Red Star said:
Good points. I'm partially sold on the idea. However, I have a few questions to ask you regarding a surface run train through downtown:

1. How do you propose the Greenline crosses the CP tracks?
2. Do you think there would be excess congestion and increased travel times having three train lines intersect at 7th Ave and 2nd street?
3. N-S city blocks are shorter than E-W blocks. They are about 80m in length. Do you think this length limits the Greenline capacity?
4. Do you think the Greenline crossing all those intersections would increase travel time?
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1. Like how the two lines cross the CP tracks now? Small tunnel for the CP track or elevated.
2. Congestion for trains? or cars? I mean there is Centre, 1st, 3rd, 4th street that cars can take, I don't see how a reduction in a few lanes on one of the the many streets will meaningfully degrade traffic.
3. Agreed this would be a problem, since the GL trains are incredibly long. I don't know the precise length of each street segment but I'd think some can still support a stop.
4. It would increase travel time of course, but we do a good job with lane reversals during rush hour, I can't see why we can't block off the lanes/left turns during high traffic times. And to cross the CP tracks part of it will still be tunnelled.

Ideally it'd be tunnelled, but compared to countless other larger cities that run surface transit routes effectively, not sure why one extra line would cause chaos and gridlock downtown. Travel times will be slower through the core, but most of the travel during peak times will be to/from downtown instead of through. Maybe you lose 5 minutes, or conversely lose years to driving or packed 301 busses because the line won't go remotely far enough. I can understand tunnelling portions of it, but I thought part of the high cost is associated with tunnelling from Eau Claire to Crescent Heights. Not sure why Eau Claire could not be a surface station then cross the bow elevated like the other CTrain lines.
 
trtcttc said:
1. Like how the two lines cross the CP tracks now? Small tunnel for the CP track or elevated.
2. Congestion for trains? or cars? I mean there is Centre, 1st, 3rd, 4th street that cars can take, I don't see how a reduction in a few lanes on one of the the many streets will meaningfully degrade traffic.
3. Agreed this would be a problem, since the GL trains are incredibly long. I don't know the precise length of each street segment but I'd think some can still support a stop.
4. It would increase travel time of course, but we do a good job with lane reversals during rush hour, I can't see why we can't block off the lanes/left turns during high traffic times. And to cross the CP tracks part of it will still be tunnelled.

Ideally it'd be tunnelled, but compared to countless other larger cities that run surface transit routes effectively, not sure why one extra line would cause chaos and gridlock downtown. Travel times will be slower through the core, but most of the travel during peak times will be to/from downtown instead of through. Maybe you lose 5 minutes, or conversely lose years to driving or packed 301 busses because the line won't go remotely far enough. I can understand tunnelling portions of it, but I thought part of the high cost is associated with tunnelling from Eau Claire to Crescent Heights. Not sure why Eau Claire could not be a surface station then cross the bow elevated like the other CTrain lines.
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You also have a train on train crossing, which will be technically difficult with the trains we bought. 600V DC and 750V DC. Edmonton used to have a system for a trolley bus to cross the LRT, but the much larger vehicles make the problem more difficult. Would require a redesign of the new LRVs at the very least.

The north south blocks are relatively short at about 80m. The trains that are ordered are 42m per car. Not a huge deal to shrink them, but they will shrink by more than 2m, being modular and all, unless we fund the development of a shrunken module. The underground stations were shrunk from ~130m to save money, but it didn't matter much because frequency could accommodate needed future capacity. Would require some modelling, but I doubt both the old LRT on 7th, and the new one on 2nd, could each maintain north of 8,000 people per direction per hour.

Travel time is everything! Would need to dig back into the reports from 2016 ish, but it degrades a whole lot more than 5 minutes iirc.

Your last point, yeah, that is a pretty easy scope to remove. Though best to not think of the station as underground per-se, but as a trenched station surrounded by a building. That is a difference between a 2x cost and a 10x cost.
 
Albertasaurus said:
Well, Nelson has been around for a long time and he has to have gotten the $8 billion figure from somewhere, I wonder if someone on Council leaked it to him? I must admit, if the above is true is it really worth $8 billion for a line that only goes to Ogden? That's a huge cost to only serve a few neighbourhoods. Wasn't the main point of Ph 1 to get people from the populous and growing SE suburbs to downtown quickly?

I'm very pro transit but at some point would abandoning this mess and refocusing on an airport rail link make more sense?
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My guess is it's a rumour that conflates two issues where Council has likely been informed that Eau Claire to Shepard will cost $XX but that requires additional funding from provincial and federal governments that have shown zero interest in coming to the table so the plan B is that they could build Eau Claire to Ogden within the original project budget and that might just have to be good enough.

