[Silence&Motion]

No… your point being that hardly any mass transit was built in cities in Canada (except Vancouver) since the 80 ‘s. Vancouver is a poor example in my mind. Because after the Expo line in the mid 80’s not much was built until the early 2000’s (millennial line). It’s the same time line as most cities having very little transit built in the 90’s. I don’t think it mattered that it was city or provincial run. Billion$$ investment takes time

Yes. My point is that very little transit has been built since the 1980s. Vancouver is arguably an exception. The 1990s was particularly bad, which is understandable given the issues with debt. HOWEVER, the fact that so little transit has been built in the last 40 years is a clear sign that the system for designing and building mass transit in this country is completely broken. The 2020s will prove to be a massive change in fortunes mostly because the Ontario and Quebec governments have taken over from Toronto and Montreal. Alberta should follow suit.

Here's transit stations built by decade with and without Vancouver:

 

[Mountain Man]

I see a big spike in Montreal before the Olympics, same with Calgary and Vancouver. I think a major world event with the funding that comes with is a big factor.

 

[darwink]

with the funding that comes

The cities didn't recieve extra special funding as part of the olympics, but certainly the cities felt confidence which enabled the politics to support investment.

 

[Silence&Motion]

I see a big spike in Montreal before the Olympics, same with Calgary and Vancouver. I think a major world event with the funding that comes with is a big factor.

Exactly. Which is why this city-led process is so terrible. In order to keep everyone on the same page, you need some mega-event. Mass transit has been treated like some special prize that provincial and federal politicians roll out during elections, when it should be treated like basic infrastructure that just needs to be continually expanded in line with a growing population. In Ontario, the establishment of Metrolinx was a big step forward. It expanded the Ministry of Transportation's mandate beyond highways and drivers' licenses to include the planning and development of public transit. (Note that in the 1990s even GO Transit had been downloaded to the municipalities.) As a result, several LRT lines were built (Kitchener, Ottawa, two lines close to completion in Toronto).

However, for the first part of its existence, Metrolinx was still very passive, letting municipalities propose and design transit lines. They just stood by and let Rob Ford trash an LRT plan that took years to develop and had funding in place. Ottawa's LRT, which did get built but has run into significant problems, reveals how terrible it is to have decision making powers scattered across so many different organizations and agencies, including city councils, mayors' offices, municipal transit authorities, and private construction consortiums. In the end, decision-making power over transit planning needs to lie with the ultimate source of political (and financial) power, which is the provincial government. With the Ontario Line, as well as the significant improvements to the GO system, Metrolinx is finally taking the lead in transit development. Municipal governments basically just need to fall in line, which is maybe not so great from a democratic standpoint, but works so much better from a logistical standpoint.

 

[Reecemartin]

Yes. My point is that very little transit has been built since the 1980s. Vancouver is arguably an exception. The 1990s was particularly bad, which is understandable given the issues with debt. HOWEVER, the fact that so little transit has been built in the last 40 years is a clear sign that the system for designing and building mass transit in this country is completely broken. The 2020s will prove to be a massive change in fortunes mostly because the Ontario and Quebec governments have taken over from Toronto and Montreal. Alberta should follow suit.

Here's transit stations built by decade with and without Vancouver:

View attachment 427275

I made a video about something along these lines last year:

You should have included the 2020s because they will be nuts. Heres a rough summary - not counting interchanges because they aren't "new".

Vancouver is adding 5 on Broadway, 8 for Surrey Langley + Capstan Way infill station on the Canada Line. (Not to mention anything else which happens!)
Calgary is adding 14 for the Green Line.
Edmonton is adding 10 for VL SE, 16 VL West, 2 Metro Line NW, 2 Capital Line South
Hamilton is getting a 17 stop LRT
Hurontario LRT in Miss and Brampton is 17 (with 2 GO interchanges)
In Toronto Finch is 18, Eglinton is 22 new stops, Eglinton West is 7, Ontario Line is 10 new stations (Yonge North is also moving forwards but not u/c as all the others are - GO is also probably going to add at least 10 new stations with a decent all day service but I'll leave out)
In Ottawa, West Extension is 11 New Stations, East Extension is 5 New Stations, South Extension is 8 new Stations
In Montreal the REM is 23, Blue Line Extension 5

That means we are probably getting 201 new frequent train or tram stops and stations in the next 10 years - this doesn't include: Likely further extensions in Vancouver (North Shore? UBC?), Waterloo (Phase 2), Ottawa (Stage 3), Mississauga/Brampton (Downtown Brampton Extension), Toronto (Finch, Yonge, Eglinton East?), or any additional REM Stations OR the Quebec City Tram which will probably happen - thats a LOT in 10 years!

 

[DougB]

The cities didn't recieve extra special funding as part of the olympics, but certainly the cities felt confidence which enabled the politics to support investment.

