[lemongrab]

My first thought yesterday was, is the city not overreacting a little bit? But then I though about it and I guess the Province did wake up from a nap and had a change of heart, and then did step on the City's toes by pulling funding and hiring the engineering firm they didn't hire overnight.

Second thought was, is there no pause button? Maybe there isn't.

What are the Green Line Board and other people working on the Green Line supposed to do until January. I mean, if you're the winning bidder what are you supposed to do sit around and wait for your competitor to tell you what to do?

I still don't have any idea what AECOM's scope of work is? A "new alignment" is so vague. C'mon MacVicar ask some follow ups or call the premier or minister's staff.

There was decent work done from Eau Claire to Shepard. Maybe AECOM is doing high level on Shepard to Seton and Grand Central Shitstorm to Downtown? It is not hard for the province to give us, the public, an idea of what is actually on the table here.

I'm really tired of the brainstorming of what could change leaking out throughout little individual briefings. Fuck off or tell us what you hired AECOM to do, through a non-competitive contract btw. Really all AECOM will be able to give them is napkin math so good luck to the province actually building anything for the price they give you.

I'm working through the council meeting and the answer on the 'pause' button didn't seem very well justified, but I think it'll be explained more later on.

I suspect the AECOM scope is something like 'figure out Elbow River to 7th Ave'. I think they mostly just want a link to their Grand Central Station.

I can imagine a crappy, but not totally insane plan that does this cheaply while retaining LF cars and connecting to the North. I'll try to draw it.

 

[EtoV]

What was the bidding/selection process for AECOM?
Or does Smith just have a friend there...

 

[trtcttc]

My first thought yesterday was, is the city not overreacting a little bit? But then I though about it and I guess the Province did wake up from a nap and had a change of heart, and then did step on the City's toes by pulling funding and hiring the engineering firm they didn't hire overnight.

Second thought was, is there no pause button? Maybe there isn't.

What are the Green Line Board and other people working on the Green Line supposed to do until January. I mean, if you're the winning bidder what are you supposed to do sit around and wait for your competitor to tell you what to do?

I still don't have any idea what AECOM's scope of work is? A "new alignment" is so vague. C'mon MacVicar ask some follow ups or call the premier or minister's staff.

There was decent work done from Eau Claire to Shepard. Maybe AECOM is doing high level on Shepard to Seton and Grand Central Shitstorm to Downtown? It is not hard for the province to give us, the public, an idea of what is actually on the table here.

I'm really tired of the brainstorming of what could change leaking out throughout little individual briefings. Fuck off or tell us what you hired AECOM to do, through a non-competitive contract btw. Really all AECOM will be able to give them is napkin math so good luck to the province actually building anything for the price they give you.

There's definitely a "pause" button but that will just add more costs that the city has to foot. And I think successive councils have just had it with the province. They paused for Kenney to do his review, and now paused again for the province to propose a new alignment at the 11th hour, when the plans have been public for YEARS. Instead of paying more for more uncertainty, I think council and many Calgarians are just done with throwing money at it only to be undercut by the province at the last minute. There's definitely some walkback by the province now that they realize the city is done with this and as unpopular as Gondek is, people will blame the province. As a right leaning person, this is just amateur governing and extremely disappointing.

Minister says no help coming for Calgary Green Line wind down

In a game of political brinksmanship, the Government of Alberta has said Calgary is on its own to cover wind-down costs for the now-dead Green Line project. The day after Calgary voted to begin the…

livewirecalgary.com

 

[ahuch]

There's definitely a "pause" button but that will just add more costs that the city has to foot. And I think successive councils have just had it with the province. They paused for Kenney to do his review, and now paused again for the province to propose a new alignment at the 11th hour, when the plans have been public for YEARS. Instead of paying more for more uncertainty, I think council and many Calgarians are just done with throwing money at it only to be undercut by the province at the last minute. There's definitely some walkback by the province now that they realize the city is done with this and as unpopular as Gondek is, people will blame the province. As a right leaning person, this is just amateur governing and extremely disappointing.

Minister says no help coming for Calgary Green Line wind down

In a game of political brinksmanship, the Government of Alberta has said Calgary is on its own to cover wind-down costs for the now-dead Green Line project. The day after Calgary voted to begin the…

livewirecalgary.com

In the presentation to council it was proposed as approximately a million dollars a day with zero certainty of anything. So it'd be burning another 50-100 million at a minimum.