If that's the case, I'm okay with it. Get the costly, complicated downtown segment out of the way and then just start incremental extensions of the line to the north and to the south afterwards. Both the provincial and federal governments have said they are open to funding future expansions, just not more money for Stage 1. Plus it has the added middle finger of penalizing the UCP for not offering more money by holding the train back from the ridings in south east Calgary they won.
 
outoftheice said:
My guess is it's a rumour that conflates two issues where Council has likely been informed that Eau Claire to Shepard will cost $XX but that requires additional funding from provincial and federal governments that have shown zero interest in coming to the table so the plan B is that they could build Eau Claire to Ogden within the original project budget and that might just have to be good enough.

If that's the case, I'm okay with it. Get the costly, complicated downtown segment out of the way and then just start incremental extensions of the line to the north and to the south afterwards. Both the provincial and federal governments have said they are open to funding future expansions, just not more money for Stage 1. Plus it has the added middle finger of penalizing the UCP for not offering more money by holding the train back from the ridings in south east Calgary they won.
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Building to Ogden would obliterate ridership.
 
Doesn't sound like its the case, but it would probably be better for the GL team if a ridiculous price tag and scope reduction rumour were floated out there, so that the actual adjustment doesn't seem so awful.
 
darwink said:
It doesn't really make sense that parts of the city were confident for the Green Line that they could deliver 44 km for around $100 million a km a decade later.
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It's funny how your back-of-the-napkin calculation yields a number that's probably not too far off from the correct figure. Yeah the experience from the West LRT and even Edmonton's Valley Line SE should have given them pause about being able to do it for <$5B.

And while we'll probably never get the answer, I do wonder why they had to be so ambitious in the first place by wanting to do all 40 km in a single phase? Something smaller, like even the "core" segment in one or two stages (similar to the Valley Line) would have probably been accepted and would have led to less grief since they wouldn't have to cut so many things over time.
 
Red Star said:
Ideally yes. But it's advantageous to future proof our transit system for the next 100 years. I think a surface station at Eau Claire and a surface station at 4th street S.E. would be a decent compromise.

Construction should have commenced in 2018. It's very disappointing that it's taken this long. Build phase 1 from Shepard -> 4th street it's the easiest and cheapest section to build.
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Even getting a section of the tunnel going, do Shepard to Centre Street South Station, then the riders are significantly closer to the employment centres of the core. I dunno. They should have phased it though and already be well underway on the 4 Street to Shepard section by now. It likely would already be opened, then figure out the core as they go.
 
UrbanWarrior said:
Even getting a section of the tunnel going, do Shepard to Centre Street South Station, then the riders are significantly closer to the employment centres of the core. I dunno. They should have phased it though and already be well underway on the 4 Street to Shepard section by now. It likely would already be opened, then figure out the core as they go.
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The concern with that strategy is you would have built a train from Shepard to 4th Street, but then realized you don't have enough money to extend it. So, spent significant dollars on an even less useful train, which would be an even larger drag on operating budgets (remember, even with the current plan, this is still projected to be a money loser to the tune of $40 million a year I think is the last we heard). So then what?

It is my understanding that this is why the Province stepped in when they did, to ensure that scenario didn't happen. Because the outcome would be, the City builds a train to nowhere, and then turns to the other levels of government and says "help!" and essentially holds them hostage for more money to actually make it useful. Seems the more responsible thing to do is to see how much the actual useful project really costs, to see if you can move forward, before starting.
 
One thing to note I don't see anyone talking about. The federal government just announced there will be an extra 3 Billion per year available from 2026-2036 that cities/provinces can apply for. This could easily help with future green line extensions if we start building phase 1 now.
 
Nawads said:
One thing to note I don't see anyone talking about. The federal government just announced there will be an extra 3 Billion per year available from 2026-2036 that cities/provinces can apply for. This could easily help with future green line extensions if we start building phase 1 now.
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That's contingent on the Province's rail plan. I can't recall the timeline on that... Could be some synergies though.
 
Nawads said:
One thing to note I don't see anyone talking about. The federal government just announced there will be an extra 3 Billion per year available from 2026-2036 that cities/provinces can apply for. This could easily help with future green line extensions if we start building phase 1 now.
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That money would be available has been known. Exactly what the program looked like has not been. But designing a program that Calgary could not access would be untenable.

Until things are announced people act like time stops after existing programs end and then act like it is a hard budget constraint and funding is a zero sum game.

Alas. Was ever thus. This next pot of money will build down to McKenzie Towne and up to 64th, and we will finish the 52nd st BRT.
 
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