Calgary benefited from surreptitious circumstances. The NW line was the priority after the S line, but was held up due to NIMBY issues in Kensington. As the provincial money was still on the table, the City rapidly pivoted to the NE line. The competence was in the City being able to turn around approval, engineering and construction of that line in less than 3 years. After the NE line opened, the NW line had to be built with mostly City money to meet the deadline for the Olympics. Both the NE and NW lines benefited from an economic downturn that drove down construction costs.

 

[DougB]

Exactly. Which is why this city-led process is so terrible. In order to keep everyone on the same page, you need some mega-event. Mass transit has been treated like some special prize that provincial and federal politicians roll out during elections, when it should be treated like basic infrastructure that just needs to be continually expanded in line with a growing population. In Ontario, the establishment of Metrolinx was a big step forward. It expanded the Ministry of Transportation's mandate beyond highways and drivers' licenses to include the planning and development of public transit. (Note that in the 1990s even GO Transit had been downloaded to the municipalities.) As a result, several LRT lines were built (Kitchener, Ottawa, two lines close to completion in Toronto).

However, for the first part of its existence, Metrolinx was still very passive, letting municipalities propose and design transit lines. They just stood by and let Rob Ford trash an LRT plan that took years to develop and had funding in place. Ottawa's LRT, which did get built but has run into significant problems, reveals how terrible it is to have decision making powers scattered across so many different organizations and agencies, including city councils, mayors' offices, municipal transit authorities, and private construction consortiums. In the end, decision-making power over transit planning needs to lie with the ultimate source of political (and financial) power, which is the provincial government. With the Ontario Line, as well as the significant improvements to the GO system, Metrolinx is finally taking the lead in transit development. Municipal governments basically just need to fall in line, which is maybe not so great from a democratic standpoint, but works so much better from a logistical standpoint.

Alberta (especially Calgary) is a different situation than other Canadian cities as municipal government is nowhere near as fragmented. More provincial involvement or regional agencies would be steps backward.

 

[CBBarnett]

Alberta (especially Calgary) is a different situation than other Canadian cities as municipal government is nowhere near as fragmented. More provincial involvement or regional agencies would be steps backward.

Especially if the provincial bodies are ideologically opposed to public transit. Calgary and Edmonton both have problems delivering quality transit, but I don't think the most pressing issue is lack of provincial involvement.

Ontario is an interesting case. After a painfully long process spanning decades, Ontario is starting to demonstrate that all political ideologies can support transit - effective transit is more of a utility that any modern province and city needs to function than just a nice-to-have social service. All it took was a century of booming growth and exhaustion with the crippling congestion of a vote-rich, fragmented, 7-million person mega-region to bring to bring everyone to the same table. They are now starting to unwind some mistakes that downloading transit responsibilities to a fragmented municipal level caused by assuming responsibility again in some issues that only the province can really resolve (like regional integration and network development). Ontario seems to be on the right track, but they took one of the longest route possible to get there.

If Ontario took an inefficient route to get there - Alberta doesn't even share the same factors or context. For the past 50+ years, the political game has always been to split the city vote and win the rural to achieve power. This splits the most likely pro-transit vote, often placated by giving $$$ to the cities to figure transit out themselves rather than stand behind transit more intentional at the province level. It's a pure downloading of responsibility for transit to lower municipalities. This downloading has worked alright for the bigger cities with the capacity to figure this stuff out - but with ongoing issues about predictable funding, operating costs given cities limited powers to raise funds. Major transit is still dependent on the occasional planetary alignment of a federal-provincial-municipal funding availability triggered usually by election cycle rather than demand.

A side-effect of Alberta downloading transit to the cities, means the provincial government never developed any internal administrative or political capacity to even think about transit. The province has no transit operating arm (like BC Transit for smaller cities), no regional transit initiatives they lead, nor any experience with building rail or public transit. Alberta's infrastructure department remains solely focused on highway expansion, happily plugging away with unneeded highway expansions in low-demand areas.

Another result of provincial absence in the transit space - any intercity/regional transit program is really only possible for to municipalities that can align interests and fund a good portion themselves (hard to do) or left up to private sales pitches to figure out everything such as the Calgary-Banff project (very hard to do). Things like corridor land assembly or cost sharing is much trickier without an overseeing body that is literally by design positioned to coordinate the fragmented local stuff - refusing to coodinate the framented local stuff.

TL;DR - big cities are fine in Alberta without provincial meddling in transit. Regional transit and small municipalities will have a near-impossible time without provincial involvement in transit.

 

[Silence&Motion]

Alberta (especially Calgary) is a different situation than other Canadian cities as municipal government is nowhere near as fragmented. More provincial involvement or regional agencies would be steps backward.

Especially if the provincial bodies are ideologically opposed to public transit. Calgary and Edmonton both have problems delivering quality transit, but I don't think the most pressing is lack of provincial involvement...
TL;DR - big cities are fine in Alberta without provincial meddling in transit.

If the province is ideologically opposed to transit, then transit is dead in the water no matter what the governance and funding arrangements. That's the point. The province is the real power here. It is the only level of government that can build transit on its own. Not the feds. Not the cities. In that sense the province is always meddling in transit since it exercises a veto power that no other level of government has.

