[MichaelS]

If politicians can admit (which means take blame for the lost decade and $Billion spent) that they actually don't know more than the professional transit planners, maybe we will get back to that initial vision, but I think it will take an election that completely removes anyone who has been involved in this so far.

Bell: Calgary Green Line, former city transit planning boss speaks out

Calgary Green Line under fire as former city transit planning boss speaks out on an LRT losing support as costs go up and the line shrinks

calgaryherald.com

 

[O-tac]

Please don’t quote Rick Bell articles. Just a smear job of Nenshi for his pal Danielle Smith. Bell finds every excuse to avoid building any new lrt.

 

[lemongrab]

If politicians can admit (which means take blame for the lost decade and $Billion spent) that they actually don't know more than the professional transit planners, maybe we will get back to that initial vision, but I think it will take an election that completely removes anyone who has been involved in this so far.

Bell: Calgary Green Line, former city transit planning boss speaks out

Calgary Green Line under fire as former city transit planning boss speaks out on an LRT losing support as costs go up and the line shrinks

calgaryherald.com

While agree with the overall argument, there is a lot of specious reasoning here, and I am highly skeptical of how he paints the process wrt to Nenshi. I found a city org chart from 2016 and McKendrick isn't listed. Most likely he reported to the Director of Transit who reported to the Transpo GM who reported to the City Manager who reported to Council. So I'm definitely going to take a grain of salt his supposed version of history with so many degrees of separation.

“It was Nenshi who came up with the grandiose idea of building a north line and a southeast line coming together and we could do the whole thing for $4.5 billion. That was pretty much the amount of study that went into it.”

I find it hard to believe that Nenshi sketched out the budget on the back of a napkin, but who knows. Seems more likely that McKendrick's team had the responsibility to come up with those numbers...the lady doth protest too much, me thinks. It'll be interesting to see if there is ever an academic case study on this...I suspect there will be plenty of damning quotes/info to go around. McKendrick may well be the most culpable 'patient zero' in opening this pandora's box with an absurd initial budget/scope, but who knows.

As for the city transit staff?

“Nobody was even asking us: Can you do this?”

“That was the end of their input to the project. It’s been all politicians since then. The politicians have done this all their own.”

So...if they weren't asked at all, what constitutes "the end of their input"? (presumably it "started" somewhere. Shirley Rick Bell wouldn't possibly string together two quotes wildly out of context!?!?!?

But there are huge problems. Running a train up Centre St. with its many intersections would be slower than the current buses.

No quotes here so this is just Bell spewing nonsense. The only reasoning I can think of here is that current busses are overloaded so early that they don't have to stop at all for the last half of the journey? (except for the traffic lights that apparently affect trains more than them or something).

The rest of the points are fairly reasonable, but I gotta question McKendrick's competence and credibility for using Rick Bell as his bullhorn (though tbf he wrote his own editorial on this in the past which was quite reasonable). It's nice to have experts speak up and raise issues the general public often doesn't consider, but it's a bad look to do it in service of grinding a political axe!

 

[outoftheice]

I enjoy how Sonya Sharp, as chair of the arena committee, gets called out on her shiny stars comment. I think the arena is a good investment for our city but to pretend it is an essential investment and expanding the LRT isn't is just eye-rolling to me.

The downsizing of Calgary’s Green Line | The Sprawl

And the upscaling of the Flames' new arena.

www.sprawlcalgary.com

 

[Surrealplaces]

Interesting video from a few days ago regarding the LRT and where it's at.

 

[Surrealplaces]

I've added a poll to the thread with three basic options. If there's another option that would make a good choice let me know and I'll add it.

 

[outoftheice]

The Premier had finally put to bed speculation that the UCP will block the revised Stage 1 from going forward. Assuming the Feds give the thumbs up this week, hopefully we can finally start talking about what happens next for not just Green Line but for transit investment in Calgary instead of relitigating 10 years of debates

Bell: Danielle Smith stiffs a Green Line rethink and folks are angry

Premier Danielle Smith has spoken out against Calgary's Green Line plan but will not push for a rethink of it despite her support for one

calgaryherald.com

 

[lemongrab]

From the sprawl article

DARSHPREET BHATTI: ... So if the objective is to build Green Line, then we also need to respect the work that’s been done already, and not reinstate it again. So as you know, five, six years is not a small timeframe to be able to go through all those permutations, land on a decision. And then to go back and to rehash all of that actually wouldn’t bring anything meaningful to the public.

This speaks to my recent rant, but the objective seems quite clearly to build the Green Line...not necessarily to deliver the best possible transit.

