I assume the city's previous approach was designed to ensure that Ramsay to Shepard gets built for sure, and then if/when costs go up on the downtown portion, they can come back to the Province and the Feds and ask for more money to finish the line.

The Province is basically saying, we are not going to play that game, and if there isn't credible engineering and procurement work on the downtown section, you can't start building the line in the suburbs.

I suppose the Honolulu experience indicates how the City's proposed model of building from the maintenance yard to the edge of downtown can be pretty painful.

One side effect of this choice seems to be that it will take a while to finish the engineering and procurement work downtown, so nothing is going to be built until just after the 2023 election, which seems to have been the UCP preference all along.
 
I like it when somebody writes a rebuttal in response to one of Richard White's articles. Almost always it's somebody coming at it with more knowledge.
Richard White published the opinion, but it was written by Neil McKendrick who worked at Calgary Transit for many years in a number of key roles. McKendrick critiques the current Green Line on quantitative measures that have become worse and worse as the Green Line continues to go over-budget. You just have to look at numerous unsuccessful American rail projects to see what happens when you ignore ridership and costs.
 
Looks like the UCP has given the green light with construction projected to start in the fall according to the PM
 
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I thought that we missed this year’s construction season due to the delay imposed by the Province? Will it really start construction this fall?
 

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