[Silence&Motion]

Roads and transit are both important transport infrastructure but transit should not try to compare with roads, because roads carry more passenger-trips as well as freight and scales well from low usage to high. Expensive rail transit should try to justify their existence based on their own benefits.

I agree that we shouldn't pit road and transit investments against each other, in part because lack of transit investment will ultimately create negative impacts on roads as well. With the collapse of the Green Line, Calgary's existing road network will have to absorb the bulk of increased car and bus traffic as the city's population grows. And with no way to meaningfully increase the capacity of the road network within the interior of the city, congestion will continue to get worse and worse.

We are following the same path that Toronto took in becoming one of the worst cities in North America for commute times. Toronto basically stopped building mass transit in the 1980s, in part because Conservative governments repeatedly cancelled transit expansion plans whenever they got into power (Harris literally filling in the tunnel that was dug for the Eglinton Subway in the 1990s, Rob Ford attempting to cancel every LRT project in the 2010s). Since 1980, while the Toronto CMA more than doubled in size from 3 million to 6.2 million, the city only increased its number of subway stations by 17%. It's road network was essentially unchanged. The result is that having to travel long distances in Toronto is miserable. The Ontario government is now desparately trying to dig itself out of the hole, but it will take generations to get that done.

Here in Calgary, our last new LRT station was built in 2014. We are about to pass the record for the longest stretch between expansions (previously set between 1990 and 2001). We are almost certainly looking at 20 years at least with no transit expansion. What are the Crowchild, Glenmore, and Deerfoot going to look like by 2035 when there's more than 2 million people living in the CMA? What's it going to feel like stepping onto the Ctrain in rush hour?

 

[outoftheice]

Very well said. If you hate driving in the GTA you're going to hate the Calgary of 2035 and we will be able to trace the reason why back to today's decision by the UCP.

 

[lemongrab]

They manifested their BS warnings into reality. The City did listen to them 6 years ago... back when Gray was engaging in good faith. His group's top ask was an independent board of experts to deliver the project because they were convinced those experts would agree with them about dropping the tunnel and building their SE LRT dream.

So the City created an independent Green Line Board and hired top project experts to take project management out of the hands of the politicians. Suprise, surprise, those project experts confirmed the City was on the right track with staging and risk management and the Gray group was out to lunch.

From that point on the Gray group was no longer engaging in good faith and instead set out to create so much fear and uncertainty that the market would walk away from the project or the politicians would. They finally found a premier willing to ignore years of reviews and studies from actual experts and instead listen to 9 retired guys with large chequebooks and a few napkin sketches and we find ourselves where we are today.

I don't think this is really true. The GL Board's mandate was actually pretty narrow: to deliver the project as already planned. A plan arrived at through much acrimony, and amidst the darkest days of COVID:


2017 - Shepherd to 16th

Nov 2019 - this article is really worth a read as it gives a great sense of what a shit show things were at this time https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/city-council-green-line-lrt-1.5361978 . Lots of different people proposing lots of different ideas...it seems evident that everyone is aware of major feasibility issues

June 1 2020 - https://globalnews.ca/news/7010503/... includes a,ground level and four underground).

However, in late January (2020), a special committee formed by Ward 6 Coun. Jeff Davison reworked the alignment of a section of the Green Line from Centre Street and 16 Avenue North south to the Elbow River in the Beltline in order to bring the project’s cost estimates within budget and manage construction risk.

The updated alignment includes a street-level track on Centre Street North with a bridge over the Bow River and a 2.5-kilometre tunnel in the downtown core and Beltline. There would with six stations in total (two at ground level and four underground).

June 18, 2020 - And then after two weeks of more infighting, everyone through up their hands and agreed it was good enough https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/city-council-green-line-lrt-1.5616976

July 2020 - Green Line Board bylaw passed (but I think it still took a bunch of time to hire the chair and other members?)


So in the span of 6-8 months - 3 of which were the first 3 months of COVID - things went from total dysfunction to scrapping the tunnel north of the river and running at grade. Everyone clapped the chalk off their hands and said: hey GLB, your mandate is to build this plan (and only this plan)!

Since then we've only seen the GLB chop segments off, with no real fundamental changes. Perhaps that means they fully agree with the plan they were given, but if you listened to the Board Chair at last month's council meeting, he was quite careful to explain that they limited their considerations to their mandate.

 

[darwink]

he was quite careful to explain that they limited their considerations to their mandate.

Yeah. Council should have (or the Mayor exhorted in private once the difficulties became more clear), that the board should consider drastic changes to deliver on the mobility objectives of the green line program.

 

[Alex_YYC]

What a clusterfuck this whole thing has been, with plenty of blame to go around.

The question now is do we do a redesign from the stampede grounds through downtown which would most likely be an elevated option?
Or, do we hang in there and wait a couple of years until the UCP is booted out of office and try this again?

I was originally against the elevated option, but now I’m thinking this is the most logical way to get this done the green line from Victoria Park South can stay the same. All we would do is change the downtown section to elevated and take another run at it.

