haltcatchfire
Senior Member
People are allowed to be rational and realistic.
Green Line LRT | ?m | ?s | Calgary Transit
- Thread starter Surrealplaces
- Start date
Nimbus
Active Member
Well, I stand by my "not a serious" government point even more.
CBBarnett
Senior Member
I am starting to think the province isn't particularly interested in building the Green line, at least not the downtown part.
As more info leaks out, their goal seems to have been to meet the communication's objective, not build an actual train line. Their objective was complete when they drafted their consultant report that says "more trains for the same price". It was kind of irrelevant whether the thing is buildable, certain, costed reasonably etc. To their restraint it's a reasonably plausible line with the cost advantages that come from elevated, but ultimately it's a $2.5M version of an alignment of something we'd come up with in the Transit Fantasy thread. Turns out we all are good enough to get to 5% design completion
This is starting to remind me of how the Province previously had a communication's goal as the whole point on some issues. All those "blue ribbon" panels of government-friendly experts that got together for a few million in consulting dollars, then announced their findings that just happen to agree with the government's existing positions, so now they can use it as a political communications talking point.
My bet is the sides are too far apart to resolve this - not just in what they want, but in what their objectives. I think the SE to Victoria Park is what we end up with, with some future project spinning up once the dust settles to take another run at the downtown connection years into the future.
As more info leaks out, their goal seems to have been to meet the communication's objective, not build an actual train line. Their objective was complete when they drafted their consultant report that says "more trains for the same price". It was kind of irrelevant whether the thing is buildable, certain, costed reasonably etc. To their restraint it's a reasonably plausible line with the cost advantages that come from elevated, but ultimately it's a $2.5M version of an alignment of something we'd come up with in the Transit Fantasy thread. Turns out we all are good enough to get to 5% design completion
This is starting to remind me of how the Province previously had a communication's goal as the whole point on some issues. All those "blue ribbon" panels of government-friendly experts that got together for a few million in consulting dollars, then announced their findings that just happen to agree with the government's existing positions, so now they can use it as a political communications talking point.
My bet is the sides are too far apart to resolve this - not just in what they want, but in what their objectives. I think the SE to Victoria Park is what we end up with, with some future project spinning up once the dust settles to take another run at the downtown connection years into the future.
lemongrab
Active Member
At this point I think you have to consider the provincial funding dead and do what you can to secure as much of the federal funding as you can and build anything productive.
Which means BRT, because it would be incredibly foolish to build an LRT entirely predicated on future extensions in this environment where you cannot trust your funding partner(s) - federal funding is probably about to become similarly precarious.
Give the Province one last set of conditions and a deadline for their funding. When they fail to meet, draw big black X over their logo on all of the GL signs in the city. At least they'll have a scapegoat for going back to busses (though I honestly believe it would offer better service than these stub line plans before even considering the lower cost).
NDP platform needs to offer a permanent fix for transit capital projects. This ad hoc approach is garbage.
Which means BRT, because it would be incredibly foolish to build an LRT entirely predicated on future extensions in this environment where you cannot trust your funding partner(s) - federal funding is probably about to become similarly precarious.
Give the Province one last set of conditions and a deadline for their funding. When they fail to meet, draw big black X over their logo on all of the GL signs in the city. At least they'll have a scapegoat for going back to busses (though I honestly believe it would offer better service than these stub line plans before even considering the lower cost).
NDP platform needs to offer a permanent fix for transit capital projects. This ad hoc approach is garbage.
Red Star
Active Member
The CAF Urbos 100's have been ordered and are arriving in 2027.
Shovels need to go into the ground in 2025 and this thing needs to be built from at least Shepard to 4th Street.
lemongrab
Active Member
...and then what?
Hope is not a plan, and I can't conceive any plan for the next steps that don't start with the word hope...
That's where I think this is headed and what the outcome will be. I'm not saying this is the proper way to do it, but I feel like this is the only thing that way it'll happen given the province's strings attached type funding.
With any luck the NDP gets elected while this leg is under construction and we can work something out for getting the downtown portion finished.
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
The missing money is because of AECOM's scope of work. It didn't need to account for what the city says it should.
I think, "it can't get worse", then it gets worse. I was really looking forward to at least a next step. We seem further from that now than ever.
From a Livewire article:
Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek said that the number one issue for Calgary city council is clarifying with the province who carries the financial risk for these such issues – as it pertains to the impact on potential landowners.
