The versions before 2020 had the 4 St station above-ground. Perhaps after changing Eau Claire to 16th from a tunnel to bridge+at-grade, they now had a "surplus" itching in their pockets that they had to immediately spend. With the Green Line now being unfunded by at least $8B, there's...

Yeah, I don't think there were any officially enumerated list of objectives and how important they were. You only had business case documents (https://www.calgary.ca/content/dam/www/green-line/documents/GL-Business-Case-2016.pdf) and presentations listing the general benefits and the need...

The Green Line has a segment that's pretty desolate though and should be a lot of cheaper. Anybody want to guess at how the split is now between the expensive DT and east of 4 Street? Stage 1 is now $5.8B (not including financing charge) so the 2.4 km DT might be around $3.5B? In 2019 this was...

Looking at the Google maps of Highfield, it's a pretty small plot and probably can't maintain and store much more than the dozen or so cars they only need for the new Stage 1.

But that's for over 3 million passenger-trips a day, enabling travel to all parts of the city and even beyond. Green Line Stage 1 will be lucky to get the claimed 32K trips/day and will have little to no benefit to 95% of the population.

During the height of the public bickering, the Green Line still only claimed that each month of delay added $1.5M to the capital costs, not the $100+M we have seen. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/green-line-lrt-construction-delayed-1.5971815

They also said the same things back in 2017; but no new funding from Alberta or Canada has been given and the core continues to shrink. In 2015, the "core" was Beddington-Shepard, then 16th Avenue-Shepard. https://dailyhive.com/calgary/green-line-lrt-new-route-2017

The closest North American project in terms of cost and cost increases I can think of is Honolulu's Skyline which also started at around $4B and continually escalated to around $12B for the full 20-mile elevated line (and is not fully funded). But at least Honolulu can claim being isolated and...

If they're boring the tunnel, there might not be any better/cheaper place to exit. I assume they're having long discussion/begging CPKC for their land.

The UCP isn't the only reason for the delays as other things that were happening from 2019-2021 (not even counting COVID). In June 2019, the DT tunnel had to be scaled back and the new plan was only approved by Council in June 2020. The Green Line board was also being setup to take over...

Why can't it be a spectrum of reasons, including thinking that the ROI of the Green Line no longer justifies the investment. One can strongly support a Green Line that's <$5B and stretches from Panorama Hills to Seton, then grudgingly approve something that goes from 16th Avenue to Shepard to...

I assume what they meant was $8B for 16th Avenue to Shepard with the available funding now only enough to go from Eau Claire to Ogden. The 2015 report mentioned that they looked at a few other sites in the SE, with a focus on CP lands in Ogden. It was probably rejected at the time because it...

It's funny how your back-of-the-napkin calculation yields a number that's probably not too far off from the correct figure. Yeah the experience from the West LRT and even Edmonton's Valley Line SE should have given them pause about being able to do it for <$5B. And while we'll probably never...

But IMO that blame lies directly on the Green Line and City because of their initial optimistic promises and their poor management of expectations over time. With full funding of $4.6B the Green Line was supposed to be constructed essentially in one stage and even when troubles mounted they were...

There will be more money, but will there be political will to direct most (and possibly all of it) again back to the Green Line in 2032, 2033 when nearly an entire generation of attention and transit funding (and bad news consuming political capital) has already been spent on it? I'd expect the...

It sounds like July 30 is the day of reckoning now:

The SE has low service/capita and is the rationale for the Green Line to the SE, but is that under-served relative to demand, or are SE residents simply less interested in using transit? The immediate need argument comes from early Green Line related documents. The 2016 Green Line Business...

But does the full Green Line, from Panorma Hills to Seton even justify $10B (which is already the likely pricetag) in spending for maybe 100K-140K ridership/day? Or is it even justified to spend over $5B on initial portions of the Green Line that deliberately ignores the area of the most...

Not sure there is, may be other than to get East Asian companies to build them. Almost every recent major LRT project in North America (from Honolulu to Calgary to Ottawa to Austin) has gone over-budget and delayed, sometimes just a year after they were approved. The best thing we can do is to...

You're not inspired by their distinctive flowing forms based on a chinook cloud arch?