Best direction for the Green line at this point?

  • Go ahead with the current option of Eau Claire to Lynbrook and phase in extensions.

    Votes: 42 60.0%

  • Re-design the whole system

    Votes: 22 31.4%

  • Cancel it altogether

    Votes: 6 8.6%
  • Total voters
    70
FCC1982 said:
I heard Jim Grey spouting off about this on the radio today - so frustrating. Doesn’t want any tunnelling, even under the CPR tracks.
As was mentioned, everyone has a right to their opinion, but why is this idiotic idea getting media attention ?
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it’s like an anti-tunnel obsession - or he has shares in a company that can’t qualify for tunnel subcontracts to the consortium.

What would be more interesting is if this group attacked the elephant in the room around transit project cost escalation overall in Canada - the problem isn’t that it’s too expensive and therefore we should built lower quality transit to fit the budget, it’s that the necessary quality of transit a major city needs can’t seem to be built quickly, affordability and repeatedly in most Canadian cities.

Lowering the quality of the Green Line as this group proposes does not create greater value. Figuring out how to improve the green line (and all transit for that matter) so it’s faster, more competitive, and more resilient is where the energy should be placed.

For example, This group should come out hard to lobby to upzone the entire SE to mid rise densities and reject all car infrastructure investments along the corridor if they are concerned about ridership, the business case for transit, and tax payer risks.
 
I don’t really understand why people bother opposing the project. Do they have other priorities they want to spend the funds on? They also argue it’s a train to nowhere, but that’s part of the purpose of the project, that ”no where” can get TOD without constant opposition from homeowners and become somewhere.
 
My opinion, is just spend the money and do this properly. It's a one time cost, and once it's done there won't be need for a new line any time soon. Most most areas of the city covered by rail transit and the city can start start leveraging the 3 lines by buildings TODs around them.
 
trtcttc said:
I don’t really understand why people bother opposing the project. Do they have other priorities they want to spend the funds on? They also argue it’s a train to nowhere, but that’s part of the purpose of the project, that ”no where” can get TOD without constant opposition from homeowners and become somewhere.
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When a project has gone so over-budget and delayed, people will have different ideas on what it should look like and what the best usage of that money to obtain the greatest transit benefit (ridership). The Green Line's problem isn't a lack of TOD, it's that it can't reach the ridership heavy communities that it was supposed to.

Surrealplaces said:
My opinion, is just spend the money and do this properly. It's a one time cost, and once it's done there won't be need for a new line any time soon. Most most areas of the city covered by rail transit and the city can start start leveraging the 3 lines by buildings TODs around them.
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But to do it properly will cost $10B or more at this point (Panorama Hills to Seton), which is probably all of the transit infrastructure money for the next 30 years and will have to compete with all the other projects discussed in RouteAhead..

And they've already cut corners, there are few people who would argue that the new alignment from Eau Claire to 16th Avenue is anything but terrible. And if the consortium comes back next year and says they can't cross the Bow with just $5.5B, it's probably not a stretch to wonder if they should even bother going to Eau Claire at all.,
 
accord1999 said:
When a project has gone so over-budget and delayed, people will have different ideas on what it should look like and what the best usage of that money to obtain the greatest transit benefit (ridership). The Green Line's problem isn't a lack of TOD, it's that it can't reach the ridership heavy communities that it was supposed to.


But to do it properly will cost $10B or more at this point (Panorama Hills to Seton), which is probably all of the transit infrastructure money for the next 30 years and will have to compete with all the other projects discussed in RouteAhead..

And they've already cut corners, there are few people who would argue that the new alignment from Eau Claire to 16th Avenue is anything but terrible. And if the consortium comes back next year and says they can't cross the Bow with just $5.5B, it's probably not a stretch to wonder if they should even bother going to Eau Claire at all.,
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It doesn’t save any money to not go to eau claire. I’d be fine with only roughing in the station though, even if it only saved $10 million bucks to end this conversation.
 
does anyone know why it costs so much to do surface transit in Canada? Like extending the line north to Panorama hills and south to Seton.
I’ve read some of the studies by the Transit Cost project at NYU but their studies are mostly in the US, and it comes down to overbuilt stations, too much back of house space, and tunnelling vs cut and cover. These problems don’t really apply to our situation.
The surface stations with low floor LRVs don’t even need station boxes, what is the money going to?
 
accord1999 said:
But to do it properly will cost $10B or more at this point (Panorama Hills to Seton), which is probably all of the transit infrastructure money for the next 30 years and will have to compete with all the other projects discussed in RouteAhead..