Contrast that with the ridiculousness of the Ottawa process, where the *provincially-enforced* inquiry has revealed that one of the major problems was the mayor's office haphazardly issuing orders over WhatsApp. The mayor's office has no real power, no budget, no logistical capacity to actually oversee a multi-billion-dollar construction project.

The city-led process is like a corporation (the province) giving a few billion dollars to a group of middle-managers (city council), appointing one of them as "leader" (the mayor) only in a symbolic sense with very little direct control over the other managers, and then telling them: "go figure out how to raise twice the amount of money we gave you and design the whole project yourselves from scratch". Oh, and to make matters worse, several of the managers will get replaced every 4 years by people who have had no involvement with the project and in fact may be aiming to destroy it. Finally, if the corporation decides at any minute that it doesn't like where the project is going, or a new CEO is appointed who just doesn't like the project, it can shut the whole thing down at a moment's notice.

A side-effect of Alberta downloading transit to the cities, means the provincial government never developed any internal administrative or political capacity to even think about transit. The province has no transit operating arm (like BC Transit for smaller cities), no regional transit initiatives they lead, nor any experience with building rail or public transit. Alberta's infrastructure department remains solely focused on highway expansion, happily plugging away with unneeded highway expansions in low-demand areas.

The level of institutional inertia that drives provinces to continually build unneeded highways on autopilot mode is exactly what we need for public transit. Building organizational capacity and inertia is the best defence against the ideological swings that come with changes in government.

Remember that Ontario also did not have anyone in charge of public transit until it created Metrolinx. The GO system was downloaded to municipalities in the 1990s.

 

[MissingMiddle]

"Critical Project Milestone"

Green Line Phase 1 RFP released to qualified applicants:
-Bow Transit Connectors (Barnard Constructors of Canada LP, Flatiron Constructors Canada Ltd, and WSP Canada Inc)
-City Link Partners (Aecon Infrastructure Management Inc, Dragados Canada Inc, Acciona Infrastructure Canada Inc, Parsons Inc, and AECOM Canada Ltd)

From the website:

One of the two proponents will be selected in early 2023 as the Development Partner. Following the selection and prior to entering into a final Project Agreement, a 12-month Development Phase will allow for collaboration, design progression, and better understanding of risks, costs and schedule.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1574446202699288576

 

[UrbanWarrior]

Holy Christ is this thing ever delayed. So the “design development phase” won’t even be done til 2024? What a joke. I was always the biggest proponent of this project, but holy shit. Ottawa - a city smaller than us with a smaller tax base - has built an entire LRT system since this was proposed, and already has the 2nd phase under construction, including an airport link. By 2025 their system will be just over 5 km longer than ours (65 km) and same number of stations, having only been built in 15 years essentially. Not to mention fully grade-separated. Ridiculous.

 

[darwink]

Holy Christ is this thing ever delayed. So the “design development phase” won’t even be done til 2024? What a joke. I was always the biggest proponent of this project, but holy shit. Ottawa - a city smaller than us with a smaller tax base - has built an entire LRT system since this was proposed, and already has the 2nd phase under construction, including an airport link. By 2025 their system will be just over 5 km longer than ours (65 km) and same number of stations, having only been built in 15 years essentially. Not to mention fully grade-separated. Ridiculous.

What you can do with your ROW already fully built save for a tunnel built through quick good geology for tunneling (and they still had the sinkhole!)

Ottawa having the sinkhole, and Seattle hitting the mass with their tunnel machine, both delivered through fixed cost P3s, basically meant that Calgary would have to pay way more to transfer risk, and take way more time to mitigate risk.

 

[MissingMiddle]

Ottawa - a city smaller than us with a smaller tax base - has built an entire LRT system since this was proposed, and already has the 2nd phase under construction, including an airport link. By 2025 their system will be just over 5 km longer than ours (65 km) and same number of stations, having only been built in 15 years essentially. Not to mention fully grade-separated. Ridiculous.

I wouldn't label the O-Train as a success, there's literally an ongoing public inquiry about the repeated derailments and system failures: www.ottawalrtpublicinquiry.ca/. Also, Ottawa-Gatineau is functionally one city with a population of 1.42M, Calgary is listed at 1.58M for the same year - or an 11% difference, which is pretty meaningless.

Nevertheless, the Green Line is taking forever. It doesn't even say "Design Completion" or tender/bid, literally just "design progression" and "understanding risks." I doubt Green Line Phase 1 will be operational before 2030.

 

[goodcitywhenfinished]

At this point I think we should just go back to the drawing board and make the green line a light metro like REM or Skytrain. We should not be spending this much money on a glorified streetcar that will have to wait at red lights.

Its not like its coming anytime soon.

 

[whatchyyc]

At this point I think we should just go back to the drawing board and make the green line a light metro like REM or Skytrain. We should not be spending this much money on a glorified streetcar that will have to wait at red lights.

Its not like its coming anytime soon.

Well all of stage 1 is basically standard ctrain with exclusive RoW and full priority