“We are not interested in carrying the legal risk on a project we didn’t even design,” Mayor Gondek said.
“So, we keep going back to them and saying, ‘if this was a province that had a provincial transit authority, you would be taking on the risk profile. You have not created that type of authority. You’re going to need to do it on this project. It is too big. It’s gone on for too long. It is too expensive. We cannot be the funder of last resort, as the municipality.”
The city's number one issue with the alignment is having to compensate landowners affected (I'm sure they're also worried about sunk cost in the tunnel alignment and contracts). The city are quite exposed and I'm sure the city's lawyers are sounding the alarms on many fronts. The province has said they are not taking on the risk, as I'm sure their lawyers advise against it.
The term 'pick your poison' have never been more apt...
Does the current contract include a downtown portion and if that is dead will the contractor need to be compensated? At least if 4th to Shepard is done you still leave the option open for not wasting the enabling works that have been done downtown.
There is a world where buses can fill in the gap between 4th Street SE and downtown. It actually gives the city an opportunity to implement a proper downtown bus circulation plan. In the next 6 months we should have a airport rail study and provincial rail study come out that should establish a crown corporation for rail projects. The crown corporation that is likely required to move this any other future rail project forward. The goal should be to talk about what can be done (4th to Shepard) and not worry so much about what can't be done (anything north or west of 4th Street SE).
Between 2025 and the opening of the line you can give yourself options to flesh out for next phases. The city is being too absolute in their thinking, plans can always change again. As they have many times since we thought this was a sure thing. Worrying about accepting full responsibility on a 5% plan is a little premature, although understood. Accept the plan and get it to 60%, that will take years. You already have the 60% tunnel plan. Once their both at the 60% design point, compare apples to apples and at that point you can always change the plan again and go back to the tunnel with new funding partners in the Federal Conservatives and Provincial NDP (can you imagine).
I think, "it can't get worse", then it gets worse. I was really looking forward to at least a next step. We seem further from that now than ever.
From a Livewire article:
Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek said that the number one issue for Calgary city council is clarifying with the province who carries the financial risk for these such issues – as it pertains to the impact on potential landowners.
“We are not interested in carrying the legal risk on a project we didn’t even design,” Mayor Gondek said.
“So, we keep going back to them and saying, ‘if this was a province that had a provincial transit authority, you would be taking on the risk profile. You have not created that type of authority. You’re going to need to do it on this project. It is too big. It’s gone on for too long. It is too expensive. We cannot be the funder of last resort, as the municipality.”
The city's number one issue with the alignment is having to compensate landowners affected (I'm sure they're also worried about sunk cost in the tunnel alignment and contracts). The city are quite exposed and I'm sure the city's lawyers are sounding the alarms on many fronts. The province has said they are not taking on the risk, as I'm sure their lawyers advise against it.
The term 'pick your poison' have never been more apt...
Does the current contract include a downtown portion and if that is dead will the contractor need to be compensated? At least if 4th to Shepard is done you still leave the option open for not wasting the enabling works that have been done downtown.
There is a world where buses can fill in the gap between 4th Street SE and downtown. It actually gives the city an opportunity to implement a proper downtown bus circulation plan. In the next 6 months we should have a airport rail study and provincial rail study come out that should establish a crown corporation for rail projects. The crown corporation that is likely required to move this any other future rail project forward. The goal should be to talk about what can be done (4th to Shepard) and not worry so much about what can't be done (anything north or west of 4th Street SE).
Between 2025 and the opening of the line you can give yourself options to flesh out for next phases. The city is being too absolute in their thinking, plans can always change again. As they have many times since we thought this was a sure thing. Worrying about accepting full responsibility on a 5% plan is a little premature, although understood. Accept the plan and get it to 60%, that will take years. You already have the 60% tunnel plan. Once their both at the 60% design point, compare apples to apples and at that point you can always change the plan again and go back to the tunnel with new funding partners in the Federal Conservatives and Provincial NDP (can you imagine).
O-tac
Active Member
I agree Shepard to 4th is the minimum that should happen. An ideal scenario would be the city approving the new alignment to get funding started, the UCP ends up with egg on their face, and Nenshi wins the next election and helps get the rest of DT and the north leg going.
haltcatchfire
Senior Member
It's always been completely obvious they're not interested in building the Green Line. This is about regional rail. Cities are just a dot on the provincial map to them.I am starting to think the province isn't particularly interested in building the Green line, at least not the downtown part.
