[kempes_78]

Understand how megaprojects work. Stability starts by having the right personnel in place from consultants to contractor to city staff to councillors. Another BigDig, Brandenburg is brewing. Was there collaboration to make the project work? Accountability is massive from all perspectives. How may Canadian megaprojects are being impacted in this fashion?

 

[kempes_78]

Well, initially, council added things to the scope, and the project team treated those elements as sacrosanct, without accounting for cost or evaluating tradeoffs.

What was added/decisions which raised costs?

• A 100% requirement that the project be underground in the core.
• Avoiding crossing Macleod Trail at grade (very strong preference to underground in the Beltline)
• Elevated in Inglewood instead of property acquisition
• Crossing the Elbow in the CPR ROW instead of near MacDonald Ave to avoid property acquisition/'cutting a community in two'
• Community gardens
• Deciding on Centre St without a fulsome evaluation of costs
• Remediation of the Highfield Road landfill to support potential TOD
• Relocating the Lynnwood and Ogden stations to better for pedestrians but more expensive locations
• Relocating the entire quarry park segment including station to a new ROW
• Splitting the contract in illogical ways
• Insisting that city council would be an effective project management board despite not being best practice, and then pivoting to a management board model after many key decisions had been made
• Insisting for almost a decade that a fixed price contract was not only possible, but desirable

Not an active decision, but the key factor in my mind

• Not empowering staff when decisions were being made to speak up to say:
  • This is not best practice, we can report make to the next meeting with options, including best practice, for this decision
  • This is not the right time to make this decision
  • We do not have the information today to weigh the tradeoffs of this decision
  • This preference will have cost implications: is this preference a $5 million preference, or a $500 million preference so we can make this decision without coming back to council

The biggest one:

• Analysis paralysis on the 2nd St tunnel downtown: sticking to the plan despite all geotechnical obstacles and not being open to alternatives, insisting that risk could be mitigated by more information beyond starting to dig

Escalation? A red herring: it has some validity but it is given too much weight. Start with the design basis and time allocated to achieve it. What was the business relationship between the City, designers and contractor?

 

[O-tac]

This LiveWire Calgary article goes into greater detail than the other media reports I've seen.

Green Line LRT cut down in south Calgary to stay within the budget - LiveWire Calgary

Scope changes on the Green Line LRT mean that the line will end four stops south of downtown Calgary, with one station brought to grade and another deferred to a later date. That’s the decision that Calgary city councillors ultimately made at the start of their summer wrap-up meeting on July 30...

livewirecalgary.com

Of note are the quotes from Councilors Evan Spencer and Terry Wong (their wards are directly impacted by the Greenline).

Ward 11 Coun. Evan Spencer amended the main motion so work could begin immediately on finding the cash to extend the line right away – in line with the original Green Line alignment agreed in 2017.

Much of the alignment down to Shepard has enabling works already done, including work that’s ongoing in the Ogden area.

“After nearly a decade of delays and setbacks, this project is moving forward, and I want us to immediately begin thinking beyond the core,” Spencer said.

“While this is super important…. just the necessity of getting the downtown figured out the necessity of doing the open-heart surgery that’s going to increase the viability of this project into future iterations and to future extensions, we need to be immediately thinking about tomorrow. The hard work to get to this day isn’t just about today.”

They wanted a scoping report to come back to the Executive Committee in the second quarter of 2025.

So this confirms what I was thinking and hoping, that they will simultaneously be applying for funding to start the next phase that goes further south.

Ward 7 Coun. Terry Wong said that this is just a start, and that we need the Green Line.

“This is equivalent of building the chassis to the ultimate engine. If you don’t start the chassis, you don’t start with building the roof or the trunk. This is a startup, the starting point,” he said.

“Ideally we want to go down to Seton. Ideally we want to get to North Pointe, but we got to start somewhere. I know a lot of people would have challenged me by saying, ‘you know, as a conservative, why would you do this?’ It’s about city building. That’s what it’s all about.”

