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

Go Elevated or try for Underground?

  • Work with the province and go with the Elevated option

    Votes: 26 74.3%

  • Try another approach and go for Underground option

    Votes: 6 17.1%

  • Cancel it altogether

    Votes: 1 2.9%

  • Go with a BRT solution

    Votes: 2 5.7%
  • Total voters
    35
If any place should be first, I don't know why there is an obsession with MRU, which while not mentioned as much as the airport, isn't nearly as large as people seem to assume. My nomination: Short, 2 turns (could get it down to 1 but it would have to be tall at Big Ts).
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CalgaryTiger said:
In all seriousness, how do we feel about gondola's as public transport over short distances (destination to destination: MRU to Downtown is about 6KM (Sunshine's Gondola is 4.5KM))?
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I think gondolas are seriously underrated as a transit option. Sure, their top speed isn't as high as a train, but the end-to-end trip time can be way shorter because headways are so high.

They are also remarkably cheap to build compared to other forms high order transit. They shouldn't form a primary artery of the network (so probably not downtown) but they are great for connecting secondary institutions like universities and hospitals.

Like, for example, UofC -> Banff Trail -> Foothills Hospital, or Chinook LRT -> Mall -> Rockyview -> MRU
 
Here's a few random gondola ideas I had a while back:
https://skyrisecities.com/forum/threads/calgary-transit-fantasy-maps.27981/post-1813793

I think some combo of Foothills, ACH/University District, and maybe U of C centre campus or Market Mall makes a lot of sense. They all have steady traffic throughout the day, and the road network is a real dog's breakfast in this area so I'm not sure how efficient bus routes are? And walking between a lot of these destinations doesn't seem very natural given some of the barriers.

The fun one is connecting Westbrook with Foothills hospital area. Or MRU to Rockyview to Chinook
 
Gondolas are slow and while they have high headways, so should other primary forms of transit. The fact that the MAX Teal has 20 minute peak / 28 minute offpeak headways isn't a natural disadvantage of BRT that gondolas can take advantage of; it's a failure from a lack of investment in core transit services. MAX routes should have 10 minute or less headways (lower in peaks); the LRT should be 5-7 minutes and lower in peaks.

A gondola from Westbrook to MRU makes no sense; it's a short trip with existing relatively uncongested roadways. For the cost of operating two buses as a shuttle, that would be 12 minute headways; for the cost of 3 buses, 8 minute headways. The headway savings for a gondola are minor in this case -- maybe 5 minutes on average (less the time it takes to get up to the gondola station).

On the other hand, when you have substantial elevations and a river to cross, not to mention all of the other restrictive land uses, a gondola connection from Westbrook to Brentwood serving the Foothills and U of C makes a fair bit of sense. Not necessarily because gondolas are a great form of transit on their own, but because the alternatives are all terrible -- a surface right-of-way involving a substantial bridge in environmentally sensitive terrain, a ridiculously expensive underground project, or the existing road network, where to go under 3 km from Westbrook to Foothills a bus has to drive twice as far over the highly congested Crowchild bridge. It's an important connection, but not a primary one.

Here's my quick crayon, including optional stations in Spruce Cliff and Parkdale (small circles), additional towers and alternate route that adds in the Children's hospital (there are a lot more adults and seniors that take transit to medical appointments than children):
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(One complicating issue with gondolas to hospitals is that some gondola designs assume pretty high levels of mobility from their users -- with cars that never stop moving. High personal mobility is a pretty good assumption when you're ferrying downhill skiiers, but less so with the clientele of a hospital. There are designs that work; the Portland aerial tram serves a hospital; but not all of them will.)
 
Appreciate the feedback on the gondola idea, my original thinking was a way to bridge the gap between Green Line and the other two lines but that depends on how detached they may be (say if Green Line stays in the Beltline).

MRU to downtown was not a great idea but @ByeByeBaby has a pretty good idea.

