Best direction for the Green line at this point?

  • Go ahead with the current option of Eau Claire to Lynbrook and phase in extensions.

    Votes: 42 60.0%

  • Re-design the whole system

    Votes: 22 31.4%

  • Cancel it altogether

    Votes: 6 8.6%
  • Total voters
    70
accord1999 said:
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.
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McKendrick was the main guy trying to run the Green Line in the empty land along the Deerfoot at the cost of halving the Blue Line frequency; it was only once he finally aged out that the north central alignment was designed to go somewhere, anywhere near where people live and work, and from his public comments I assume he's been bitter ever since.
 
The SE segment goes through long stretches of transit ridership wilderness and nobody ever complains about that. McKendrick dealt with the funding circumstances of his era where billions of dollars weren't available all at once and therefore had to say no to some things, unlike the original Green Line which said yes to everything and everybody because surely $4.6B would be enough.

It would be ideal if the NC LRT could have main street-ed Centre Street N and also served as a higher speed, high capacity commuter line for the north of Beddington Trail communities but as corners keep getting cut and it is no longer grade-separated from 20th Ave southwards, I think it's no longer able do either function well.
 
ByeByeBaby said:
McKendrick was the main guy trying to run the Green Line in the empty land along the Deerfoot at the cost of halving the Blue Line frequency; it was only once he finally aged out that the north central alignment was designed to go somewhere, anywhere near where people live and work, and from his public comments I assume he's been bitter ever since.
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Okay, but what constraints/assumptions did he have to work within at the time? Both budgetary and in terms of political appetite for deleting vehicle lanes, etc.

Perhaps he could/should have been more at the forefront of time-travelling the public conversation closer to present ideas (many of which are still in their infancy in terms of North American implementation) , but he's just a transit planner (not a time traveller nor a PR wizard) in a fairly conservative city

As far as blue line frequency, wouldn't that pretty close to irrelevant until the red line goes underground? Blue line is already frequency limited; sharing another km or two of track/stations wouldn't be ideal and would probably result in an occasional delay off-peak.

There are a bunch of better arguments against that alignment, but the big question may be:
- bad Nose Creek alignment that might actually have been built by the end of this decade
vs
- better NC alignment (that may still have several less than ideal compromises) that may not be built until ___???

I'd still lean to the latter and hope for the best, but it's possible our kids will be arguing on some similar forum about how dumb we were in the 20s and 30s.
 
lemongrab said:
Did the railyard HAVE to be in the SE though? I've forgotten the exact rationale for not using Aurora business park, but I think it was something about that area having too much other development, which has not panned out at all...(I've always speculated that some key influencers have personal interest with Shepard).
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It is a couple billion bucks north of 16th.
 
darwink said:
It is a couple billion bucks north of 16th.
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Doesn't that just go back to stage prioritization? Which is kinda the whole point...it's only like 11km from the Bow River to Country Hills Blvd, and every inch of track is high yield for ridership.

My impression is that the 2 big factors against going north sooner were:
1. Weak advocacy from those wards' councillors
2. Not all of the land had been acquired yet

I never really questioned #2...until now. Can anyone explain what land is actually needed? Is it just a bit more space around some of the stations? Shirley I'm missing something here?
 
lemongrab said:
Doesn't that just go back to stage prioritization? Which is kinda the whole point...it's only like 11km from the Bow River to Country Hills Blvd, and every inch of track is high yield for ridership.

My impression is that the 2 big factors against going north sooner were:
1. Weak advocacy from those wards' councillors
2. Not all of the land had been acquired yet

I never really questioned #2...until now. Can anyone explain what land is actually needed? Is it just a bit more space around some of the stations? Shirley I'm missing something here?
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The City of Calgary needs to acquire like 1 foot of right of way from pretty much every property along Centre St to make things work for the Green Line. It's one of the reasons costs for that stretch is so high. Property owners could get some easy cash and give the City the bit of their property that it needs or they could dig their heels in and demand the City expropriate their entire property to get that 1 ft. The cost and time associated with possibly expropriating hundreds of properties and then trying to sell them back on the market is a big complicating factor with Centre St.

