My aim was to make something that could be dramatically cheaper without compromising on speed and grade separation. Obviously it seems like the current alignment will be moving ahead (especially given the enabling work being done underground) but this is at the very least interesting food for thought.
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It woud cut the amount of tunneling necessary by just under 50%, and crucially go from 4 underground stations to 2 underground stations. And it would do all this while avoiding grade conflicts with any major roads, and maintaining good station alignments.

In SE downtown, it would run next to the train tracks and expand the existing rail bridges over the Macleod and 4th St E underpasses. Consequently, the 5th St E station would be a block and a half further from the new event centre. Instead, we could kill 2 birds with 1 stone and integrate the 5th St station directly into a new regional rail station planned for this site. The same pedestrian overpass/underpass used to connect both sides of the Green Line tracks could be expanded northwards to also serve the EB & WB future rail platforms, as well as provide a connection to East Village.

2nd St would become an exclusive Green Line ROW North of 3rd Avenue – this would be fine because every avenue past 3rd essentially deadends anyways. The expensive-looking “landmark” Eau Claire station would be dropped and replaced with a City Hall type surface station that is closer to the major trip generators (nearby office towers, Chinatown).
 
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