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

Go Elevated or try for Underground?

  • Work with the province and go with the Elevated option

    Votes: 27 75.0%

  • Try another approach and go for Underground option

    Votes: 6 16.7%

  • Cancel it altogether

    Votes: 1 2.8%

  • Go with a BRT solution

    Votes: 2 5.6%
  • Total voters
    36
I think there is way to much importance being put in the Federal funding expiring in March. yes, the current funding and the fund that it came from ends. But if we need to we could wait and reapply for a new funding agreement to get the LRT line correct. It may delay things another year. But there is no way the feds turn down funding a portion of new transit in Canada's 4th largest City when most other transit projects across the country the feds have contributed 20-30%.
 
If you wait, you will need to wait until the next provincial election and hope for a change (talk about high risk). I cannot see the UCP admitting they were wrong and funding anything other than what they have provided. And if the city says no, we will wait, I am not sure once the Rail Crown Corportation is setup, they don't just take over all rail and do it anyway. I think the city is stuck here, and I hope they choose the option that serves the most Calgarians for the least cost. Let the holiday's pass and then announce an alignment in Jan.
 
Here is hoping the City and Province, who at this point have both planted their flags in the ground, get back together and meet in the middle. The answer is elevated but I do think there needs to be some flexibility from the Province on the specifics of what the city adopts.

darwink said:
This was already tried by adding the green line board, but it was empowered with too little decision making authority to actually right the project. It wasn’t even empowered to give advice to try to fix the project the way that made the most sense, which in the end caused the province to reject the proposal (after accepting it, which was a giant error on the province’s part).
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Adopt the framework of the study, create a body, with your bid-winning partner and empower it to build the best and cheapest option with the least risk. (Surface on 11th to elevated on 2nd and staggered platform stations downtown to make then less wide.)

Enough of council getting in the way. The way this is gone they're all out next fall.

The mayoral candidate Thiessen is saying the city should just sue the province, if we get to March and nothing is agreed to and the project is actually scraped then that's when you sue. It can be the first thing he does if he becomes Mayor.
 
Nawads said:
I think there is way to much importance being put in the Federal funding expiring in March. yes, the current funding and the fund that it came from ends. But if we need to we could wait and reapply for a new funding agreement to get the LRT line correct. It may delay things another year. But there is no way the feds turn down funding a portion of new transit in Canada's 4th largest City when most other transit projects across the country the feds have contributed 20-30%.
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This isn’t about whether the city can apply later and get money for the same purpose but in a different time period—on that I agree with you. It is, the program that ran from 2015-2027 will be over, and the money from that program will be inaccessible. That money just doesn’t sit in a bank account being slowly drawn down, eventually it lapses and spending authority that still exists at that time ceases to exist. Delaying means Calgary wasted an entire funding cycle while still spending its 1/3rd match.
 
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Beltline_B said:
I haven’t followed the project as much as others, but I thought the UCP wanted it to run from Seton to the envisioned grand central station.
You’ve followed this a lot closer than I have, based on what you’ve seen or heard, do you feel confident the city and province will work this out before March?
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The UCP usually accompanied that pronouncement with ‘and connecting with the red and blue lines’.

I think in the case of the AECOM report the province was legitimately surprised that elevated to around city hall was such a bad idea when their friends had said it was a good idea for years. Plus the incremental cost for some guideway and an extra elevated station isn’t very high but the system is so much better. It lays if there was a temptation to end at 4th, how much doing so undermines ridership and travel time savings.

I am confident that the city and province will reconcile. That the city’s position on evaluation will end up far more conciliatory, after they realize 90% of the $1.3 billion in extra costs they asserted exist don’t really.
 
badc0ffee said:
Has this ever happened in other projects?

The reason the tunnel is risky is that we don't actually know with 100% certainty what the geology of the route is. See some of the posts here in the last week - the layers in this part of the Bow valley are so varied that doing boreholes and taking samples won't really give you a clear picture.

The reason the elevated line is risky is that landowners may sue, and property values may tank. But there is a cap to how much effect that would have, especially in a downtown that is still 25% vacant.
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All good points… but consider that the corridor at play here (the 2nd street alignment) doesn’t have a 25% vacancy rate. There are multiple fairly prized properties along or near that stretch.

The high vacancy issue is still primarily concentrated west of 5th street sw.
 
darwink said:
The UCP usually accompanied that pronouncement with ‘and connecting with the red and blue lines’.

I think in the case of the AECOM report the province was legitimately surprised that elevated to around city hall was such a bad idea when their friends had said it was a good idea for years. Plus the incremental cost for some guideway and an extra elevated station isn’t very high but the system is so much better. It lays if there was a temptation to end at 4th, how much doing so undermines ridership and travel time savings.

I am confident that the city and province will reconcile. That the city’s position on evaluation will end up far more conciliatory, after they realize 90% of the $1.3 billion in extra costs they asserted exist don’t really.
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at least 1/4 of that 1.3 billion figure is probably getting to Eau Claire like the tunnel would have for a better comparison of the two options, not ending at 7th ave like the UCP is proposing now.
 
Nawads said:
at least 1/4 of that 1.3 billion figure is probably getting to Eau Claire like the tunnel would have for a better comparison of the two options, not ending at 7th ave like the UCP is proposing now.
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Which is neither here nor there. The big concern about that is the city using its evaluating framework for path dependencies for underground on an elevated line. Ending at 7th underground creates huge future costs if an expansion was ever wanted. Ending at 7th above ground does not. It is just a boat load easier building stuff above ground.
 
darwink said:
Ending at 7th above ground does not.
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It actually creates opportunity: Eau Claire can be developed without relying on leaving room for the Green Line.

The province says south extensions only but they can go back on that. The next section, can be 7th Southwest to 16th North and you can get there however you want (surface or elevated, maybe even under Centre Street north of the river).
 
Smith just proved she’s been proposing this in bad faith the whole time throwing out that $20 billion dollar full line estimate. And Dreeshat is just as terrible once again threatening council and making it sound like the province truly has no interest in funding this. Also blaming Nenshi again as parroted by his propagandist Rick Bell.

I like that there’s a guy running for mayor who wants to sue the province over the Greenline antics. He’s running under the Calgary Party too! A fantastic, non partisan sounding municipal party that could be centrist and not beholden to the UCP. Let them try to enforce municipal parties all they want. Smith can get bent!
 
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O-tac said:
I like that there’s a guy running for mayor who wants to sue the province over the Greenline antics. He’s running under the Calgary Party too! A fantastic, non partisan sounding municipal party that could be centrist and not beholden to the UCP. Let them try to enforce municipal parties all they want. Smith can get bent!
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As a lawyer he should be embarrassed to propose that.
 
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