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

That being said, the feds will sign off.
 
CalgaryTiger said:
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.
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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
 
Albertasaurus said:
a new business case
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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.
 
O-tac said:
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.”
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During the height of the public bickering, the Green Line still only claimed that each month of delay added $1.5M to the capital costs, not the $100+M we have seen.

 
Ramsayite said:
Just some rough napkin math to go with my post above:

Average cost to own a vehicle per year is about $15,000 (The Star says $16644)

Assume 400,000 cars in Calgary, that's $6billion annually.

In other words, Calgarians are collectively paying for an entire green line every year, just in personal vehicle costs. A decade of car ownership costs builds this project 10 times over.

That doesn't include any of the infrastructure costs, road maintenance, environmental or other effects etc. That's just the atomized individual cost of car ownership.
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But that's for over 3 million passenger-trips a day, enabling travel to all parts of the city and even beyond. Green Line Stage 1 will be lucky to get the claimed 32K trips/day and will have little to no benefit to 95% of the population.
 
darwink said:
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.
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Sorry to reply to an old comment, but I thought this is why the cars are 42m in the first place - you can fit two of them on a N-S block when (lol, I mean if) this thing ever goes up Centre St.

These blocks are 100 m from centre line to centre line. With roads, 84 m from corner to corner doesn't sound too far off.
 
accord1999 said:
During the height of the public bickering, the Green Line still only claimed that each month of delay added $1.5M to the capital costs, not the $100+M we have seen.
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That article is from March 2021; I can think of one thing that's changed since then:
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Not the only element to be sure, but I wonder how much this contributes.
 

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CalgaryTiger said:
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.
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The city accumulates additional reserves most years, and does not 'prebook' projections of outside contributions into reserves.

There is also, you know, raising revenue to pay for things, as the city portion of the Green Line already is.
 
lemongrab said:
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.
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Looking at the Google maps of Highfield, it's a pretty small plot and probably can't maintain and store much more than the dozen or so cars they only need for the new Stage 1.
 
darwink said:
The city accumulates additional reserves most years, and does not 'prebook' projections of outside contributions into reserves.

There is also, you know, raising revenue to pay for things, as the city portion of the Green Line already is.
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I guess I also wonder if we should just relax for a bit. Work on keeping the lights on and maintenance (that pipe will probably continually be an issue). City building never stops but personally I kind of feel like we're a bit out over our skis fiscally. I don't feel like people are really calling for anymore city shaping projects. And like I said I don't actually think any project like that is just sitting there waiting. The province looks like it is going to take the regional and provincial rail thing on so that shouldn't burden the city.

I'm sure the next mayor or council will come in with some new ideas but maybe time for this set to go through the motions a bit and be boring until the next election.
 
accord1999 said:
But that's for over 3 million passenger-trips a day, enabling travel to all parts of the city and even beyond. Green Line Stage 1 will be lucky to get the claimed 32K trips/day and will have little to no benefit to 95% of the population.
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The point isn't a comparison like-for-like of service, otherwise, I would have included the hundreds of billions of dollars of road infrastructure and the additional billions per year in maintenance and the additional billions per year in ecological destruction, and the additional billions per year in supplementary infrastructure that cost more due to sprawl, and the additional billions in healthcare costs and so on to go with the 3million passenger trips.

Not my point. The point is that $6 billion is actually a pretty fractional cost when talking about citywide transportation.

The point is that when billions of dollars of expenses for some one mode (cars) is divided across individuals as personal transactions it obfuscates our ability to compare that to alternate modes wherein that money is pooled instead. And this creates a natural sticker shock bias where we are totally surprised by big projects like this one and completely unaware that we are spending multiple times this yearly quite easily on transportation.

Tl;Dr calgarians and Albertans at large have a shit ton of money to spend and are already uncritically spending it on the least efficient and least scalable form of transportation while balking at the alternatives and calling it critical thinking.
 
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