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When the first phase of the CTrain opened back in 1981, the modern LRT project represented a public consensus, however tenuous, about what type of city Calgary would be going into the 21st century. Over the course of the 1980s, the rest of the current system would open to public use, bringing suburban Calgarians to and from work, and crowds of visitors and tourists to the city's main attractions like the Saddledome, Stampede Grounds, and Calgary Zoo. Finished just in time for the 1988 Olympics, the CTrain, like many other public transit mega projects, was built in large part to put its host city on the map. Moving forward to today, when the proposed Green Line LRT project that could almost double the length of the current network is wending its way through City Hall, it is evident that the very same arguments and competing visions for the future of Calgary have once more reared their heads.
While funding at the municipal and federal levels has been in place for more than a year, City Council was considering a short-list of engineering solutions available to solve the complex issue of crossing The Bow River, allowing LRT travel north of the downtown core. The potentially more significant issue of the alignment and various surface and tunnel options that exist for the route's passage through the downtown Beltline district has been left for another day.
The options for crossing The Bow ranged from the much more expensive tunnel option, set at $2 billion, or 40% of the total costs for the entire $5 billion line, to the much cheaper $1.3 billion option of simply making use of the existing Centre Street Bridge, which was originally used by the Calgary Municipal Railway as a mixed-traffic streetcar route. While City Council voted to support the tunnel, the downtown portion may prove just as tricky to decide upon, with a multitude of options still on the table.
Viewed in the map and diagram below, the 40-kilometre Green Line LRT will nearly double the current length of the existing 59-kilometre CTrain LRT network, bringing an additional 25 stations to the network and increasing the current total of 45 stations to 70. A major expansion by any metric, the Green Line LRT will be transformative for Calgary. Not only will it broaden the suburban reach of the network into new currently underserved areas, but for the first time in more than 65 years, street rail service will be restored to the once well-served Beltline district, one of the densest metropolitan areas in downtown Calgary.
The chosen option for the line's downtown passage once it has cleared the river will have a distinct role in the way downtown continues to develop and grow for years to come. Each option involves an east-west alignment through the heart of the city, a few blocks south of the existing downtown LRT corridor, but there are mixed opinions on just where and how the downtown segment should proceed.
Downtown the line will run east-west between 2nd Street SW and 4th Street SE, with a total of five stations, through one of the densest corridors in the city. To be built either at grade or tunnelled underground, the LRT is set to travel along either 10th, 11th, or 12th Avenues. While for many an underground route is the preferred option, as it will not compete with traffic, streetcar and LRT enthusiasts have pointed out that from a user and local business standpoint, there is much to be gained from the experience of a surface route. Such arguments have been a tough sell in car-centric Calgary, however, and the Beltline Neighbourhoods Association has come out as a strong supporter of an underground option with service along 12th Avenue, which they feel would best serve their community.
Throughout all of the numerous Town Hall discussions and debates, the usual arguments over ridership, traffic impacts, construction costs, and disruption to local businesses, have all been made, with proponents and detractors falling into one of a few camps, typified in the most general of terms between urbanites and suburbanites, car owners and transit users, and so forth. However, over the din of competing voices, one sentiment remains clear, that the time has come for Calgary to start building more transit, to keep up with global trends, and to maintain its status as an attractive option amid a nation that is becoming more and more urban and metropolitan.
However Council decides to proceed through the core, the Green Line LRT's eventual arrival will be a boon to the city, a sign that Calgary is ready to build the infrastructure necessary for urban life in the 21st century.
SkyriseCalgary will be sure to return to this project as new developments continue to be come forward.
