Calgary Public Transit II

[Radley77]

An awesome West LRT Video Construction Montage

• Video Link

Reference: http://www.westlrt.ca/

[UofC.engineer]

Originally Posted by polishavenger

Any monkey could have balanced budgets on the back of record oil and gas royalties, and thats just what we got, a great politician, but a bad leader

U couldn't...not when oil was $15-20 a barrel in the early/mid 90's. Ralph Klein was one of the few politicians that had the balls to run a balanced budget. Most politicians give in to the demands of the people and rack up huge deficits, it's one of the flaws of democracy.

Don't get me wrong, i think democracy is the best system out there, but sometimes what the people want and what is good for the state can be two different things.

Oil prices started going up in 2004 and peaked in 07/08, don't believe me??? check this out.
http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_rate/historical_oil_prices_table.asp

So do your research before u say something, or else u might look foolish to others.

[J-D]

Originally Posted by UofC.engineer

U couldn't...not when oil was $15-20 a barrel in the early/mid 90's. Ralph Klein was one of the few politicians that had the balls to run a balanced budget. Most politicians give in to the demands of the people and rack up huge deficits, it's one of the flaws of democracy.

Don't get me wrong, i think democracy is the best system out there, but sometimes what the people want and what is good for the state can be two different things.

Oil prices started going up in 2004 and peaked in 07/08, don't believe me??? check this out.
http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_rate/historical_oil_prices_table.asp

So do your research before u say something, or else u might look foolish to others.

Normally I wouldn't call anybody out on this, but if you're trying to put forth an argument that somebody else is looking foolish to others you probably shouldn't use "u" instead of "you". With that said, I think you seem to be over generalizing many of the intricacies that play out with representative democracy. This thread is about transit, not Ralph Klein or Stelmach.

[UofC.engineer]

A video about a little girl travelling to a far away school made people talk about housing, inequality and politics for two-three solid pages a little while ago, I post one off shoot comment and...anyways...whatever...

...moving on...

Nenshi stated that Calgary requires about $4 billion in transit investment at a National Infrastructure Summit in Regina. Here's the article

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Nenshi...ructure+deficit+acute/4176000/story.html

I heard the SE LRT with a downtown subway under 2nd ST SW would cost $2.2 billion

8th ave Subway I have no clue??? maybe $500 million for 2.3 km??? anybody know?

Current Nose Creek alignment would probably run $700-800 million from memorial -> Aurora business park -> Harvest Hills Blvd -> Stoney Trail(15-16km), although Nenshi doesn't prefer this alignment.

The rest would probably go to extensions and busways. But these numbers are pure speculation

[fusili]

Originally Posted by UofC.engineer

Current Nose Creek alignment would probably run $700-800 million from memorial -> Aurora business park -> Harvest Hills Blvd -> Stoney Trail(15-16km), although Nenshi doesn't prefer this alignment.

The Centre Street subway would be considerably more expensive and considerably more effective.

[UofC.engineer]

I guess we can bring the 8 ave subway estimate to $2.3 billion dollars for 2.3km according to this article.

"However, the subway construction cost is very expensive, in accordance with international standards for the Mass Transit Railway Construction cost estimates into account, total cost per kilometer of subway is about 1 billion U.S. dollars"

http://eng.hi138.com/?i64176

If there was only a way we could bring the cost down...

[Ferreth]

Originally Posted by UofC.engineer

I guess we can bring the 8 ave subway estimate to $2.3 billion dollars for 2.3km according to this article.

"However, the subway construction cost is very expensive, in accordance with international standards for the Mass Transit Railway Construction cost estimates into account, total cost per kilometer of subway is about 1 billion U.S. dollars"

http://eng.hi138.com/?i64176

If there was only a way we could bring the cost down...

There are many factors affecting the cost of subway - almost like saying the average price of a house in Calgary is $500K therefore my house is going to cost $500K. I'd say this is a bit high as we would be doing cut 'n cover.