As more info leaks out, their goal seems to have been to meet the communication's objective, not build an actual train line. Their objective was complete when they drafted their consultant report that says "more trains for the same price". It was kind of irrelevant whether the thing is buildable, certain, costed reasonably etc. To their restraint it's a reasonably plausible line with the cost advantages that come from elevated, but ultimately it's a $2.5M version of an alignment of something we'd come up with in the Transit Fantasy thread. Turns out we all are good enough to get to 5% design completion
This is starting to remind me of how the Province previously had a communication's goal as the whole point on some issues. All those "blue ribbon" panels of government-friendly experts that got together for a few million in consulting dollars, then announced their findings that just happen to agree with the government's existing positions, so now they can use it as a political communications talking point.
My bet is the sides are too far apart to resolve this - not just in what they want, but in what their objectives. I think the SE to Victoria Park is what we end up with, with some future project spinning up once the dust settles to take another run at the downtown connection years into the future.
darwink
Senior Member
So a lot of things going on.
First, council hates risk. If the lawyers say there is ANY chance something will happen, council treats that advice as the lawyers saying you have to account for that happening. Not a lets say 0.5% chance something would happen, if the courts overturned a precedent. The lawyers CANNOT categorically say something won't happen. So council gets to a place where all it sees are risk. For a project with near 50% contingencies already. So when a councillor asks 'can we be assured that OMERS won't sue us due to us putting an elevated track next to their office ' the lawyer can't say no. Until we see the fee tables next to eachother, we can't honestly say if this is $100 million of the difference, or $1 billion of the difference. Given council rejected elevated due to property value impacts in the past, if they asked admin to do a calculation of lets say, 5% of the value of adjacent properties, just as a guess, that could be a huge portion of the amount.
Otherwise I can't see why the city is talking about substantially higher risks. Elevated has way less risks of every other type than underground. It is possible that the city has so much tunnel vision that somehow they've convinced themselves that a tunnel is cheaper than elevated.
Second, unless these are released, I'm not convinced that 1) AECOM could screw up that much given they had months and 2) that the city didn't motivated reason their way into a box, to convince themselves they were right all along.
It is just highly improbable that the city is right in their assessment here.
First, council hates risk. If the lawyers say there is ANY chance something will happen, council treats that advice as the lawyers saying you have to account for that happening. Not a lets say 0.5% chance something would happen, if the courts overturned a precedent. The lawyers CANNOT categorically say something won't happen. So council gets to a place where all it sees are risk. For a project with near 50% contingencies already. So when a councillor asks 'can we be assured that OMERS won't sue us due to us putting an elevated track next to their office ' the lawyer can't say no. Until we see the fee tables next to eachother, we can't honestly say if this is $100 million of the difference, or $1 billion of the difference. Given council rejected elevated due to property value impacts in the past, if they asked admin to do a calculation of lets say, 5% of the value of adjacent properties, just as a guess, that could be a huge portion of the amount.
Otherwise I can't see why the city is talking about substantially higher risks. Elevated has way less risks of every other type than underground. It is possible that the city has so much tunnel vision that somehow they've convinced themselves that a tunnel is cheaper than elevated.
Second, unless these are released, I'm not convinced that 1) AECOM could screw up that much given they had months and 2) that the city didn't motivated reason their way into a box, to convince themselves they were right all along.
It is just highly improbable that the city is right in their assessment here.
haltcatchfire
Senior Member
These thing are going to sit in some storage yard for 15-20 years before there's track for them to roll on. Right next to the cases and cases of Turkish "tylenol'.
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
It isn't a screwup, it wasn't in their scope.
Council is putting themselves into a pretzel. If we had a competent mayor that could see through the noise this wouldn't be so complicated for them.
DiscoStu
Active Member
I'm onboard (toot toot) elevated trains for the totally selfish reason of getting some sweet views and photo opportunities out of them.
lemongrab
Active Member
Ooph. That would mean a three seat ride for the foreseeable future, and four seats if transferring to 7th! Fully agreed on the DT bus plan, but I think it would be incredibly foolish to build any kind of 'foundation' that is so heavily reliant on future expansion at this point.
We are on the cusp of a truly magnificent transit experiment: let's find out how good BRT can be when it has actually been designed like an LRT!