- Thread starter Surrealplaces
- Start date
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
I like that they put Shepard on it because whose to say where the other end of the line will stop... Haha
accord1999
Active Member
Speaking of Shepard, there's an article today in the Herald again questioning the value of the Green Line Stage 1 given its current costs and terminal points with comments from Jim Gray and Neil McKendrick. McKendrick has some harsh words concerning ridership:
The article also throws in a statement from supposedly a Calgary Transit staffer:
Corbella: Is the Green Line LRT on the right track? Many say it's past time to pivot on costly rail line
"When you look back when we built the south line, northwest and the northeast lines, the buses that served those corridors were operating nose to tail, jam packed w…
calgaryherald.com
ahuch
Active Member
Not something I can back with any sort of statistics, but a lot of people that I know (in general conversation) will consider taking a train but the second you talk about a bus they're hopping in their car. A dedicated transit way would probably fix a lot of that with a reliable schedule and increased frequency, but buses in this city right now have a serious image problem.Speaking of Shepard, there's an article today in the Herald again questioning the value of the Green Line Stage 1 given its current costs and terminal points with comments from Jim Gray and Neil McKendrick. McKendrick has some harsh words concerning ridership:
The article also throws in a statement from supposedly a Calgary Transit staffer:
Corbella: Is the Green Line LRT on the right track? Many say it's past time to pivot on costly rail line
"When you look back when we built the south line, northwest and the northeast lines, the buses that served those corridors were operating nose to tail, jam packed w…
accord1999
Active Member
People in North America often say that but most of the new LRT lines in the US haven't grown overall transit ridership. In some cases, the cannibalization of bus services (due to needing to pay for the expensive trains) or re-routing them to feed train stations means overall ridership went down even before COVID hit.
As McKendricked noted, the previous C-Train lines replaced good ridership bus corridors which helped them be successful from the start.
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
These guys love to beat this drum, every so often someone listens; today that person was Corbella. Best to know your sources (from the article):Speaking of Shepard, there's an article today in the Herald again questioning the value of the Green Line Stage 1 given its current costs and terminal points with comments from Jim Gray and Neil McKendrick. McKendrick has some harsh words concerning ridership:
The article also throws in a statement from supposedly a Calgary Transit staffer:
Corbella: Is the Green Line LRT on the right track? Many say it's past time to pivot on costly rail line
"When you look back when we built the south line, northwest and the northeast lines, the buses that served those corridors were operating nose to tail, jam packed w…
...(The article said Councilor Sharp asked, just how much is $700 Million (money already spent on the Green Line). 'Sharp's question is one shared by many high-profile and credible concerned Calgarians, particularly the more than 800 people who have joined the Ad Hoc Citizen’s Committee on the Green Line, led by the inexhaustible dean of Calgary philanthropists and business leaders, Jim Gray.
One of the more surprising of the more than 800 names on the ad hoc committee list belongs to Neil McKendrick.
His is not a household name in this city like former CBC Dragon’s Den star Brett Wilson or WestJet’s Clive Beddoe, who have joined the group, but for those in the transportation community, he’s pretty much legendary.
For the last 10 years of his 36 years with Calgary Transit, McKendrick was the manager of the city’s Transit Planning Group. He retired in May 2016 but was kept on as a consultant for another three years.'
Ole Jimmy and the boys just won't give it up. It's almost as if these guys have never rode the bus or train for a day in their life. I ride the bus and the train every day, I can tell you from personal experience it takes seconds to transfer from a bus to a train.
Secondly, I've finally found the person responsible for the current transit system. Hello Neil Mckendrick, I'd like a word about your not so fine work over the past couple decades.
Yes, it's not going as far as we'd like south or north, but it was the dragging out of the process that did that. I would argue the green line is by far the most complicated line the city has ever built. It has cost a lot of money, but imagine spending 700M and getting nothing from it.
I'm also glad we don't take our transit planning cues from a random Calgary Transit staffer... I'm sure the CT staffer scuttlebutt is pretty juicie.
Sometimes things the city does aren't about you, these guys just need to go away. This isn't for them or about them, you're rich, you want influence. Go try to buy an election again.
MichaelS
Senior Member
Be VERY CAREFUL with this line of thinking. $700 million will seem cheap if it ends up costing $10 billion to make only Eau Claire to Shepard work (just a wild ass guess from me, we have no idea how much until the agreement with the chosen RFP partner is released in about a year I think).
"We have to spend an additional $4 billion more than we thought, because we already spent $700 million on this thing...." is not a great way to prioritize limited capital resources.
