Ramsayite
Active Member
Calm down, your fragility is showing.
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You forget the geotechnical studies which will be key to support the alignment. These tasks are inter-dependent with each other and influence design, curvature and running speeds: coupled with planning etc........Do you think by next year they will agree on a new alignment and start construction? Or will this planning drag out another 3 years lol? Would they still be able to do work for the non DT stations as they likely wont change the alignment for that part whenever it gets built?
I'm in the architecture field, so not much planning background so I wont weigh in on what is the best way to go forward. I just want the line to go into the SE since I live there so I was excited for the Shepard station being operational in 2027.
Not helpful with your cheap jibes: be constructive in your critiques.So you just sit in the weeds, add nothing interesting to the dialogue, and lob a few personal insults. cool.
Design is an issue: why has design taken so long and is, allegedly, stuck at 60%, curious.I don't think the bolded part was true. Weren't we only at 60% design costs? Even if the costs were contained, I don't think the project was at a stage to begin construction in that timeframe. (waiting on @accord1999 to provide the correct information.....)
Don't be hoodwinked: you overlook what the Province's designs are and expect construction based on what basis, to what alignment and by the same development contractor? What about delay costs, who is responsible for them?I think they (the city and the province) won't agree, but construction will start, on the province's plan.
And no, a SE train from Seton to Inglewood ain't going to start until there is assurance on the central section.
A couple of kilometres walk will promote a healthy workforce!The UCP risks stepping in it if they have truly foreclosed on a grade separated line through downtown. There have already been studies that have shown that a mainly cut and cover tunnel is the most viable way to get through downtown given the CP tracks, 7th Ave transit line, traffic congestion, ext.
It's laughable that Smith suggested having the line terminate by the new arena after supposedly critiquing it as a "line to nowhere". I'm sure people in the SE will love having to walk 10 blocks to their office.
30% and 60% designs were accelerated for presentation in January. Not all of the 60% were complete as some of the 30% still required design info – obvious compounding issue. 60% design is the acid test - all affected authorities approve or otherwise before moving onto 90%. 90% designs are basically ready to issue for construction - has 90% been reached?The 60% designs were presented but I'm not sure that that means things were "stuck" at that point. I recall seeing a couple station renders that were at the 90% iirc.
Based on what I saw and the amount of surrounding work that's been done at each of the station sites (from Crossroads south) I would hazard to guess that more than half of the stations are very close to shovel ready, although I can't speak for the track, tunnels, guide ways in between those stations.
I don't know about any of the design work west of the elbow; certainly a lot more complex design there. And that is the section that the province claims it will "fix" and that is clearly their justification.
Of course all of the stations south and east of the elbow that may be "complete" are designed for low-floor trains. If vehicle type is one of the things that is under review then it could certainly throw those stations back to the drawing boards.
Re: high floor vs low floor: Perhaps as another poster mentioned, one could just take those existing designs and dig the track down a couple feet to accommodate high floor trains, but something tells me it's not that easy; One can't just make up track grade willy-nilly, especially when these stations all have elevation constraints: Crossroads station immediately enters an elevated guideway that needs to maintain a certain elevation over road and track. Highfield station sits right up against a road and associated underpass with clearance requirements. Lynnwood immediately crosses a road at grade after the station head. Almost all of the stations have some at-grade pedestrian crossing to move between platforms. A couple feet of grade change would completely invalidate these designs. I really really hope that the UCP's review doesn't try to change the vehicles.
I think the average person has no idea how much work has gone into this right-of-way; how many ARPs, TOD sites, road alignments, streetscape upgrades, bike paths, public amenities, utility upgrades etc are hinged upon it and have been designed alongside. The risk of invalidating all of this associated work needs to be considered as part of the package of opportunity costs here. We are at serious risk of butchering a ton of associated planning work.