I understand the timeline challenges, but I don't accept the reasoning to "respect" prior work that has proven to be so substantially wrong over and over again. An absolutely critical decision was to commit to connecting the lines (thereby necessitating this whole notion of 'build the difficult part first'). That decision was based on costs that were orders of magnitude incorrect, and benefits that will be realized decades later than supposed at that time. If that isn't reason to reconsider a fundamental decision, I don't know what is!

I'd feel a lot better if they could honestly come out and say something like "we did explore some dramatic alternatives, but for various reasons this remains the best path". I probably wouldn't agree with that conclusion, but I'd appreciate that they have a lot more info than I do and are not simply burying their heads in the sand.

BHATTI: Two years of escalation alone will be worth more than whatever you're saving now. So you have to take all of those aspects into account. That you don’t have a public process that supports this new option. You don’t have the funding partners that have supported that new option because all of our funding is based on an approval. You need to design at a certain level to be able to go back to market. You’ve lost your current procurement, so we would be going to the market for the third time.

We already had significant challenges just bringing in the partners we do today after the previous cancellation. So the third time around, as an owner—I’m speaking very frankly—you would lose your leverage because the market would see you as a noncommittal owner. They would see you as an owner that’s changed their mind multiple times.

The funding partner challenge has been long evident (though I think the risk of delivering a white elephant isn't being properly factored) , but the procurement risk is a totally fair point that I had not really considered. I'm not sure its enough to excuse the sunk cost fallacy at play here, and I worry we are anchoring ourselves in the other direction.

Is it worse to be a noncommittal client who may balk if the costs are too great, or a client who will plow onward no matter how bad the cost vs benefit becomes?

 

[outoftheice]

Is it worse to be a noncommittal client who may balk if the costs are too great, or a client who will plow onward no matter how bad the cost vs benefit becomes?

In this case it is definitely worse to be a non-commital owner. Bhatti has said publicly before at Green Line Board meetings that their traffic light risk model went from a yellow light to a red light when they started looking at costing from local subcontractors who were unexpectedly pricing major risk premiums into their quotes due to the perceived political uncertainty around the project.

The Green Line team even went as far as trying to create incentives for non local subs to participate in the project to lower cost but it's a small industry and word travels quickly about risk and there are a lot of infrastructure dollars flowing into other cities as well, keeping those companies busy.

If the City of Calgary stopped procurement and had to go back to the market a third time, guaranteed they would receive costing from a market that had already been twice burned that would have off the charts risk premium pricing that would probably make any future iteration of a Green Line Stage 1 completely unfeasable to build.

 

[zenkz]

I've added a poll to the thread with three basic options. If there's another option that would make a good choice let me know and I'll add it.

I see two more quite reasonable options:

1. Go at-ground in Downtown with transit-priority signals (most likely with slightly altered route - for example 3rd ave SW instead of the 2nd and a short tunnel or overpass between CP mainline and 6th ave SW). Later can be replaced with a tunnel with reusing the at-ground line for a different LRT project.

2. Build a line from Seton - Shepard and then along Deerfoot and Anderson road to Anderson station of the red line. Then build the extension to downtown and convert the spur between Shepard and Anderson to a separate connector line with a possible extension further west. (This options adds LRT where it is needed most)

 

[Ramsayite]

I see two more quite reasonable options:

1. Go at-ground in Downtown with transit-priority signals (most likely with slightly altered route - for example 3rd ave SW instead of the 2nd and a short tunnel or overpass between CP mainline and 6th ave SW). Later can be replaced with a tunnel with reusing the at-ground line for a different LRT project.

2. Build a line from Seton - Shepard and then along Deerfoot and Anderson road to Anderson station of the red line. Then build the extension to downtown and convert the spur between Shepard and Anderson to a separate connector line with a possible extension further west. (This options adds LRT where it is needed most)

This is "redesign the whole system" and quite honestly, I think this sort of thing is just likely to cause substantially more delays, costs, and no green line.

The answer to me is clear. The cost of the line has escalated. We pay the escalated cost just like we were willing to do (?) for the arena. That starts with paying for the core section..then let's fund another $6b and get the whole thing done.

 

[lemongrab]

In this case it is definitely worse to be a non-commital owner. Bhatti has said publicly before at Green Line Board meetings that their traffic light risk model went from a yellow light to a red light when they started looking at costing from local subcontractors who were unexpectedly pricing major risk premiums into their quotes due to the perceived political uncertainty around the project.

The Green Line team even went as far as trying to create incentives for non local subs to participate in the project to lower cost but it's a small industry and word travels quickly about risk and there are a lot of infrastructure dollars flowing into other cities as well, keeping those companies busy.

If the City of Calgary stopped procurement and had to go back to the market a third time, guaranteed they would receive costing from a market that had already been twice burned that would have off the charts risk premium pricing that would probably make any future iteration of a Green Line Stage 1 completely unfeasable to build.

