O-tac
Active Member
How can anyone trust anything the UCP says when they contradict themselves and speak out of both sides of their mouth?
- Thread starter Surrealplaces
- Start date
outoftheice
Active Member
They manifested their BS warnings into reality. The City did listen to them 6 years ago... back when Gray was engaging in good faith. His group's top ask was an independent board of experts to deliver the project because they were convinced those experts would agree with them about dropping the tunnel and building their SE LRT dream.
So the City created an independent Green Line Board and hired top project experts to take project management out of the hands of the politicians. Suprise, surprise, those project experts confirmed the City was on the right track with staging and risk management and the Gray group was out to lunch.
From that point on the Gray group was no longer engaging in good faith and instead set out to create so much fear and uncertainty that the market would walk away from the project or the politicians would. They finally found a premier willing to ignore years of reviews and studies from actual experts and instead listen to 9 retired guys with large chequebooks and a few napkin sketches and we find ourselves where we are today.
InfrastructureEnthusiast
New Member
I've seen a lot of news about the water main problems in the west end, are the centre st utils of a similar age?
If so, it might make sense to take that row of houses and cut & cover new utils and the green line..
InfrastructureEnthusiast
New Member
Running the line elevated downtown is definitely interesting, having stations integrated with the +15 network would certainly be unique, not sure if any other city that has something like that?
If the whole line was built grade separated, it would also open up the option of having a spur connecting to the airport and blue line as well, maybe even further east to support new high density developments.
Calgary might be able to get its own version of Canada line after all...
Abstract&Unity
New Member
yess I agree!! that would be a good use of the bridge. It would also be cool to see a bike lane beside it too. lessen the bike traffic on street level.
Silence&Motion
Senior Member
I agree that we shouldn't pit road and transit investments against each other, in part because lack of transit investment will ultimately create negative impacts on roads as well. With the collapse of the Green Line, Calgary's existing road network will have to absorb the bulk of increased car and bus traffic as the city's population grows. And with no way to meaningfully increase the capacity of the road network within the interior of the city, congestion will continue to get worse and worse.
We are following the same path that Toronto took in becoming one of the worst cities in North America for commute times. Toronto basically stopped building mass transit in the 1980s, in part because Conservative governments repeatedly cancelled transit expansion plans whenever they got into power (Harris literally filling in the tunnel that was dug for the Eglinton Subway in the 1990s, Rob Ford attempting to cancel every LRT project in the 2010s). Since 1980, while the Toronto CMA more than doubled in size from 3 million to 6.2 million, the city only increased its number of subway stations by 17%. It's road network was essentially unchanged. The result is that having to travel long distances in Toronto is miserable. The Ontario government is now desparately trying to dig itself out of the hole, but it will take generations to get that done.
Here in Calgary, our last new LRT station was built in 2014. We are about to pass the record for the longest stretch between expansions (previously set between 1990 and 2001). We are almost certainly looking at 20 years at least with no transit expansion. What are the Crowchild, Glenmore, and Deerfoot going to look like by 2035 when there's more than 2 million people living in the CMA? What's it going to feel like stepping onto the Ctrain in rush hour?
outoftheice
Active Member
Very well said. If you hate driving in the GTA you're going to hate the Calgary of 2035 and we will be able to trace the reason why back to today's decision by the UCP.
lemongrab
Active Member
I don't think this is really true. The GL Board's mandate was actually pretty narrow: to deliver the project as already planned. A plan arrived at through much acrimony, and amidst the darkest days of COVID:
2017 - Shepherd to 16th
Nov 2019 - this article is really worth a read as it gives a great sense of what a shit show things were at this time https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/city-council-green-line-lrt-1.5361978 . Lots of different people proposing lots of different ideas...it seems evident that everyone is aware of major feasibility issues
June 1 2020 - https://globalnews.ca/news/7010503/... includes a,ground level and four underground).
June 18, 2020 - And then after two weeks of more infighting, everyone through up their hands and agreed it was good enough https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/city-council-green-line-lrt-1.5616976
July 2020 - Green Line Board bylaw passed (but I think it still took a bunch of time to hire the chair and other members?)
So in the span of 6-8 months - 3 of which were the first 3 months of COVID - things went from total dysfunction to scrapping the tunnel north of the river and running at grade. Everyone clapped the chalk off their hands and said: hey GLB, your mandate is to build this plan (and only this plan)!
Since then we've only seen the GLB chop segments off, with no real fundamental changes. Perhaps that means they fully agree with the plan they were given, but if you listened to the Board Chair at last month's council meeting, he was quite careful to explain that they limited their considerations to their mandate.
darwink
Senior Member
Yeah. Council should have (or the Mayor exhorted in private once the difficulties became more clear), that the board should consider drastic changes to deliver on the mobility objectives of the green line program.
Alex_YYC
Senior Member
What a clusterfuck this whole thing has been, with plenty of blame to go around.
The question now is do we do a redesign from the stampede grounds through downtown which would most likely be an elevated option?
Or, do we hang in there and wait a couple of years until the UCP is booted out of office and try this again?
I was originally against the elevated option, but now I’m thinking this is the most logical way to get this done the green line from Victoria Park South can stay the same. All we would do is change the downtown section to elevated and take another run at it.
The question now is do we do a redesign from the stampede grounds through downtown which would most likely be an elevated option?
Or, do we hang in there and wait a couple of years until the UCP is booted out of office and try this again?
I was originally against the elevated option, but now I’m thinking this is the most logical way to get this done the green line from Victoria Park South can stay the same. All we would do is change the downtown section to elevated and take another run at it.
thecivilengineer
New Member
Wait until next election and next...!!! Everyone to blame, starting from previous mayor. and idk with UCPs plan of merging line on 7th ave and grand station?
I don't think making the SE green line a branch off 7 Ave is completely insane. It could cross under the CP tracks near 5 St SE.
Any track capacity issues on 7 Ave would have to be solved by building the 8 Ave tunnel for the red line, making 7 Ave blue/green SE only. But at least 8 Ave is a comparatively shallow tunnel.
This would leave the new low-floor train cars for use on the north-central line, which would be completely separate and not connected to the SE green line.
Any track capacity issues on 7 Ave would have to be solved by building the 8 Ave tunnel for the red line, making 7 Ave blue/green SE only. But at least 8 Ave is a comparatively shallow tunnel.
This would leave the new low-floor train cars for use on the north-central line, which would be completely separate and not connected to the SE green line.
darwink
Senior Member
This was studied and rejected for the reasons you cite.
What reasons not to build it did I cite? That it would require the red line tunnel down the road, or that it would be disconnected from the north line, or that the low-floor vehicles would only be usable for the north? None of these are dealbreakers in my view, especially now that we know the alternative.
thecivilengineer
New Member
So total wastage of time and money. This is priority project, they should do anything to make it happen without delaying and learning from past LRT projects.