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Originally Posted by outoftheice
I always find it interesting when people speak as if the $4.9 billion Green Line budget is all the money that will ever be available for this project. Let's not forget the federal government is planning on spending $3 billion/year on public transit beginning in 2026. Calgary's share of this will be several hundred millions dollars per year so before the Shepard to Eau Claire stage is even finished construction there could be another half billion dollars in the pot to cover any cost over-runs and build over the river and up to 16th. That doesn't even account for the fact 2 provincial elections will be fought in that timeline and a replacement for MSI will most likely need to be proposed which is hundreds of millions of dollars more into the pot. Green Line will be built and it will be built north of the river and up Centre St it's now just more of a question of whether construction will start in 2028 or earlier.
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The Green Line has the super awesome feature that it increases operational costs both absolutely and on a per rider basis, making one question why it is being built since the whole point of using larger electric vehicles is to reduce costs vs running lots of diesel buses.
So it's not clear to me where additional money for extension is going to come from, at least on the city end. At least further capital spend should make the Green Line less of a financial burden if they extend it to somewhere actually useful.
I do hope in the next few years we actually get some information from the city on what land actually needs to be procured on Centre Street. I still can't help the feeling that it will be much harder to build on street than they present and the city knows this. Luckily with zero chance of it being built north of the river any time soon, people with less personal investment in the project will be able to look at it more critically.
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