Are we not already demonstrating our inability to commit by cutting this scope in half? Presumably a lot of flexibility was built into the procurement process, but for most vendors we are only moving forward on about half of what we went to market for. We kinda look like idiots either way.

The alternative scenario of going to SEBRT and pivoting focus to NLRT means:

- Earthworks, bridges, utilities, etc continue as planned
- rolling stock, tracks, and signals delayed (most of these being the latest deliverables years from now)
- tunnels pretty much cancelled
- continue Shephard MSF; figure out Aurora MSF instead of the Highfield thing now

It's just a different way to de-scope, and the reputational harm would be more limited to non-local specialists. A lot of the design work stays the same - its good that it's been done with the intent of LRT.

I guess I'm not sure how different it would really be to go to market 'again' for NLRT than it will be to go back to market 'again' for extensions off this stub.

 

[darwink]

Its all about the tunnel. They've been consulting informally and formally about the tunnel for 8 years. The tunnel builders are few, and have a lot of business going on, even in Canada. 3 projects simultaneously boring in Toronto, one in Vancouver, one in Montreal. There isn't a lack of work.

IMO, if we had pulled the trigger on single bore massive tunnel with a full 6 underground stations for all of the beltline to 16th in 2017, it would have been cheaper, even with overruns, than the 1.5 (and 1 roughed in) underground stations covering half the distance we get today.

By trying to optimize the problem and reduce risk we instead ruined it.

Now, if we had started that big tunnel it in 2017, I bet a contract for $1.8 billion or so would have been signed, and in 2022-23 there would have been a cash call for another $500mm-$1 billion.

In that situation we would feel we had made a mistake even if in actuality delaying (what we did do) was the mistake all along.

We traded a bit more certainty and a tiny bit of less risk for 7 years and a billion dollars. It was NOT worth it.

 

[accord1999]

Its all about the tunnel. They've been consulting informally and formally about the tunnel for 8 years. The tunnel builders are few, and have a lot of business going on, even in Canada. 3 projects simultaneously boring in Toronto, one in Vancouver, one in Montreal. There isn't a lack of work.

IMO, if we had pulled the trigger on single bore massive tunnel with a full 6 underground stations for all of the beltline to 16th in 2017, it would have been cheaper, even with overruns, than the 1.5 (and 1 roughed in) underground stations covering half the distance we get today.

By trying to optimize the problem and reduce risk we instead ruined it.

Now, if we had started that big tunnel it in 2017, I bet a contract for $1.8 billion or so would have been signed, and in 2022-23 there would have been a cash call for another $500mm-$1 billion.

Was it actually possible to make that decision in 2017? Paul Giannelia wasn't hired until March 2018 and at his first appearance at Council, he had a timeline of Q1 2019 for the RFP.

https://pub-calgary.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=121431

And even in October 2018, a presentation he made to the Transport/Transit committee noted that they were still deciding on a dual-bore versus single-bore tunnel.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-green-line-tunnel-downtown-1.4851481

https://pub-calgary.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=69213

But then he left a month later, I've always been curious as to why and how that set the Green Line back.

 

[darwink]

Was it actually possible to make that decision in 2017? Paul Giannelia wasn't hired until March 2018 and at his first appearance at Council, he had a timeline of Q1 2019 for the RFP.

https://pub-calgary.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=121431

And even in October 2018, a presentation he made to the Transport/Transit committee noted that they were still deciding on a dual-bore versus single-bore tunnel.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-green-line-tunnel-downtown-1.4851481

https://pub-calgary.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=69213

But then he left a month later, I've always been curious as to why and how that set the Green Line back.

That is the thing really, still deciding. But in June 2017, the Transportation and Transit Committee approved the final alignment. Before that approval, it was clear, due to pushback from BOMA, that downtown would be underground. Due to pushback from the Stampede, the Beltline would be as well. At a meeting I remember to be contemporaneous, perhaps the very same meeting, the contracting got off track when Council started listening to local industry and talking about breaking the project into little chunks so different contractors could bid on different bits.

Council believed it could have everything, a fixed cost project, broken up into bite sized contracts, that was underground.

With that mandate, administration attempted to deliver the contract, and could never get all those things aligned, so spun their wheels until 2020/1 iirc when the Green Line Board was appointed.

This from a Herald article is great: "Giannelia’s repeated emphasis on cost control wasn’t always well received by councillors looking for broader details on station design and the Green Line’s impact on surrounding neighbourhoods."

Gondek's response was "Everything is about cost-per-kilometre but it’s not about ridership and modal progression, and it tends to be buried in page seven of whatever report we’re getting. While I respect and appreciate everything has to be done in a cost-effective manner, I am not seeing attention to very important considerations."