Ramsayite
Active Member
The error was the assumption that the province under the UCP could ever be a good faith partner. Whoops.
Green Line LRT | ?m | ?s | Calgary Transit
- Thread starter Surrealplaces
- Start date
You're not wrong, but I'd feel worse about that if the city's own plan wasn't a pile of bullshit, mismanagement and wishful thinking from the start, executed at a glacial pace.
accord1999
Active Member
What's wrong with user pay? Drivers are willing to pay the capital and operating costs for their vehicles, are transit users willing to pay 3-4X the fare to do the same? Even for relatively successful Calgary Transit, fare revenues currently only account for about 42% of operating costs and 0% of capital costs.
Rail transit would be a lot easier to fund too if governments only needed to pay for the tracks and some stations and users had to buy the trains, maintain them, pay for insurance and electricity and drivers.
Roads and transit are both important transport infrastructure but transit should not try to compare with roads, because roads carry more passenger-trips as well as freight and scales well from low usage to high. Expensive rail transit should try to justify their existence based on their own benefits. And if a road ends up being under-used, the costs of that aren't as crippling as a multi-billion rail transit line being under-used.
One could argue the Green Line hasn't been a good faith partner either, frequently changing scope and doing less with more. And now instead of a one-time contribution that was supposed to build most (if not all) of the Green Line in one stage; Alberta's would have needed to fund another $2+B (assuming 33% split again and Calgary can find more money) in the future to finish it. Seems very presumptuous on the part of Calgary that Alberta would be ok with a $13B LRT project.
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accord1999
Active Member
There was a second tax cut that the City also kept, so it's about $75M/year now and were dedicated for at least 30 years to the Green Line. I'd expect they'll be used to pay off the remaining debt for the Green Line project and then be a funding source for future transit projects.
Ramsayite
Active Member
Hyperbole, but I can see your perspective.
outoftheice
Active Member
The answer seems to be none. The cost of winding down the project will essentially drain the rest of the City of Calgary's contribution and the scope of changes being demanded by the Province turns this into a new project which means the $1.5 billion from the federal government disappears too.
The Jim Gray group has orchestrated exactly what they were claiming to want to avoid... a massive financial albatross around the necks of Calgary taxpayers, a huge reputational hit that will impact all future projects, and not a single km of track being laid. Bravo to the group of concerns citizens.
O-tac
Active Member
Are you fucking kidding me?!? The UcPee was determined to kill this from the start. My MLA Matt Jones will be hearing from me!Wonder what happens now, is the line dead? If the UCP wants so much input, they can pay for it like how Ford is paying for the Ontario line overruns
Province rejects revised Green Line plan, says funding to be withheld
In a scathing letter, Alberta Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen slams Calgary's Green Line plan, saying funding for it to be withheld.calgaryherald.com
O-tac
Active Member
I am seething over this, but not at all surprised. Danielle Smith and the UCP should get destroyed by Nenshi for this.
MichaelS
Senior Member
Did they orchestrate it? Or, did their warnings just turn out to be entirely accurate? Imagine if we listened to them 6 years ago, instead of stubbornly assuming that "train = good!!!!" no matter what the costs.
lemongrab
Active Member
Ooph. Pretty depressing when you put it that way.
The city has long failed to factor the political risk here of presenting such an underwhelming project. Especially after the first time the UCP showed their bad faith.
It is interesting this time that the UCP essentially reversed 100% from their letter in late July...but perhaps there were some back channel shenanigans on both sides? Presumably GLB gave a heads up that big changes were coming, so the city waned to give the feds/prov a heads up and seek clarification on how funding might be affected. It looks like the Mayor sent Dreeshen a letter on June 13 (does anyone know if it's possible to find the June 13 letter?), to which we have Dreeshen's official response. But I'd imagine there were actual conversations, too - I wonder if expectations were managed poorly along those games of telephone.
Most likely the UCP just conjured up a silly scheme and didn't think twice about contradicting themselves; otherwise they might have laid some better groundwork in those official communications.
O-tac
Active Member
How can anyone trust anything the UCP says when they contradict themselves and speak out of both sides of their mouth?
outoftheice
Active Member
They manifested their BS warnings into reality. The City did listen to them 6 years ago... back when Gray was engaging in good faith. His group's top ask was an independent board of experts to deliver the project because they were convinced those experts would agree with them about dropping the tunnel and building their SE LRT dream.
So the City created an independent Green Line Board and hired top project experts to take project management out of the hands of the politicians. Suprise, surprise, those project experts confirmed the City was on the right track with staging and risk management and the Gray group was out to lunch.
From that point on the Gray group was no longer engaging in good faith and instead set out to create so much fear and uncertainty that the market would walk away from the project or the politicians would. They finally found a premier willing to ignore years of reviews and studies from actual experts and instead listen to 9 retired guys with large chequebooks and a few napkin sketches and we find ourselves where we are today.
InfrastructureEnthusiast
New Member
I've seen a lot of news about the water main problems in the west end, are the centre st utils of a similar age?
If so, it might make sense to take that row of houses and cut & cover new utils and the green line..
InfrastructureEnthusiast
New Member
Running the line elevated downtown is definitely interesting, having stations integrated with the +15 network would certainly be unique, not sure if any other city that has something like that?
If the whole line was built grade separated, it would also open up the option of having a spur connecting to the airport and blue line as well, maybe even further east to support new high density developments.
Calgary might be able to get its own version of Canada line after all...
Abstract&Unity
New Member
yess I agree!! that would be a good use of the bridge. It would also be cool to see a bike lane beside it too. lessen the bike traffic on street level.