And they've already cut corners, there are few people who would argue that the new alignment from Eau Claire to 16th Avenue is anything but terrible. And if the consortium comes back next year and says they can't cross the Bow with just $5.5B, it's probably not a stretch to wonder if they should even bother going to Eau Claire at all.,
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I don't believe it would have to go to Panorama to be considered done properly, at least not off the beginning.I'd be happy with it going to Beddington and Panorama as an added extension. This particular line is also funded by the feds and the province, whereas other RouteAhead initiatives aren't, so I'd like to see the city take advantage now and be done with it. The city is only going to get bigger, and we'll have to pay for transit in some way or another. Is the Green Line the most efficient way? It's debatable of course, but once it's built it would be easier for the city to leverage down the road. I look at the Red line and imagine how Calgary would be today if the city didn't it back when they did. It's taken a long time, but we're finally starting to reap some rewards from it.
 
badc0ffee said:
IIRC the SW portion of the ring road (16th Ave to Macleod) also cost $10 billion. But you don't hear anyone griping about that.
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The portion of the ring road you are referring to was two separate projects. The SW Calgary Ring Road (Glenmore Trail to Macleod essentially) was $1.42 billion:

The West Calgary Ring Road (16th Ave to Highway 8, and the twinning of the Bow River Bridge) cost $1.2 Billion:

West Calgary Ring Road

The West Calgary Ring Road, between Highway 8 and the Trans-Canada Highway, is the final 9 km of the Calgary Ring Road. Most of the road will be built on the existing Transportation Utility Corridor owned by the Government of Alberta. Full details can be seen here...
majorprojects.alberta.ca majorprojects.alberta.ca

So total cost is roughly $2.62 billion dollars. All provincial tax dollars too I think (I am not certain, but I don't think there is any federal or civic money that went into it). And the infrastructure is in the TUC, meaning it will be a provincial maintenance obligation as well.
 
trtcttc said:
does anyone know why it costs so much to do surface transit in Canada? Like extending the line north to Panorama hills and south to Seton.
I’ve read some of the studies by the Transit Cost project at NYU but their studies are mostly in the US, and it comes down to overbuilt stations, too much back of house space, and tunnelling vs cut and cover. These problems don’t really apply to our situation.
The surface stations with low floor LRVs don’t even need station boxes, what is the money going to?
Click to expand...
Utility relocation, adding a whole bunch of non-transit associated projects (street scaping) and building to very high standard (avoiding soil movement at a level higher than we would do for roads).
 
trtcttc said:
does anyone know why it costs so much to do surface transit in Canada? Like extending the line north to Panorama hills and south to Seton.
I’ve read some of the studies by the Transit Cost project at NYU but their studies are mostly in the US, and it comes down to overbuilt stations, too much back of house space, and tunnelling vs cut and cover. These problems don’t really apply to our situation.
The surface stations with low floor LRVs don’t even need station boxes, what is the money going to?
Click to expand...
darwink said:
Utility relocation, adding a whole bunch of non-transit associated projects (street scaping) and building to very high standard (avoiding soil movement at a level higher than we would do for roads).
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I'd add a few others.

  1. Risk sharing and benefit sharing:
    • Often the contracting processes Canadian cities use either means the public takes on too little risk (therefore the consortium increases risk premium), and/or the public receives too little of the benefit (public pays for the train, surrounding landowners benefit from the additional accessibility that is granted by the investment). This can make projects seem expensive (to the public), while still producing significant value (to everyone else) - pure cost is one thing, value creation and capture is the other.
    • Highway investments are mostly immune to this cost/value test that transit struggles with - it's largely just assumed that building giant highways creates value for someone somewhere, hence why there's so little push-back or issues with billions into highways.
    • All this is very complex stuff and there's a million different ways to fund, procure, phase and stage a project - all with pros and cons for cost and value. The complexity and politics involved are often why cities get it wrong.
  2. Political interference and outdated institutional preferences
    • Waste time and effort on different alignments that end up not being ideal, biases towards certain technologies (low-floor, subway only ,automated v. driver etc.), anti-transit politics throwing wrenches at every step, NIMBY activism, study fatigue slowing things down at every step at every level, every delay adds inflation costs to the project etc.
  3. Pork-barreling with car infrastructure
    • Transit alignments are (obviously) fairly land efficient as that's one of the whole point - transit is the only credible way to move significant volumes of people efficiently and reliable in an urban setting over long distances.
    • However while you are there building the big project, might as well tag on that interchange we always wanted to build. Or widen the intersection because the traffic department has a few things to clean up on their list, or add a bunch of park-and-rides because you didn't bother to figure out how to activate and value-create the lands you are benefitting due to all the runaround in the politics, design and procurement phases.
    • Ironically, this is why transit projects sometime fail to create the value they are trying to - the transit itself is fine, but they choose alignments that benefit car infrastructure and surround themselves with anti-transit land uses.
  4. No standards, everything is customized. Every project is infrequent so has to be stood up fresh each time a mega-project comes along:
    • Every Canadian cities has different trains, mostly different technologies, different station designs, different funding arrangements. No one can share actual knowledge and design capacity because everyone is "special". This raises costs everywhere, for arguably little benefit
    • Projects are so big they don't happen often, so all the expertise that is used to figure out how to build a transit mega-project is disbanded each time you finish a project. Very little opportunity to learn and immediately apply improvements to the next project.
 
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