That being said, I can't see this being any less that 0.7B, (I seem to recall a rough estimate of 0.5B a few years back, factoring in inflation...). Add in things like a rough in for 2nd St. N-S expansion, unfavorable ground water, and a lot of utility relocation, who knows in the end what this is going to cost.

[UofC.engineer]

I hope you're right about the cost

Stupid question time:
The downtown functional subway study was comissioned by bronco in 07' and I heard it was suppose to come out in 09/10. Has it come out yet or is still in the works?? I can't seem to find any info online.

[The Avid Pedestrian]

Recognizing the importance/need for an 8th Ave subway, I'm very concerned about the use of Cut and Cover for construction along 8th.

It would be a shame to tear up Stephen for any amount of time - they did ~6km of C/C along Cambie in just over 2 years. Anyone with a Geotechnical background comment on how this timeline might scale?

If Centre Street Subway goes forward, I would think boring would be the way to go to avoid disruption and keep the surface footprint to stations and tunnel portal/sending/receiving shafts.

It might be time for Calgary to invest in a TBM. Bore 8th Ave, 2nd st, and Centre street. More expensive sure, but MUCH LESS disruption and some savings/efficiencies in using the same TBM 3 times.

Thoughts?

[The Avid Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by UofC.engineer

I hope you're right about the cost

Stupid question time:
The downtown functional subway study was comissioned by bronco in 07' and I heard it was suppose to come out in 09/10. Has it come out yet or is still in the works?? I can't seem to find any info online.

I can't either, and it's been discussed on this forum long before I was a member.

We should email or Tweet at Nenshi. Anyone following him on Twitter?

[MalcolmTucker]

Can't really bore 8th Ave very easily with the tie in to existing tunnels at city hall, no good launch sites, and the depth it is notionally planned at (trains running on what would be the 'P2' level of most towers)

Even then, with the number of stations planned you are going to have multiple station boxes at almost full avenue width at least 130m long, plus likely two needed crossover boxes near each end. So you are going to have huge holes either way.

If you can convince city council to do only 3 stations with rough-ins at one for the connection to SE-LRT I think you could get it done sub $450 million.

Every station on top of that add $75 to $100 million.

Big engineering question still is can you get the LRT onto the bridge to sunnyside without needing major realignment of 4th Ave too far south to make it unreasonable since the Bow Trail connector that was to elevate 4th Ave was never built.

[mersar]

Originally Posted by Sir.Humphrey.Appleby

Can't really bore 8th Ave very easily with the tie in to existing tunnels at city hall, no good launch sites, and the depth it is notionally planned at (trains running on what would be the 'P2' level of most towers)

Even then, with the number of stations planned you are going to have multiple station boxes at almost full avenue width at least 130m long, plus likely two needed crossover boxes near each end. So you are going to have huge holes either way.

If you can convince city council to do only 3 stations with rough-ins at one for the connection to SE-LRT I think you could get it done sub $450 million.

Every station on top of that add $75 to $100 million.

Big engineering question still is can you get the LRT onto the bridge to sunnyside without needing major realignment of 4th Ave too far south to make it unreasonable since the Bow Trail connector that was to elevate 4th Ave was never built.

The connection at the end at the Louise Bridge is the big question. I think it might be possible, but its going to be close. Elevating 4th might be the only workable solution, and building it would be quite complicated as you wouldnt want to close too many lanes at a time, not to mention you'd also need to keep the Ctrain running at the same time. The only other option might be to look at bringing the train to grade between 4th and 5th and leaving the at grade crossing at 4th.

[bigcanuck]

Originally Posted by Sir.Humphrey.Appleby

Can't really bore 8th Ave very easily with the tie in to existing tunnels at city hall, no good launch sites, and the depth it is notionally planned at (trains running on what would be the 'P2' level of most towers)

Even then, with the number of stations planned you are going to have multiple station boxes at almost full avenue width at least 130m long, plus likely two needed crossover boxes near each end. So you are going to have huge holes either way.

