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

Go Elevated or try for Underground?

  • Work with the province and go with the Elevated option

    Votes: 44 80.0%

  • Try another approach and go for Underground option

    Votes: 7 12.7%

  • Cancel it altogether

    Votes: 1 1.8%

  • Go with a BRT solution

    Votes: 3 5.5%
  • Total voters
    55
What's the difference between Centre St north of 20th Ave and Centre St south of there? For me, the only thing I can think of is people being convinced we still need 4 lanes of traffic across the bridge and into downtown. Isn't that just is falling into the trap of continually planning a city where we are prioritizing cars over all else? We closed Centre Street Bridge to traffic for almost 2 years and things were just fine. Surely now we can survive with only 2 lanes of traffic south of 16th and crossing the bridge when it's being paired with light rail?
 
I want to see it underground from 16th to McHugh for my own personal liking. As a rider I would rather the line had a a more streamlined feel to the flow, but that's just my personal preference. That and if we were ever looking at putting that section underground at some point, it's easiest to do it now. They could close that section of Centre street for all I care.
 
outoftheice said:
What's the difference between Centre St north of 20th Ave and Centre St south of there?
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Traffic volume. Have you ever been on that section of the street during rush hour?

Centre Street funnels traffic to/from 16 Ave, and to a lesser extent 20 Ave. That's why we have the reversible lanes all the way from downtown to there. If they're so pointless, why not remove them today and dedicate one lane in each direction to buses? Surely that would be a smooth and inexpensive way to improve transit service if what you're saying is true. Or heck, even just save some operational dollars and shut down the reversible lanes so we have two lanes of mixed car/bus in each direction.
 
badc0ffee said:
Traffic volume. Have you ever been on that section of the street during rush hour?

Centre Street funnels traffic to/from 16 Ave, and to a lesser extent 20 Ave. That's why we have the reversible lanes all the way from downtown to there. If they're so pointless, why not remove them today and dedicate one lane in each direction to buses? Surely that would be a smooth and inexpensive way to improve transit service if what you're saying is true. Or heck, even just save some operational dollars and shut down the reversible lanes so we have two lanes of mixed car/bus in each direction.
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Well for one thing, the capacity of buses and the capacity of light rail to replace that traffic volume are orders of magnitude different. That being said, turning the two middle lanes into a BRT transitway would be a great interim solution, even if you're only suggesting it facetiously. The community of Crescent Heights would love it as getting rid of the 4 lane car sewer through their community has been a top priority for years. Like I said, Calgary survived just fine with the Centre St bridge closed completely for 2 years so the motorists will find a way to adapt. Either way, thank you for proving my point that for many people this all comes down to spending gobs of money and doing whatever it takes so that construction of a light rail line that can move a massive amount of people along a corridor doesn't impact our ability to funnel single passenger vehicles in to, and out of, downtown.
 
The community of Crescent Heights would love it as getting rid of the 4 lane car sewer through their community has been a top priority for years.
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We're talking about a 4-lane road with wide sidewalks, crosswalks every 1-2 blocks, and frequent transit service from multiple routes. It has some small front parking lots in places, but it's mainly businesses fronting the sidewalk. If that's a car sewer then that term has strayed so far from its original meaning.
 
Wide sidewalks?
https://maps.app.goo.gl/sqA2GZvAqUMfwK5F6


I was thinking about this a bit today and trying to come up with similar situations as our Centre Street. This is a random thought along those lines, but I've found the pedestrian experience on West Broadway in Vancouver - a 5-6 lane road - to be far more pleasant than our Centre St, or most of our other vibrant streets.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/itPMQrStukSzDo5U8

The answer is probably as simple as novelty+vacation mode (though I'm generally doing pleasure and not businesses at similar locations in Calgary), but I dunno. Maybe it's the far lower ratio of obnoxious pickups/huge SUVs (ripping through ~20 blocks on street view I only noticed 1 pick up and 1 large SUV out of hundreds of cars)
 
The Familia said:
Back when I was in university I worked for the city of Calgary on a landscaping roads crew. The two crews in our division would make it a competition who could rip down and collect as many pop up lawn signs on city property as we could….those things drive me nuts.
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The city should put out a bounty for those signs, $1 off your property tax for every sign you turn in
 
Funding approved today:
1700698420150.png
 
Line item 2 scares me a little bit as to me that means they're going to try and tie more projects into the Green line. Not a bad thing but yeah. It's like the Olympics, well you're already spending money on that so might as well throw this on as well.
 
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