That being said, even with all the added BS around the Centre St alignment, I am a firm believer that it is the only way to go. The original Nose Creek Valley alignment by-passed a huge chunk of population and will hopefully be one day served by commuter rail anyways. The biggest failure of our current LRT network is that it is essentially park and ride focused commuter rail which is great for 9-5 rush hour commuters but sucks for developing all day, 2 way traffic. Sunnyside station and 45th Avenue station are really the only two spots on the entire network that are in the heart of any community and are designed around walk-ability. The fact we have such limited examples of community stations on such a large LRT network should be seen as a planning failure in my mind and yet it is the same vision Grey and McKendrick's group have been pushing for the Green Line.
 
lemongrab said:
Doesn't that just go back to stage prioritization? Which is kinda the whole point...it's only like 11km from the Bow River to Country Hills Blvd, and every inch of track is high yield for ridership.

My impression is that the 2 big factors against going north sooner were:
1. Weak advocacy from those wards' councillors
2. Not all of the land had been acquired yet

I never really questioned #2...until now. Can anyone explain what land is actually needed? Is it just a bit more space around some of the stations? Shirley I'm missing something here?
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The expensive part of the current plan is the downtown tunnel.
 
outoftheice said:
like 1 foot of right of way from pretty much every property along Centre St
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It's always been wider north of McKnight, and I think the city widened the street as far south as 43rd for bus advance lanes. So we're really looking at something like 4.5 km, plus a narrow stretch north of the shopping centre at Beddington Blvd.

(North of where Centre St ends, the LRT enters a ROW the city has protected since the 80s)
 
darwink said:
The expensive part of the current plan is the downtown tunnel.
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Of course, but what does that have to do with which direction to lay tracks out of downtown first?


outoftheice said:
The City of Calgary needs to acquire like 1 foot of right of way from pretty much every property along Centre St to make things work for the Green Line. It's one of the reasons costs for that stretch is so high. Property owners could get some easy cash and give the City the bit of their property that it needs or they could dig their heels in and demand the City expropriate their entire property to get that 1 ft. The cost and time associated with possibly expropriating hundreds of properties and then trying to sell them back on the market is a big complicating factor with Centre St.

That being said, even with all the added BS around the Centre St alignment, I am a firm believer that it is the only way to go. The original Nose Creek Valley alignment by-passed a huge chunk of population and will hopefully be one day served by commuter rail anyways. The biggest failure of our current LRT network is that it is essentially park and ride focused commuter rail which is great for 9-5 rush hour commuters but sucks for developing all day, 2 way traffic. Sunnyside station and 45th Avenue station are really the only two spots on the entire network that are in the heart of any community and are designed around walk-ability. The fact we have such limited examples of community stations on such a large LRT network should be seen as a planning failure in my mind and yet it is the same vision Grey and McKendrick's group have been pushing for the Green Line.
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Is this not a good reason to go underground between the river and 16th Ave? Or has that land already been acquired/it's less of an issue for this stretch?
 
Less of an issue south of 16th. As Badc0ffee mentioned above, it is 16th Ave to McKnight that is the biggest issue with right of way although I do believe the issue is still present to a degree north of McKnight because the design plans use the larger available right of way to build Centre St back to 4 lanes, unlike the 2 lanes that will be constructed south of McKnight once the Green Line goes in.
 
They've always wanted to tunnel under the river to past 20th Avenue, that option was rated much higher than anything else they looked at.

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Option A - Street-level LRT from Chinatown to Crescent Heights on existing Centre Street Bridge, underground at 2 St SW
Option B - Tunnel under Centre Street from 20 Ave N to the river & a new LRT bridge to connect to the Centre City, underground at 2 St SW
Option C - Tunnel under Centre Street from 20 Ave N to the river & elevated guideway in Centre City
Option D - Tunnel under the river, underground in Centre City
Option E - Street-level in Crescent Heights with new LRT bridge to Centre City & street-level station in Eau Claire, underground at 2 St SW

But geotechnical and money issues means they can no longer afford it and are forced to use a version of Option E. Unless we get a miracle and the downtown tunnel comes in a billion dollars under-budget or the Province blank-checks the Green Line, it's hard to see how they do another 180 degree turn back to the original plan.
 
I think the key segment for traffic (including bus and truck) impacts is 16 Ave and points south. Centre street dumps a good portion of its northbound traffic onto 16 Ave, and correspondingly much of the traffic south of 16 Ave comes from 16 Ave.

I don't understand why we went from a full, deep-level tunnel under the Bow river all the way to 20~24 Ave ($$$$$), to a new bridge but let's enter Centre street at grade and take half the corridor, effectively turning Centre St bridge into two lanes of capacity, and crossing 16 Ave at grade ($$). There must be some middle ground, like shallow tunnelling into the escarpment north of where the new bridge ends. Also it's weird that there was seemingly no cost savings by changing to this option.
 
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