[darwink]

So a lot of things going on.

First, council hates risk. If the lawyers say there is ANY chance something will happen, council treats that advice as the lawyers saying you have to account for that happening. Not a lets say 0.5% chance something would happen, if the courts overturned a precedent. The lawyers CANNOT categorically say something won't happen. So council gets to a place where all it sees are risk. For a project with near 50% contingencies already. So when a councillor asks 'can we be assured that OMERS won't sue us due to us putting an elevated track next to their office ' the lawyer can't say no. Until we see the fee tables next to eachother, we can't honestly say if this is $100 million of the difference, or $1 billion of the difference. Given council rejected elevated due to property value impacts in the past, if they asked admin to do a calculation of lets say, 5% of the value of adjacent properties, just as a guess, that could be a huge portion of the amount.

Otherwise I can't see why the city is talking about substantially higher risks. Elevated has way less risks of every other type than underground. It is possible that the city has so much tunnel vision that somehow they've convinced themselves that a tunnel is cheaper than elevated.

Second, unless these are released, I'm not convinced that 1) AECOM could screw up that much given they had months and 2) that the city didn't motivated reason their way into a box, to convince themselves they were right all along.

It is just highly improbable that the city is right in their assessment here.

 

[haltcatchfire]

The CAF Urbos 100's have been ordered and are arriving in 2027.

Shovels need to go into the ground in 2025 and this thing needs to be built from at least Shepard to 4th Street.

These thing are going to sit in some storage yard for 15-20 years before there's track for them to roll on. Right next to the cases and cases of Turkish "tylenol'.

 

[CalgaryTiger]

Second, unless these are released, I'm not convinced that 1) AECOM could screw up that much given they had months and 2) that the city didn't motivated reason their way into a box, to convince themselves they were right all along

It isn't a screwup, it wasn't in their scope.

Council is putting themselves into a pretzel. If we had a competent mayor that could see through the noise this wouldn't be so complicated for them.

 

[DiscoStu]

I'm onboard (toot toot) elevated trains for the totally selfish reason of getting some sweet views and photo opportunities out of them.

 

[lemongrab]

There is a world where buses can fill in the gap between 4th Street SE and downtown. It actually gives the city an opportunity to implement a proper downtown bus circulation plan. In the next 6 months we should have a airport rail study and provincial rail study come out that should establish a crown corporation for rail projects. The crown corporation that is likely required to move this any other future rail project forward. The goal should be to talk about what can be done (4th to Shepard) and not worry so much about what can't be done (anything north or west of 4th Street SE).

Between 2025 and the opening of the line you can give yourself options to flesh out for next phases. The city is being too absolute in their thinking, plans can always change again. As they have many times since we thought this was a sure thing. Worrying about accepting full responsibility on a 5% plan is a little premature, although understood. Accept the plan and get it to 60%, that will take years. You already have the 60% tunnel plan. Once their both at the 60% design point, compare apples to apples and at that point you can always change the plan again and go back to the tunnel with new funding partners in the Federal Conservatives and Provincial NDP (can you imagine).

Ooph. That would mean a three seat ride for the foreseeable future, and four seats if transferring to 7th! Fully agreed on the DT bus plan, but I think it would be incredibly foolish to build any kind of 'foundation' that is so heavily reliant on future expansion at this point.

We are on the cusp of a truly magnificent transit experiment: let's find out how good BRT can be when it has actually been designed like an LRT!

 

[CalgaryTiger]

I think it would be incredibly foolish to build any kind of 'foundation' that is so heavily reliant on future expansion at this point.

4th to Shepard isn't a line built on future hope. Unless we become an actual broken country it will be added on to. There's a chance here to save all the furniture. Ironically it will take courage to do less even though it is the more prudent thing.

 

[InfrastructureEnthusiast]

Ooph. That would mean a three seat ride for the foreseeable future, and four seats if transferring to 7th! Fully agreed on the DT bus plan, but I think it would be incredibly foolish to build any kind of 'foundation' that is so heavily reliant on future expansion at this point.

We are on the cusp of a truly magnificent transit experiment: let's find out how good BRT can be when it has actually been designed like an LRT!

No need to run that experiment, Ottawa did it first, and by many accounts there was better service with the busways than the converted LRT lines.

But Ottawa made their choices... Calgary could learn a lesson here, and from a city they could sell their low floor trains to!

 

[darwink]

It isn't a screwup, it wasn't in their scope.

Council is putting themselves into a pretzel. If we had a competent mayor that could see through the noise this wouldn't be so complicated for them.

The city might be kremlinologing, assuming that since it wasn't in the scope of the contract to consider the costs of the LRV order (because why would it be, it is a sunk cost!), that therefor, of course the budget doesn't include the LRV order.

 

[darwink]

No need to run that experiment, Ottawa did it first, and by many accounts there was better service with the busways than the converted LRT lines.

But Ottawa made their choices... Calgary could learn a lesson here, and from a city they could sell their low floor trains to!

That is because they cut so many corners trying to stay within their budget, and they transferred so much risk their P3 partner had to be sued to not abandon the contract, and the city ended up paying a settlement of some sort to stop the contract from going belly up.

Staying with the BRT as built/operated was not an option. It was slowly strangling the city with the number of buses and the operating costs it imposed.

