[Joborule]

I don't see how this could be true for any part of 2 St, except for the 1.5 blocks south of 9 Ave? And I guess the northernmost part of it at Eau Claire.

That said, I am cool with elevated tracks along 2 St. I just don't see what you mean by "dead zone".

Apologies, not the best use of words. I mean in regards of CRU's, there isn't anything being lost by the impacts of a elevated line. It doesn't have the urban realm potential like 1 Street SW or what they would like 3 Street SW to be like in the core. Those are streets that should be protected. 2 Street can function as a elevated transit corridor.

 

[darwink]

It was because the City doesn't own the land for 5th Street, Remington does, and they (Remington) were not willing to part with it.

I believe the problem with 5th street was the province owning the parcels for the future rail station that they've owned for almost 2 decades now. Can't cut the access. Can't expropriate them.

 

[lemongrab]

I don't see how this could be true for any part of 2 St, except for the 1.5 blocks south of 9 Ave? And I guess the northernmost part of it at Eau Claire.

That said, I am cool with elevated tracks along 2 St. I just don't see what you mean by "dead zone".

IIRC from doing a street view tour there doesn't seem to be a single street level CRU between Eau Clair and 9th

 

[darwink]

So options for mitigating issues with elevated in urban environments, China edition, Xi'an's Line 5 Phase 1 East:

Line 3 with sound wall on 1 side.

 

[thecivilengineer]

We need to make fare gates at station to make it more secure as well.

 

[darwink]

We need to make fare gates at station to make it more secure as well.

For the grade separated ones, I agree. Much harder to CPTED them.

 

[InfrastructureEnthusiast]

Isn't this why other regions have more centralized transit/rail planning things like translink? Rail Alberta...

Yeah something to mimic TransLink or metrolinx was sort of what I had in mind. Will be interesting to see what comes of Rail Alberta, but between the cities transit networks, HSR and tourist or commuter rail projects there should be plenty of steady work for decades.

 

[InfrastructureEnthusiast]

So options for mitigating issues with elevated in urban environments, China edition, Xi'an's Line 5 Phase 1 East:
View attachment 597744
View attachment 597745

Line 3 with sound wall on 1 side.
View attachment 597749

There are plenty of those sound walls on Taipei's brown line, but that fully covered concept may be best if elevated 2st is the chosen route.

 

[InfrastructureEnthusiast]

Elevated was taken off the table by adjacent land owners, who expressed that the 'tax shift' from downtown businesses to other businesses would be quite bad if their buildings were devalued further by adjacent elevated rail. This was in the 2016-17 context where that was a huge concern for the City. It is not a technical issue.

That seems wildly shortsighted.. Wouldn't a building close to a new transit line be more desirable, not less?

Was there opposition like that to linking buildings into the +15 network when it was rolled out?

 

[lemongrab]

Further to my Jan 2004 Study Summary, here's a not so brief summary of the Feb 2006 report wrt to the SE. I imagine this post won't be terribly easy to follow as it's really just a collection of things that jumped out to me while I was particularly looking for info on the 2nd St SW alignment, and for a general sense of what "studied to death" has actually meant. Just an interesting snapshot from 2006 when the current alignment first took root.

There's a lot going on here, but one thing I found crazy is that the red option 3A involves an elevated crossing over the tracks, a surface station between 9th ave and the CP tracks, and then a deep bored tunnel to Centre St. So...that's just kinda nuts compared to just tunnelling, right?

Analysis was first on the broad concepts, with the beltline as the obvious choice

The cost numbers here seem interesting. Option 1 seems to include costs for the 8th Ave Subway - I'm guessing that's for a TBM the full length? Option 3 involved both elevated and a TBM. But below the beltline options are in the $250M-312M range...

I was hoping to find more reasoning behind the 2nd St selection, but it seems it's as simple as 2nd > 6th. It's fairly easy to see why those are the two options at the time, especially since they proposed cut and cover tunnel for 2nd St SW, which involved demolishing and rebuilding the ramp on the north side of the tracks. So from that standpoint I completely understand why 2nd was a natural choice. I would be curious what the ramp demolition/rebuild costs and impacts were.

One of the 10th Ave concepts seems to have involved crossing Macleod Tr at grade and then tunneling under 1st St SE...which is weird:

But largely the focus was on determining the E-W alignment in the beltline, landing on 10th Ave

It may be hard to see, but it's neat that they included provision for a bike lane alongside the tunnel. It's not exactly clear to me where the tunnel approach begins, but it all seems impressively tight.

Overall a really interesting report (with a lot more good stuff about the north and west lines). However, it doesn't seem there was much focus at all on the CP tracks/8th/7th, at least not from a beltline approach. No mention of any conflict with 8th Ave subway (again I wonder if the assumption - perhaps at the convenience of this report's conclusions - was deeper TBM?). At this point there are no significant concerns with running at-grade in the beltline (though they do list the challenges involved).

I'm sure I'll get there in subsequent reports, but can anyone share why the cut+cover idea on 2nd was dropped (and presumably has remained untenable despite the cost issues)?