 

[darwink]

I predicted Smith would do this from the start. So tired of being ruled by an impulsive, Dunning Krueger, Facebook meme believing dumbass. How can AECOM even provide a proper report in 2 months when it took YEARS to get to where we are now?

Curious how it will be presented if it doesn’t fully confirm Smith and Dreeshat’s belief that 7th ave can actually handle more traffic.

Use the existing reports as the basis for a new one. The alignment reports stretch from 2004 to today. Elevated is also super easy to cost compared to underground.

There were key findings along the way that narrowed the scope of options. It doesn't take much more than internalizing the concepts of transit geometry in Human Transport to exclude further interlining, or forcing transfers close but not close enough to your destination.

One of the benefits of making the green line faster was shifting current and future red line demand to the green line to push off the Red Line tunnel to 50 years from now. This is all public.

Think of this as a lit review, and then a brief consultants report.

 

[lemongrab]

Here's a bad drawing of a super cheap option. I don't like it. But if you really want to keep LF trains in the SE and connect them to the north someday once 8th Ave is built it keeps the option open (even though it's pretty stupid).

I meant to label the blue and burgundy as underpass.

There are better half-assed solutions, but this might be the cheapest of them all. I think I like it a little better than the Jim Gray elevated option to a similar spot. The one redeeming quality I see is that it keeps the 'do it right' option most open where you continue down the beltline and leave this underpass for a connector to serve the Grand Central Fantasy.

 

[outoftheice]

Good recap of how we got to where we are today although I feel it is being pretty generous to the UCP's actions over this last month. Also an interesting quote in there from a pre-UCP McIvor

How the Green Line went from foundational project to multibillion-dollar bust

Planning for Calgary's Green Line as we know it began in 2011 and came to an abrupt end this week when city council voted to stop work.

calgarysun.com

 

[O-tac]

Project update from the Greenline website:

Today, Calgary City Council formally approved the wind down of the Phase 1 project, from Lynnwood/Millican in the southeast to Eau Claire. After receiving project approval from Council in July, the withdrawal of financial support by the Alberta government earlier this month while they consider an alternate scope and alignment for a future LRT project to the southeast rendered this decision inevitable. This is because at this stage of the project, with 60% design completed and construction underway, the almost 1,000 staff, consultants and contractors, the current procurement, the more than 70 negotiated contracts and current construction are directly tied to the previously approved alignment.

Rooted in the assumption that a Green Line LRT will be built in the future, the project wind down will take place over the next few months and will focus on our people and four key principles – safety, cost and risk mitigation, value preservation and efficiency and effectiveness. The Green Line Board will oversee the wind down and ensure that all contractual obligations are fulfilled or transferred to the City by December 31, 2024.

Safety at our work sites and for the public remains the top priority through the wind down period.

Active construction in the Downtown will be completed this fall and work will continue on the 78 Avenue Project in the community of Ogden through to the end of November 2024, when it will be substantially complete. Outstanding work will be transferred to the City to conclude by July 2025. All other contractual obligations will be negotiated in the months ahead.

Construction details and ongoing notices will continue to be posted on our website.

With $1.3B spent since 2017, including $650M prior to project approval in 2021, terminating and winding down an active construction project of this scale is without prior transit precedent.

While a full assessment of risk is ongoing, the Green Line Board anticipates that total wind down costs, including forecasted direct expenditures and risk allowance will exceed $800M. The City’s investment in overdue transit infrastructure will now be directed to these costs.

For the past decade, Calgarians have been strong advocates of the Green Line LRT ensuring that decision makers understood the expectations and opportunities for communities along the alignment. You shaped this city-building project and by remaining as vocal champions your input will continue to guide future Green Line decisions and decision makers.

On behalf of the Green Line Board and entire project team, thank you for your years of support, advocacy and patience through construction. It has been our privilege to work on your behalf.