This is actually a really good point by Wong about building the chassis before the rest of the car. I appreciate a conservative stepping up to support the greenline and explain this reality.

 

[darwink]

When they account for project costs, are TOD sites like Highfield Road Landfill used to offset costs? If they include the remediation, logically some portion of the future land sale proceeds should go back to the Green Line.

I think so. But the site won't pay for itself, so it really is cost decision. Same is when the city bought out Lilydale chicken. was it the cheapest choice, or just solves another file at the same time?

Escalation? A red herring: it has some validity but it is given too much weight. Start with the design basis and time allocated to achieve it. What was the business relationship between the City, designers and contractor?

So, many things. There is the pure escalation. That exists for sure. Then there is scope creep, that existed for sure. Then less than optimal risk management. Then less than optimal procurement planning.

To try to make the plan better, there was lots of delay. Likely, waiting made the costs higher and the project worse than our current situation, but, it would seem very bad if had moved forward at the time and had lets say a $1 billion overage in the 16th Ave - Elbow River tunnel.

 

[lemongrab]

I'm just watching the council meeting. Sounds like there will still be an additional storage and maintenance facility required at Shephard eventually. Which doesn't sound terribly efficient.

 

[Red Star]

Honestly if the tunnel gets shortened any further I'd almost change teams and be for cancelling the whole thing. If we want to secure Calgary as a car dominant city then you spend (less) billions on, as I like to say, a really long slow electric bus on rails with 10-15 minute frequency. It won't get anyone around particularly fast, it will have to wait at traffic lights, will get into traffic accidents, and will force people outside more to wait at even more glorified bus stops. By the time this thing is build this city will be closer to 2 million population, we deserve big boy infrastructure, not something that again goes 40km/h on a street. I will definitely be driving if that's the case. It will also be very bad for any businesses on those streets where it would be street level.

I generally agree with your sentiment. Rapid-transit should be 'rapid'. People living in Seton and North Pointe are going to drive if the train ends up being too slow or gets caught in a traffic accident.

However; I think the whole purpose of a low-floor LRT system is that it moves less people than a metro and is suppose to run at street level. The trade-off is that it's suppose to be cheaper than a metro system and the stations can integrate into the streetscape better. But then again, I'm not a transit expert by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[DougB]

How many billion would have been saved had the UCP and Rick McIver not put funding on hold for 2 years during COVID when we were still the only major project of this kind in NA? And all to review it and find nothing worth changing. And now they will point out this insufficient, butchered Phase 1 and say: “see! It wasn’t worth doing.”

How much could have been saved if city councillors hadn't been self-congrulating themselves over 4 years of scope creep between 2015 and 2019 and broken ground during the NDP years? At one time, they dreamed of building the full north to south line with bored tunnels and deep underground stations. The original 3 LRT lines were less than 3 years from inception to opening.

 

[darwink]

I generally agree with your sentiment. Rapid-transit should be 'rapid'. People living in Seton and North Pointe are going to drive if the train ends up being too slow or gets caught in a traffic accident.

However; I think the whole purpose of a low-floor LRT system is that it moves less people than a metro and is suppose to run at street level. The trade-off is that it's suppose to be cheaper than a metro system and the stations can integrate into the streetscape better. But then again, I'm not a transit expert by any stretch of the imagination.

You're right.

The project was designed and decisions were made over a period of 20 years without defining what success looked like, and minimum service standards to avoid unnecessary frills and to insure the project delivered what we value as a community.

This led to decisions based on aesthetics and trends without evaluation of whether those decisions served the overall goals of the project.

In hindsight this is easy to see, but at the time, it certainly wasn't.

 

[darwink]

The original 3 LRT lines were less than 3 years from inception to opening.

They were longer than that, but yeah, your point stands for sure. Ended up in a loop of analysis paralysis for sure, not realizing that delay was contributing as much to problems as potential risks from choosing the good but less than perfect option.

 

[accord1999]

So this confirms what I was thinking and hoping, that they will simultaneously be applying for funding to start the next phase that goes further south.


