MichaelS
Senior Member
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.
Green Line LRT | ?m | ?s | Calgary Transit
- Thread starter Surrealplaces
- Start date
Ramsayite
Active Member
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.
itsavro
New Member
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?
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?
lemongrab
Active Member
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
Ramsayite
Active Member
The error was the assumption that the province under the UCP could ever be a good faith partner. Whoops.
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.