TLDR: the alignment was arrived at presuming at-grade through beltline and then cut+cover running N-S. No consideration to elevated or TBM on a beltline alignment at this time.

 

[lemongrab]

So...the CPA parkade ramp demolition/rebuild idea was new to me here. And I'm now remembering that it seems to have been on/off construction a lot in recent years (but I never really paid attention to it). But holy shit:

It was obviously open for a while in its new form, but kind funny that it was closed again for the latest street view.

Now I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation here...but presumably one of the impediments to a cut/cover plan was closed for like a year for a major renovation anyways? That maybe needs more work already? It looks great...but WTF? I guess that's just a +15?

 

[outoftheice]

I wonder if things also got hung up on procedural issues...the Green Law Bylaw is pretty explicit that the mandate can only be changed by direction from council. So reconsidering the prescribed alignment from 4th to Eau Claire may have been impossible without an official and public council vote.

I believe council direction had previously dictated that proceeding with contracts for 4th to Shephard had to wait on feasibility/budget confirmation for the DT tunnel...which makes some sense if you've declared that the tunnel is the one and only option and because the whole project depends on it. But we know that doesn't have to be true.

As usual, they seem to have prioritized the tunnel over the project. The better option would have been to green light 4th to Shephard and direct GLB to reconsider all possible DT alignments. Which doesn't necessarily cancel the tunnel, but we'd finally get a proper evaluation of tunnel vs. other options (including other tunnel options *couch 1st St SW*). Politically I think you're offsetting the bad news of partial delay with the good news of true ground breaking.

And really this gets you to effectively the same place as the Lynnwood compromise. EC-Lynnwood until extension vs. 4th-Shephard until extension. But maybe they were scared it would give the UCP the chance to kill the tunnel...which happened anyways...

In this alternate timeline I wonder if it might have also motivated a 6th/9th Ave BRT enhancement (imagining an interim route from 4th St SE 'quickly' looping through DT

The reason that Council prioritized the tunnel over the project is because, in the ironies of all ironies, they were ordered to by the UCP government. The original procurement plan was to procure from East Village to Shepard and start building right away because that alignment was ready to go. Then the tunnel to Eau Claire was going to be procured and finally Eau Claire to 16th.

This was back in 2020 and it was this UCP government that stepped in and said that launching an East Village to Shepard line was a train to nowhere and that procurement of the tunnel segment as a stand alone procurement was too risky. So the UCP pushed pause and conducted their 18 month review and what came out of that review was the UCP ordered Council to combine the downtown tunnel procurement with the procurement for East Village to Shepard in order to keep the funding.

So the City of Calgary never had a choice to break off the tunnels because their provincial funding was dependent on including the tunnels right up until the same government that inserted those conditions decided it was too risky to build tunnels and blew up the entire procurement this month and is now proposing building East Village to Shepard just like the City originally wanted.

 

[O-tac]

That seems like the biggest no brainer. Thanks for the info. I didn’t realize or remember that the UCP ordered them to build to Eau Claire. What a colossal waste of time! I’ll be happy if it gets that section built in the end. I do fear Nenshi will be the only option to get anything north built in the future though.

 

[darwink]

The original procurement plan was to procure from East Village to Shepard and start building right away because that alignment was ready to go. Then the tunnel to Eau Claire was going to be procured and finally Eau Claire to 16th.

The problem with that plan was it made the tunnel virtually uncontractible with risk transfer. Would have needed to been cost plus which the city really didn’t want to do.

And it isn’t just the UCP saying that.

The greenline board was set up to try to stop political whims from whipsawing the project without evidence. Like when the city adopted the divide the project into small chunks idea without thinking much of it. That was a gift to local business stakeholders who didn’t know they were effectively making the project fight with one hand tied behind its back.

It is the same storey with the dismissal of elevated without a detailed idea on costs.

Which’s comes back around to governance. Council kept direct governance for years too long and even when they set up the green line board gave the board too narrow of a mandate without core objectives to prioritize beyond ‘deliver this thing we’ve designed’. Bound by previous decisions the board couldn’t salvage it and the project leaders couldn’t apply the knowledge we hired them for.

I feel for the greenline team. From April-July it must have felt like they were just banging their heads on their desks with no innovation or value engineering within the defined bounds of the project enabling a better outcome.

 

[darwink]

That seems like the biggest no brainer. Thanks for the info. I didn’t realize or remember that the UCP ordered them to build to Eau Claire. What a colossal waste of time! I’ll be happy if it gets that section built in the end. I do fear Nenshi will be the only option to get anything north built in the future though.

It wasn’t exactly that. But I can see how it could be spun that way. The city plan at the time was exceedingly risky. Because it could have let the tunnel eat the project but you’re stuck with the full line to Sheppard. So all that is left is either stopping (and breaking your funding agreements with the feds and province), or finding more money, or, and it seems exceedingly unlikely given how much councillors have been poisoned on the ideas: considering exactly what is being considered today: elevated on 2nd or alternative service plans.