Go Elevated or try for Underground?

  • Work with the province and go with the Elevated option

    Votes: 42 79.2%

  • Try another approach and go for Underground option

    Votes: 7 13.2%

  • Cancel it altogether

    Votes: 1 1.9%

  • Go with a BRT solution

    Votes: 3 5.7%
  • Total voters
    53
Very disappointing progress on the Green Line so far this year. The main RFQ, which was initially planned for 2018, then rescheduled to Q2 2019, will now ‘start to be released’ in Q3 2019. The RFP was pushed back from Q1 2019 to Q3 2019 and will now ‘start to be released’ in Q1 2020.

Further, there is a comment that “Evaluation of the contract strategy is ongoing. A current scan of the construction market indicates a lack of capacity in the market for large procurement options. Other mega projects across the country have experienced significant challenges indicating that the sizes of the procurement packages impact the attractiveness for bidding and must be considered.” To me, this is project manager code for ‘we don’t know how we want to contract this, we are late developing the contract docs, and we are going to release little pieces first to make it look like we are progressing while the completion date drifts far into the future.’

This looks like they are at least a year behind the 2026 delivery schedule already and headed towards a two year delay.

Meeting materials: https://pub-calgary.escribemeetings...527f1bb3e9&Agenda=Agenda&lang=English&Item=22
 
Agreed. I was hoping this would already be well underway by now. I'd like to be a fly on the wall in some of their meetings.
 
One more map.

D98vz_kXsAE97nV.jpg
 
MichaelS said:
Well, tomorrow's committee meeting will be interesting:
globalnews.ca

City of Calgary administration waves red flag at Green Line tunnel - Calgary | Globalnews.ca

"At a time when council is looking to have cost assurances on mega projects, going underground might not be the best option for us today.”
globalnews.ca globalnews.ca
Click to expand...
? I didn't think that a potential change that drastic would be possible at this stage. But then again, it seems to be dragging already much longer then I would have hoped.
 
The tunnel isn't an engineering problem, but it is a contracting problem. Including something like the tunnel in a procurement that seeks to transfer 100% of the construction risk to the bidder is a problem, as large companies that bid on similar things have run into tunnel problems recently (Ottawa and Seattle come to mind) and would probably price a huge risk premium into their bid if they have to take on all the risk. There could be a few ways to mitigate the risk:
  • Change the route to not go on 2nd but instead go up 4th to avoid the sandy valley.
  • Remove an underground station (save $100 million or so)
  • Go radical and go above ground after all this time
  • Set up a risk sharing agreement for tunnel construction
 
I get their point, it's a lot of money at a time the city should be tightening the purse strings significantly. That being said, delaying it more will actually cost us money as it will only get more expensive to build. Also, we have secured funding from 3 levels of government, so time to get the shovels in the ground and end the debate.
 
Mountain Man said:
So there is a group of businessmen urging council to pause or completely cancel the green line. I think the city needs to look at cost cutting for sure, but this project has been delayed for so long that we can't wait anymore.
https://calgaryherald.com/news/loca...ssmen-ask-council-to-pause-green-line-project
Click to expand...

This is alarmist BS put forward by the same people who were pushing to spend billions on the Olympics. The fact that a few old rich white guys can barge into council to express their personal opinions (and then get written up in the herald) is beyond belief. They should be ignored. They should have never been given this platform. They bring no expertise at all to this issue. They presented no new facts. Economic downturns are exactly when government should be putting money toward long-term investments that will create jobs and inject money into the economy.
 
Unfortunately it wasn't just the Herald. That said, I won't touch any Postmedia product anymore. The fact that they're lobbying to get involved in the UCP's media "war room" has exposed the fact that the entire Postmedia operation is just being kept afloat to promote the political ideals of their ownership. The few actual reporters left on staff are mostly just there to maintain the facade that it's still a legitimate news operation. It's unfortunate that they bought up and dragged down half the newspapers in Canada with them.
 
Engineers swap Bow River tunnel for bridge to get Green Line into downtown Calgary
Social Sharing

Technical challenges mean major change in plans for CTrain project

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/green-line-tunnel-bridge-1.5195297



FFS. While not devastatingly disappointing, this shows to me the lack of vision our city has (at times). They knew that tunneling would be the best long term plan, despite it's cost. I wonder how much of this had to do with those business owners last week - or if it was actually determined by the engineers that it would be even costlier than predicted. Best we can hope for now is that budget difference applied to extending North of 16 Ave, and maybe a 9 Ave Station comeback....
 
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