Anyhow, just got an email about SE Green Line information sessions for people to view and give feedback on the 60% design... Interesting!
 
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I like gondolas for crossing difficult terrain over short distances. Not sure they would really work for transportation in Calgary.
 
Mountain Man said:
I like gondolas for crossing difficult terrain over short distances. Not sure they would really work for transportation in Calgary.
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When they reach their top ppdph, replacing them with automated guideway transit is a natural evolution imo.

Of course, every station and curve requires 1 full time attendant, plus would want a handy-person on the system at all times imo. If you bake that into potential comparable bus service, the bus service would win out I think. Even if sometimes we can build nicer things just because we want the nicer thing, not for a pure dollars and cents play. We just need to know that that is the choice we are making.
 
I think the play is a tourist attraction that offers some utility. I don't think Calgary really has an ideal location for that, though. Edmonton had a decent proposal but couldn't get it off the ground.

One spot that might be interesting is the airport to Nose Creek. Probably a bunch of problems with that, but let's get creative and route it through the Blue Ring!
 

Here are the most important items...

The province's new, above-ground plan for Calgary's Green Line LRT will be ready in a matter of weeks, Minister of Transportation and Economic Corridors Devin Dreeshen said Friday.

Dreeshen said he met with Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek, the Calgary Downtown Association and members of the construction industry about the Green Line on Friday.

He said he received direct feedback from Calgary businesses about the transit project at that meeting.

"It was good. It was a really positive meeting to know that the province is serious about building the Green Line," he said, adding that the new downtown alignment, which is expected to be at-grade or elevated, will bring change to the area.

"But they stress that even with elevated, it's still — you want to have a good street level experience in the downtown core."

Dreeshen once again emphasized the province's desire to see the Green Line forgo tunneling through Calgary's downtown in favour of an above-ground track that links to a transit hub at the city's new event centre, which is currently being built.

Premier Danielle Smith indicated that her vision for the transit hub would be a multi-tiered building that resembles Toronto's Union Station.

The premier said she hopes she and Gondek will be able to see eye-to-eye on an above-ground alignment for Calgary's new train line to reduce the cost of the project.

"One of the things that AECOM had told us is that Austin [Texas] went through a very similar process of trying to tunnel and it became so expensive that they brought them in to reimagine how it could be done," Smith said.

She added it will cost about $1 billion per kilometre of track to build underground, about $300 million per kilometre for an elevated line and about $100 million per kilometre to build at-grade.

"So it just stands to reason, if we can find a way to do above-ground elevated or above-ground at-grade, we'll be able to build longer for the same budget.... I hope we have a meeting of the minds on that."
 
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CalgaryTiger said:
"One of the things that AECOM had told us is that Austin [Texas] went through a very similar process of trying to tunnel and it became so expensive that they brought them in to reimagine how it could be done," Smith said.
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Doesn't Austin have one of the worst light rail systems on the continent? Every 30-40 minutes peak, and it only just barely goes into downtown. 1600 passengers a day ride it.

CalgaryTiger said:
She added it will cost about $1 billion per kilometre of track to build underground, about $300 million per kilometre for an elevated line and about $100 million per kilometre to build at-grade.
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These numbers are just crazy to me. The 19 km Canada Line in Vancouver was built for under $2 billion, and is about 50% underground. Have costs really increased that much since then?
 
badc0ffee said:
Doesn't Austin have one of the worst light rail systems on the continent? Every 30-40 minutes peak, and it only just barely goes into downtown. 1600 passengers a day ride it.



These numbers are just crazy to me. The 19 km Canada Line in Vancouver was built for under $2 billion, and is about 50% underground. Have costs really increased that much since then?
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When you design stations to be twice as long, they get to be at least twice as expensive. Turns out Canada Line was built at the exact right time, (and they got lucky with geology), with the exactly right delivery model (before P3s got scared of underground fixed cost), but the process pissed off a lot of people, so instead of replicating it, we did everything different, who cares about the price, as long as fewer people complained.
 
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