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

Go Elevated or try for Underground?

  • Work with the province and go with the Elevated option

    Votes: 8 72.7%

  • Try another approach and go for Underground option

    Votes: 2 18.2%

  • Cancel it altogether

    Votes: 1 9.1%
  • Total voters
    11
I’m completely fine with elevated. Would look pretty awesome in my opinion. I love tunnels, but either way, being grade separated in the core is paramount. Elevated from the Centre Street Bridge to Highfield would be mint. That’s gotta cut at least a billion off the cost eh?
 
UrbanWarrior said:
I’m completely fine with elevated. Would look pretty awesome in my opinion. I love tunnels, but either way, being grade separated in the core is paramount. Elevated from the Centre Street Bridge to Highfield would be mint. That’s gotta cut at least a billion off the cost eh?
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Might be in the wheel house, but where it really helps is in soft (may be using that word wrong in this context) costs, by reducing the demanded risk premium.
 
aryanoboi said:
I mean at this point the best we can hope for is a Nenshi government in 2027 that’s willing to fund the green line. Frankly, the stub proposal being shelved might be a good option for now.

It just shocks me how we can’t build a simple train line. The provincial government is perfectly fine throwing hundreds of millions of dollars to improve one highway interchange, but can’t fund a massive transit expansion? God this place is backwards sometimes…
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This outcome shocks you? The cost and length of the current proposal wasn’t your first clue?
 
UrbanWarrior said:
I’m completely fine with elevated. Would look pretty awesome in my opinion. I love tunnels, but either way, being grade separated in the core is paramount. Elevated from the Centre Street Bridge to Highfield would be mint. That’s gotta cut at least a billion off the cost eh?
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Will likely add a billion for cancelling procurement, new detailed engineering, and delays.
 
Half-baked idea: what about a pedestrian tunnel (with people movers) linking 4 St SE Station/ "Grand Central Station" with the municipal building (ie. 7 Ave and 8 Ave roughed in station)?

Accepting for a moment the Grand Central Station fantasy and that a 7th Ave connection would be beneficial. But also think about the 8th Ave subway in the long-term...was there actually going to be a good link between that and the Green Line? Would it make sense to have an 8th Ave underground station as early as 2nd St? I feel like you'd want just one underground station around 4th/5th St, and maybe one more after it's turned north at 9 Street.

The overall idea here being that you don't necessarily need the green line to cross the tracks at all... maybe it goes on to serve more of the beltline...
 
aryanoboi said:
I mean at this point the best we can hope for is a Nenshi government in 2027 that’s willing to fund the green line. Frankly, the stub proposal being shelved might be a good option for now.

It just shocks me how we can’t build a simple train line. The provincial government is perfectly fine throwing hundreds of millions of dollars to improve one highway interchange, but can’t fund a massive transit expansion? God this place is backwards sometimes…
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The difference is that the highway interchange can be delivered on-time and on-budget with measurable benefits. The Green Line plans have been shambolic since 2015.
 
DougB said:
The difference is that the highway interchange can be delivered on-time and on-budget with measurable benefits. The Green Line plans have been shambolic since 2015.
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Hey cost overruns and on-time/on-budget issues are spread all over:

2017: Cochrane interchange estimated at $40 - 50M: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/cochrane-interchange-province-alberta-intersection-1.4060710

2024: Cochrane interchange estimated at $95M: https://cochranenow.com/articles/1a22-project-hits-milestone
 
CBBarnett said:
Hey cost overruns and on-time/on-budget issues are spread all over:

2017: Cochrane interchange estimated at $40 - 50M: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/cochrane-interchange-province-alberta-intersection-1.4060710

2024: Cochrane interchange estimated at $95M: https://cochranenow.com/articles/1a22-project-hits-milestone
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That would be amazing for the Greenline. Same scope as 2017, but only double the price. Instead, we have come in at about double the price for dramatically less scope.
 
DougB said:
Nowhere nead bad as for North American transit projects.
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A 100% increase in cost? I dunno..maybe as long as you momentarily forget that an interchange is useless without everybody buying a vehicle to drive on it, is completely useless if there aren't already roads built to connect it to , has zero requirement to integrate with the streetscape or produce any meaningful destination for anybody to arrive at . Whereas transit line includes all of the above.

It's pretty classic conservative bullshit. Pass the externalities onto individual users so you can pretend you saved money while actually spending more of everybody's money, but in an atomized way.

Go ahead and include a fractional cost for vehicles, gas, insurance, parking, service, and pollution and then we can talk about trying to compare these two vastly different projects.

Because otherwise an interchange sitting out in the middle of nowhere connected to nothing is basically just an expensive public sculpture that provides zero value.
 
A masterclass of a clown show...

How much of the city's initial $1.5 billion (the $52 million/year tax revenue returned to us by the province, for those who remember 2015) is left? Are we going to use the remainder for other transit projects? Do we still have access to the feds' $1.5 billion promised by Harper?
 
The victory lap speeches at the council meeting where they approved the Millican alignment were cringey at the time...I don't even know what word I'd use to describe them today
 
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