I would also guess that there are tons of sub-surface utilities that use the 8th Ave ROW that would need to be relocated - this would also require huge holes.

[polishavenger]

Originally Posted by mersar

The connection at the end at the Louise Bridge is the big question. I think it might be possible, but its going to be close. Elevating 4th might be the only workable solution, and building it would be quite complicated as you wouldnt want to close too many lanes at a time, not to mention you'd also need to keep the Ctrain running at the same time. The only other option might be to look at bringing the train to grade between 4th and 5th and leaving the at grade crossing at 4th.

I dont think any elevation needs to be done as the train could come out midway between 4th ave and 5th ave. Im not sure how they would deal with the continuity of service issue.

[Koolfire]

Originally Posted by bigcanuck

I would also guess that there are tons of sub-surface utilities that use the 8th Ave ROW that would need to be relocated - this would also require huge holes.

The city has been protecting 8th ave since the Ctrain started. My understanding that most utilities have been rerouted over the years. I don't think there is as much do relocate.

[DarkKeyo]

The at-grade crossing at 4th is high on the list of problems with the downtown routing, and is a pretty big one to not solve when investing lots of money in a subway.

I have to wonder, when they built the bit of subway under City Hall, and drew plans for the subway interchange station below Olympic Plaza (which was posted sometime in the last year in this thread).... where did they think the other end of that tunnel would be?

Regarding cut and cover on 8th ave, it would actually be very easy for the half of 8th ave that is west of 4th, and most of 9th st, since those are lightly used vehicle roads; it's just the other half that is going to be complicated.

[DarkKeyo]

Originally Posted by Sir.Humphrey.Appleby

There seems to be busways sold all over as cheap to convert to LRT later. It didn't happen in Seattle, and it isn't happening in Ottawa. Unless you're going to O-Bahn the line, it is going to need a wider corridor, built to tolerances of human drivers. Who knows what vehicles we will want to run in the corridor 10 or 15 years from now, if we design to a requirement today we might find we don't want to build low floor lrt in the future for some reason. Or it might constrain us to one manufacturer, or one vehicle that wouldn't be optimal because we assume certain performance characteristics. Path dependence can in the end be very expensive.

To be honest, if we have a defined plan on what we want, why should the city wait past when the next batch of engineering studies are done? Tender the project, borrow the money either traditionally or as a P3, and raise taxes to pay for it. Put it to a referendum and it would pass.

I was too busy to respond to this back when it was posted, but found it when I was catching up, and I agree very much, particularly with that last bit. I would gladly pay money to get stuff, since currently I seem to may money and not get useful things like transit expansion.

[Ferreth]

Originally Posted by Koolfire

The city has been protecting 8th ave since the Ctrain started. My understanding that most utilities have been rerouted over the years. I don't think there is as much do relocate.

That would help a lot. Cut 'n cover wouldn't be so bad if the disruption could be left to a minimal time working one bloc at a time - although where ever the stations get built is just going to take time.

Regarding the other end of the tunnel @ 9th, I wish they'd close 8th Ave between 8th & 9th to allow for a tunnel > elevated option to the river. No level crossings are going to work DT if they want short head ways. It would be an expensive three short blocs of elevated rail, with the logistics of building it and tying it into the existing line.

[UofC.engineer]

Damn, there is only about 50 meters from 4th ave to the foundation of the LRT/pedestrian bridge crossing the bow.

Let's do some math:

First off does anyone know the max rail gradient? 6-8%?

We'll say 6% for arguments sake, the height of a tunnel(from rail to surface) is what?...3.5-4m? lets say 4m.

so that means 50m*0.06 = 3m. Maybe that's enough!!! During construction perhaps a shunt line can be built beside the exsisting track to not interfere with service.

But if you look on google earth most tunnel approaches are about 100 meters

[Koolfire]

My thought has been cut and cover 8 ave to 8 st to 4ave then run parallel to 4 ave as it comes out of the tunnel and connects up with the existing track. Currently it's a city run parking lot and it looks long enough.