The reality is that this project is much more than just a train that goes some places; for as long as I have been engaged with this project (2015?) One of the stated goals has been place-making, I.e. avoiding the errors of 1980s LRT (looking at you, 36st NE) And creating opportunities for meaningful development around this line. It's the same stated goal as for the arena except there's a lot more tangible work that has been done to actually achieve that at a public level, at a much larger scale, and without the interference of a for-profit "tenant."
And so, It'll be interesting to see how much design work gets thrown out as part of this "review." I could summarize my greatest concern more succinctly and without prior sass: I don't trust a provincial party of rural grievances to properly understand this project, And I don't trust whatever private interests they're pretending are an "independent review" to understand this work either. Owning an abandoned traincar in High River and liking trains is not a qualification.
And to be clear, the narrative of these aforementioned ideologues is just far too transparent: Leverage collective sticker shock, ignore the scope of this project and reposition it as commuter rail, take advantage of rural and suburban voters biases and lack of awareness of urban place-making to dangle a carrot for vote buying. Then, over-emphasize the opportunity cost associated with capital spending while under-emphasizing opportunity cost associated with every other facet of this project and its delay. Use the per kilometer track cost as a talking point while ignoring all of the amenities that are costed in along this section, then extrapolate this per track cost to the rest of the alignment to overestimate the full project and position it as a boondoggle. Come up with an alternative design that looks cheaper on paper but won't actually get built during your tenure; use it primarily as a talking point during political debates. Carefully avoid communicating about what has been "lost" through the value engineering process so that the whole situation looks great on paper. Deflect all criticisms to the municipality. Ignore that inflation exists.
Bonus move: screw over the "radical downtown urbanites " who you despise and deliver some "benefits" to some donors while you are at it.
Anyway, please accept my apologies for being a bit sassy about this, I'm sure I'm not the only one who is a bit suspicious of users who joined the forum primarily to run PR for the stadium deal and now appear to be running PR for the provincial government while standing aggressively on decorum to deflect any criticisms of such.
Yet Smith's commuter rail line makes sense. It is achievable if LRT utilises the northern freight line to Airdrie and combines the LRT within the configuration. A bit of thought and planning will achieve. Face facts, Alberta severely lacks rail systems.Alberta premier considers north LRT route ahead of key vote on Calgary’s Green Line
Place your bets now: Rather than designing a meaningful regional rail network independent of City LRT, The UCP is going to take this project over and turn it into their own commuter rail line. In doing so they are going to waste the right-of-way on a high floor train and consequently ruin multiple streetscapes, pathways, and sidewalk connections, diminish the feasibility of multiple TOD opportunities, ignore a decade of community voice and consultation, and create a decade-long mess that can't be cleaned.
And the ironic part is that when it's all done we will end up with exactly the same cost, if not more. We'll see half of that cost as capital spending on a more "economical" line and the other half of the cost will just end up atomized and externalized in ways that don't fit on the spreadsheet. Reminiscent of past conservative governments that run a surplus on the books while racking up infrastructure deficits that aren't as easily itemized so they can pat themselves on the back. A narrative trick and nothing more.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. If Smith wants her commuter rail system so badly she needs to do the leg work and design it.
I don't disagree, but hijacking another project in order to deliver that one is pretty spurious.Yet Smith's commuter rail line makes sense. It is achievable if LRT utilises the northern freight line to Airdrie and combines the LRT within the configuration. A bit of thought and planning will achieve. Face facts, Alberta severely lacks rail systems.
I don't disagree, but hijacking another project in order to deliver that one is pretty spurious.
These are two different conversations and conflating them demonstrates a profound ignorance, in my opinion.
An ignorance that would be very on-brand for this pThe Green Lin
This Green Line megaproject is following the classic Flyvbjerg's Iron Law of Project Management failure principles as expanded upon by Denicol: underestimating costs; overestimating revenues; undervaluing environmental impact and overvaluing economic development effects.I don't disagree, but hijacking another project in order to deliver that one is pretty spurious.
These are two different conversations and conflating them demonstrates a profound ignorance, in my opinion.
An ignorance that would be very on-brand for this premier