CBBarnett
Senior Member
Actual Green Line project risks aside.... I patiently await the monthly critique Herald piece on city and provincial road and highway expansion planning by Herald columnists and this strangely visible and politically connected cabal of random bored retired engineers "led by the inexhaustible dean of Calgary philanthropists and business leaders, Jim Gray" as Corbella impartially describes.
On the Green Line, surely if everything has changed and no one commutes anymore, we don't need any highways and the ones we have don't need to be as wide right? We should scrap half the lanes on all the arterials in the core tomorrow - they are no longer needed apparently! Starting next week, we should expect an endless series of Herald attack pieces slamming the city and province for failing to build more economical cycle-tracks fast enough on all these obsolete major roads everywhere that no one needs, right?
Where were all these prestigious engineers complaining about the cost and overbuilding on the ring road project before it was built? I don't recall 10 years of monthly Herald columns supporting the speculations of groups of concerned engineers that critiqued the unsubstantiated traffic projections and opaque project financials. The ring road project only cost about ~$10B and counting - not that we know or ever will know the exact number of course.
On the Green Line, surely if everything has changed and no one commutes anymore, we don't need any highways and the ones we have don't need to be as wide right? We should scrap half the lanes on all the arterials in the core tomorrow - they are no longer needed apparently! Starting next week, we should expect an endless series of Herald attack pieces slamming the city and province for failing to build more economical cycle-tracks fast enough on all these obsolete major roads everywhere that no one needs, right?
Where were all these prestigious engineers complaining about the cost and overbuilding on the ring road project before it was built? I don't recall 10 years of monthly Herald columns supporting the speculations of groups of concerned engineers that critiqued the unsubstantiated traffic projections and opaque project financials. The ring road project only cost about ~$10B and counting - not that we know or ever will know the exact number of course.
outoftheice
Active Member
I think this Herald piece has far more to do with a bunch of billionaires needing a bigger cheque from the City of Calgary to chase their Calgary Next fantasy than it does with actually building the Green Line.
accord1999
Active Member
It wasn't dragging out the process that caused, it was the Green Line team massively under-estimating costs and over-promising how ready it was. The original plan was to start construction in 2018 and finish all 40 km in 2024. What dragged it out was the Green Line team having to revise things to meet realistic cost estimates and turnover of top management.
It may not be the romanticized European tram system that urbanists fantasize about, but in terms of ridership/capital costs it's the best LRT system in North America. It's too bad McKendrick wasn't in charge during the initial days of the Green Line, we likely have had reasonable estimates of costs from the beginning and therefore made informed choices on where the Green Line should go, rather than scrambling for the last 6 years trying to build anything.
darwink
Senior Member
It’s always possible we end up with a failed procurement and have to pivot to a different downtown design. I’d put it at less than 20%.
YYCguy
Active Member
If that happens, and I truly wish it doesn’t, then no elevated or ground level tracks through downtown a la Jim Gray please!
darwink
Senior Member
Glancing downtown à la Jim Gray is no good. We shall know about procurement within a few months.
One of the problems with this project is the competing priorities -
* The ridership demand is in the north-central part, but
* The railway yard is in the inner SE part, so you have to do that first, even though it's the lowest-ridership part, but
* The political priority is the outer SE, like MacKenzie, where for 20 years the residents have been looking at a sign on the empty right-of-way telling them the train is coming.
Of course phase 1 isn't going to make anyone happy. We've always known this. But I still think it's a good project because it's relatively cheap to finish the SE after that core section is done.
* The ridership demand is in the north-central part, but
* The railway yard is in the inner SE part, so you have to do that first, even though it's the lowest-ridership part, but
* The political priority is the outer SE, like MacKenzie, where for 20 years the residents have been looking at a sign on the empty right-of-way telling them the train is coming.
Of course phase 1 isn't going to make anyone happy. We've always known this. But I still think it's a good project because it's relatively cheap to finish the SE after that core section is done.
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
The question in piece was about what do you get for 700M and what else it could've bought. That's spilt milk, you can't recover that money and do those other things. So my point is more imagine getting nothing, no green line and none of what they mention. As you point out, maybe we should imagine how that feels if this thing is that far gone.
But as CB explores, it's hard to square the vehement Green Line opposition against a background of other large transportation projects.
I never asked for Lisbon, I'd love it, but my problem is the fact I live in a 10 minute drive from downtown or a 40 minutes ride. I wouldn't give McKendrick that much credit so say he would've been the one to save the green line.