Project Update - September 17, 2024

www.calgary.ca

 

[lemongrab]

A big talking point out there is about how this has been 'studied to death'. Which is true to some extent, but I think most people misunderstand that the scope of these 'studies' has been only within the bounds of the 2017 alignment. Certainly true since July 2020 as this has been repeated by the Board Chair and now again by Bhatti:

From the Sep 17 Council meeting, in his opening remarks - Darshpreet Bhatti:

Again, I want to emphasize that everything we have done to date has been based on direction provided by council and there is a mandate that dictates what the board can and cannot do. So when questions are asked, did we look at an option? I would just like to answer that our mandate was to deliver phase 1 as approved by council and not to consider other alignments unless council chose to direct us

It's possible there was some thinking outside the box from 2017-2020, but probably nothing other than the 'steer' report and the 8 options it presented. None of which contemplated elevated through the core (but rather elevated terminating in the beltline and saving $500M compared to the selected option). Several other issues in that report surrounding OPEX, and I'd argue the disconnected NLRT options were made intentionally poor by terminating at-grade at 6th St (despite one of these options saving $1.1M compared to selected).

 

[kora]

I know the UCP want to win political votes by serving communities deep in SE Calgary, but it's an unnecessary political move. These are safe UCP ridings. They would do better to build a Centre Street north LRT, where the battleground seats are.

 

[Tothewest]

I know the UCP want to win political votes by serving communities deep in SE Calgary, but it's an unnecessary political move. These are safe UCP ridings. They would do better to build a Centre Street north LRT, where the battleground seats are.

Or they determined, like many many other Calgarians...we need a Green Line, but not 9km for $6B. It likely isn't as political as some are making it out to be

 

[trtcttc]

Or they determined, like many many other Calgarians...we need a Green Line, but not 9km for $6B. It likely isn't as political as some are making it out to be

I think even people in support of the project recognize its problems, and know the council's process on this project was poor. But the time to ask for reviews of elevated alignment was 2020/2021. It's the same party in power no less. As a government, you can't reset every decision made by previous administrations, even if you don't agree.

 

[accord1999]

I know the UCP want to win political votes by serving communities deep in SE Calgary, but it's an unnecessary political move. These are safe UCP ridings. They would do better to build a Centre Street north LRT, where the battleground seats are.

The lack of planning or past spending makes it very hard to switch to this direction, no matter how much it makes more sense based on ridership.

I think even people in support of the project recognize its problems, and know the council's process on this project was poor. But the time to ask for reviews of elevated alignment was 2020/2021. It's the same party in power no less. As a government, you can't reset every decision made by previous administrations, even if you don't agree.

Given the animosity in 2019-2021, I'd expect that Alberta warned Calgary that it would support it but it wouldn't tolerate any more reduction in scope and/or increase in costs. Calgary decided to gamble that it could pull off the tunnel, instead of taking the safer choice and a cheaper DT alignment and is now paying the price for it.

 

[O-tac]

Or they determined, like many many other Calgarians...we need a Green Line, but not 9km for $6B. It likely isn't as political as some are making it out to be

Dreeshen labelled it the ‘Neshi Nightmare’ and pretended it was all due to his mismanagement. The Gray group of ‘concerned citizens’, including that dipshit who syphoned off however many $100K from the War Room chest to never find any proof of the evil anti oil conspiracy that was being pushed at the time, have been pushing the nosecreek alignment for years. They are UCP connected. The UCP delayed the project by 2 years causing the cost escalation. Now they’re blaming the city for that.

I also believe, though this is speculation, that Danielle Smith has fantastical visions of being some kind of “legacy” Premier who will finally bring rail to Banff and to the airport. Hence her “grand central station” and rural train ‘plans’ (really just crayon drawings on the back of napkins during meetings with coal companies). Also the Flames arena. But deep down I think there is an irrational, ideological, opposition to ‘green’ projects. Not saying the ‘green’line triggered her, but urban transit is certainly not on her priority list. In fact she’s seemed opposed to it from the start. Unless it’s the Danielle Smith designed line she thinks it’s a waste of money.

 

[O-tac]

In the end my best hopes at this time are that the province and the city come to an agreement to build it from Seton to the arena and avoid connecting to 7th. Then hopefully our next Premier Nenshi will help fund the proper alignment to Eau Claire and then north. That would require some compromise from both parties. The city needs to be open to this possibility as it would be better than throwing the $2 Billion already spent right into the trash.