This is actually a really good point by Wong about building the chassis before the rest of the car. I appreciate a conservative stepping up to support the greenline and explain this reality.

They also said the same things back in 2017; but no new funding from Alberta or Canada has been given and the core continues to shrink. In 2015, the "core" was Beddington-Shepard, then 16th Avenue-Shepard.

“Building the core of the Green Line LRT is essential to supporting Calgary’s growth,” said Mac Logan, General Manager of Transportation for the City of Calgary, in a statement. “This staging recommendation is the right approach for Calgary, today and in the long-term. Stage 1 is ready for construction, demand for the line will only continue to grow, and with the economic downturn, this is the right time to invest in jobs and make this project a reality.”

One of the major factors for the increased cost in building the project revolves around the higher-than-expected cost for acquiring the land required for the ground-level sections of the track and stations.

“We have a unique opportunity now to apply for a significant amount of funding,” he added. “In building the most technically complex piece of the project first, we will be well positioned to expand the line in affordable, incremental pieces as more funding becomes available.”

Green Line LRT now half as long with price tag of $4.6 billion | News

The Green Line LRT project will now be 20 kms long instead of 40 kms long, and $100 million more expensive at $4.6 billion.

dailyhive.com

 

[darwink]

They also said the same things back in 2017; but no new funding from Alberta or Canada has been given

Even then, the additional funding was beyond 2026. It is the nature of the funding cycle.

 

[CalgaryTiger]

This is still not a go yet, is it? The city is celebrating a nothing accomplishment again, this still requires and provincial and federal sign-off. We're getting close, no doubt but unless I'm not understanding correctly, no new work is starting anytime soon.

 

[darwink]

This is still not a go yet, is it? The city is celebrating a nothing accomplishment again, this still requires and provincial and federal sign-off. We're getting close, no doubt but unless I'm not understanding correctly, no new work is starting anytime soon.

It requires federal sign off, not provincial, since it fulfills the requirements the province laid out.

That being said, the feds will sign off.

 

[Albertasaurus]

This is still not a go yet, is it? The city is celebrating a nothing accomplishment again, this still requires and provincial and federal sign-off. We're getting close, no doubt but unless I'm not understanding correctly, no new work is starting anytime soon.

Province said their commitment stands as long as the line still connects to the Red and Blue lines, and to their so-called "Grand Central Station" site. Feds need a new business case submitted in the next couple of weeks to, in their words, ensure it still meets the intent of their infrastructure funding program, but I am sure it will - I just hope they don't drag their feet on their review.

Edit: Darwink beat me to it

 

[CalgaryTiger]

a new business case

I mean I can see why they're including the additional phases in the business case. This phase has an awful business case. That doesn't mean they shouldn't get on with it but the city has tapped themselves out of any additional funding until 2032.

The City has found $705 million from:

$208 million from a Reserve for Future Capital.
$8 million per year 2025-2031 ($48 million).
-They mentioned a number like $252 million that will go towards the Green Line Fund for Operating & Maintenance but by my math that will be over 31.5 years if it is $8 million per year so is this them funding operating it until 2056?
$133 million from 75 percent of any future operating savings from 2025-2031.
$112 million in new growth, equating to $16 million per year from 2025-2031.

So as I see it there's not much left for anything else (fieldhouse, is the rest of Arts Commons and Stephen Ave funded?), let alone funding for extensions.

I guess if you're the city you can say you'll spend money in 2032 when the actual work on those sections begins... steal the idea from the feds. It is a classic government promise where they talk about future spending like it is happening now. So saying that, Trudeau probably cannot help himself but to also write a cheque for the next phases and just post-date it 2032. We'll be in Milhouse's second term by then and he won't cancel funding for an LRT Project that will finally reach Conservative voter rich ridings. I can see it now Pierre is the Grand Marshall of the Stampede Parade and is riding high after doing what couldn't be done; build the actual full Green Line, forgetting Justin wrote the cheque in 2024.