 

[thecivilengineer]

Wait until next election and next...!!! Everyone to blame, starting from previous mayor. and idk with UCPs plan of merging line on 7th ave and grand station?

 

[badc0ffee]

I don't think making the SE green line a branch off 7 Ave is completely insane. It could cross under the CP tracks near 5 St SE.

Any track capacity issues on 7 Ave would have to be solved by building the 8 Ave tunnel for the red line, making 7 Ave blue/green SE only. But at least 8 Ave is a comparatively shallow tunnel.

This would leave the new low-floor train cars for use on the north-central line, which would be completely separate and not connected to the SE green line.

 

[darwink]

I don't think making the SE green line a branch off 7 Ave is completely insane. It could cross under the CP tracks near 5 St SE.

Any track capacity issues on 7 Ave would have to be solved by building the 8 Ave tunnel for the red line, making 7 Ave blue/green SE only. But at least 8 Ave is a comparatively shallow tunnel.

This would leave the new low-floor train cars for use on the north-central line, which would be completely separate and not connected to the SE green line.

This was studied and rejected for the reasons you cite.

 

[badc0ffee]

What reasons not to build it did I cite? That it would require the red line tunnel down the road, or that it would be disconnected from the north line, or that the low-floor vehicles would only be usable for the north? None of these are dealbreakers in my view, especially now that we know the alternative.

 

[thecivilengineer]

So total wastage of time and money. This is priority project, they should do anything to make it happen without delaying and learning from past LRT projects.

 

[lemongrab]

Yeah. Council should have (or the Mayor exhorted in private once the difficulties became more clear), that the board should consider drastic changes to deliver on the mobility objectives of the green line program.

I suppose we have to remember that with most of these council meetings - and particularly the one last month - is that they spend 4-6 hours going everything in private and then the public session is largely a performative rehash of the key points.

I would hope the idea of more drastic changes was at least discussed in-camera, though I suspect that answer was 'we could but it would take a long time'. I think sunk-time fallacy has been the bigger issue throughout this than sunk costs...most of the work done to date will be useful eventually, even if it has to sit on a shelf for a decade or two. It seems everyone was more afraid of delays than of a boondoggle. This is one of the biggest reasons I've always favoured the SEBRT - make some tangible progress that gives you cover to figure everything else out

 

[accord1999]

Here in Calgary, our last new LRT station was built in 2014. We are about to pass the record for the longest stretch between expansions (previously set between 1990 and 2001). We are almost certainly looking at 20 years at least with no transit expansion. What are the Crowchild, Glenmore, and Deerfoot going to look like by 2035 when there's more than 2 million people living in the CMA? What's it going to feel like stepping onto the Ctrain in rush hour?

I guess that's the unfortunate consequence of the Green Line taking up all the attention and money for the last decade and an unwillingness for Council to put a limit on just how expensive it could get. And even if Stage 1 is built, you still need billions of dollars to get it useful and where it would be fighting for money with other extensions and projects in the 2030s.

 

[trtcttc]

With how expensive transit costs now, they have to be provincially led going forward. There's just not enough fiscal room in municipal budgets to fund these things. Toronto tried building transit extensions and new lines. John Tory ran for mayor on a Smart Track platform. Nothing went anywhere until the PC came in and threw their weight behind the Ontario Line and other extensions. Many of the same things said about the UCP was said when Doug Ford became Premier, that it's all a farce to line the pockets of consultants, but Ontario Line is under construction. Our only hope is that the UCP is serious about their Grand Central vision.

 

[badc0ffee]

Doug Ford was not without his pet projects.

Calgary-ish Scarborough needed to replace line 3 (which used SkyTrain technology). The plan was to replace it with not just a single line, but a full light rail network. This was scrapped by Ford in favour of a subway extension because light rail was a "war on cars". The problem is the subway extension set everything back and is taking so long that line 3 was shut down before the replacement was ready. And Toronto is probably going to build most of the light rail network anyway, but as a disconnected mess, rather than smooth transfers to the subway, and through-running to the Eglinton Line, at Kennedy Station.

But I agree with you that the previous two provincial governments, and a long line of mayors, were mostly unable to stick to a plan long enough to build anything at a large scale. I think the only exception is some streetcar extensions, and the line 1 extension into Vaughan.

 

[CalgaryTiger]

they have to be provincially led going forward.

I'd agree that this is the end of Alberta municipalities building LRT. Hopefully the likely to be created more centralized 'Rail Alberta' properly integrates whatever they build into the existing lines. I wonder if CT will continue to operate the LRTs or if they'll be absorbed into Rail Alberta. the problem is we'll have to wait until Spring for even a glance at a very high-level plan. We'll see a hint at what the airport rail options are this fall but that will just be a list of options that the report in the Spring should narrow down.

The money spent on what has been done physically (moving utilities, land prep, etc) will be utilized at some point. What's completely lost is the time and money spent on what is essentially nothing we couldn't do on this forum: Debate and look into what can be done and where for SE and NC LRT line.

I hope Rail Alberta is independent and well funded. Danielle loves independence because it can be blamed when things go bad and she will wear none of the responsibility. The opportunity to create another boogey man will be too tempting to avoid.