 

[InfrastructureEnthusiast]

That is because they cut so many corners trying to stay within their budget, and they transferred so much risk their P3 partner had to be sued to not abandon the contract, and the city ended up paying a settlement of some sort to stop the contract from going belly up.

Staying with the BRT as built/operated was not an option. It was slowly strangling the city with the number of buses and the operating costs it imposed.

Well I guess there's lots of lessons to learn from Ottawa then!

Fortunately for Calgary, the SE usage isn't expected to be as significant as the other legs, and robobuses are becoming a viable option to help keep operating costs reasonable.

And if the ROW gets built triple-wide as originally envisioned it can always be upgraded to LRT later on if and when demand warrants.

But for now, its pretty clear there are significant issues with the way megaprojects are planned and paid for, so maybe its best to hold back on those until better methods are in place.

 

[lemongrab]

4th to Shepard isn't a line built on future hope. Unless we become an actual broken country it will be added on to. There's a chance here to save all the furniture. Ironically it will take courage to do less even though it is the more prudent thing.

Agree to disagree I guess. I don't doubt that it would eventually be added on to - at the expense of all other priorities. I just don't see how that process will become any smoother.

Even with an NDP gov't (hope), I don't think we can count on this being an immediate/top priority for them. Wouldn't it be better in the long run to establish the provincial transit authority for these projects? Maybe they'd throw us cash at the same time, but I wouldn't bank on it.

I just see a lot of white elephant risk if you lay track that isn't immediately useful. The only upside I see is exploiting sunk costs. Both paths can get us to the same place over 30-50 years. I think we'll get there better taking smaller bites with simpler critical paths.

 

[darwink]

Well I guess there's lots of lessons to learn from Ottawa then!

Fortunately for Calgary, the SE usage isn't expected to be as significant as the other legs, and robobuses are becoming a viable option to help keep operating costs reasonable.

And if the ROW gets built triple-wide as originally envisioned it can always be upgraded to LRT later on if and when demand warrants.

But for now, its pretty clear there are significant issues with the way megaprojects are planned and paid for, so maybe its best to hold back on those until better methods are in place.

Without a fully grade separated solution, ain't no robo-buses coming anytime soon. The problem isn't the ROW east of the elbow. It never was. Whether it is buses, low floor lrvs, high floor lrv, mini metro, automated light metro, or Vegas loop style. The problem is downtown, both providing something better than exists currently for potential users and not making other things worse for non users. There are only two ways to do that, elevated, or a tunnel, or a combination of the two.

You only address the problem, by focusing on the problem. The problem is that between 9th and 7th on 2nd street specifically, the normally bad geology of the downtown/beltline glacial floodplain is horrendously worse. You can throw money at the problem, or avoid it. Those are the two options. You can avoid it by going much further west (6ths is viable), or going much further east, both which create spillover problems, or by going up which is the equivalent of an aesthetic war crime to many people.

 

[Red Star]

...and then what?

Hope is not a plan, and I can't conceive any plan for the next steps that don't start with the word hope...

Then we have a train from 4th street to Shepard.

And then when more funding is available, the line can be extended 1.5km to 7th Ave. City building never stops. But we need to get the ball rolling on the project now.

 

[CBBarnett]

Without a fully grade separated solution, ain't no robo-buses coming anytime soon. The problem isn't the ROW east of the elbow. It never was. Whether it is buses, low floor lrvs, high floor lrv, mini metro, automated light metro, or Vegas loop style. The problem is downtown, both providing something better than exists currently for potential users and not making other things worse for non users. There are only two ways to do that, elevated, or a tunnel, or a combination of the two.

You only address the problem, by focusing on the problem. The problem is that between 9th and 7th on 2nd street specifically, the normally bad geology of the downtown/beltline glacial floodplain is horrendously worse. You can throw money at the problem, or avoid it. Those are the two options. You can avoid it by going much further west (6ths is viable), or going much further east, both which create spillover problems, or by going up which is the equivalent of an aesthetic war crime to many people.

Good summary @darwink .

Does anyone have access to that underground geology alignment map from years ago? I recall that was a big part of the 2nd Street decision in the first place. Does the conditions change that dramatically between streets only a block or two apart?

 

[Red Star]

I'm still on team busway, too. I think you just figure out a full BRT solution for the heart of downtown that also serves yellow/purple/301/etc. Tons of options for that, but I'd look at 1st SW as transit only N-S connection and then 6th and probably 9th. Or maybe its 6th and 10th/11th

And of course the critical path of opening a BRT is much shorter and simpler than the LRT, and you don't even need this figured out perfectly before you launch service. I wonder if platform heights as currently designed would work for the rest of the SE ROW?

I'm sure nobody wants to own the decision to downgrade to busses, but I wonder if it might actually be more popular at this point than we'd expect?

I don't think a BRT transitway is the right system for the SE and NC corridor.

1. Operation costs are high for BRT as you have to run lots of buses frequently to achieve decent ridership (Paying operators is expensive for a transit system). This means you can't provide as much service as a rail based service.
2. Buses don't last as long as trains and require more expensive, frequent and extensive maintenance (Electric motors are simple).
3. BRT systems are difficult to convert to LRT.
4. Buses are loud and polluting.