Calgary Public Transit II

[Socguy]

Originally Posted by lubicon

Given the current state of the Provinces finances I would say this is anything but a forgone conclusion. Add in the uncertainty of the federal election outcome and the fact the City has almost zero dollars laying around and the skeptic in me says this project is still very much in doubt. But I would love to be proven wrong by all three levels of government.

Well, the NDP did hire David Dodge to make the economic case for the Provence to borrow money to build needed infrastructure, (basically give them cover to borrow money for projects we need). I suspect that this line will be near the top of his list because if this project is not sufficiently high impact for Alberta, what is?

[Socguy]

Originally Posted by Spring2008

The city has also already allocated $500M towards this so far based on the excess property tax revenue of $50M over the next 10 yrs.

If i had to pick a line i'd say SE deserves it more. Seton, Rangeview, Quarry Park, and Providence in the south are all being designed as large mixed-use hubs with large concentration of employment and residential. Will benefit Vic park and Inglewood too. North Central's pretty far behind.

Picking sides is needlessly divisive. Should do what the actual green line advocacy group is doing and advocate for the line as a whole...

[Surrealplaces]

Originally Posted by Policy Wonk

I always agreed that Centre Street at grade was possible, I think it's stupid and doomed to be a politically charged multimodal clusterfuck for the ages, but indeed possible.

Why would Centre Street at grade be doomed and stupid? I realize that we don't have anything like this in Calgary, but other cities do, and it seems to work fine.

[Surrealplaces]

Originally Posted by Spring2008

The city has also already allocated $500M towards this so far based on the excess property tax revenue of $50M over the next 10 yrs.

If i had to pick a line i'd say SE deserves it more. Seton, Rangeview, Quarry Park, and Providence in the south are all being designed as large mixed-use hubs with large concentration of employment and residential. Will benefit Vic park and Inglewood too. North Central's pretty far behind.

Right now it would seem that the North Central region is less of a priority if they had to choose, but it is evolving quickly. With these projects going up along Centre and on 16th near Centre, I see the region changing quickly. Maybe they should do the line up to 20th ave N at least to start.

[simster3]

According to Nenshi:

"Soon, if you can imagine it, we will see state-of-the-art light-rail transit emerging from downtown, crossing the river into this escarpment, serving upwards of 40 million passengers a year," he said.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/gr...-gets-1-53b-pledge-from-ottawa-1.3166511

I hope that means it will be a bridge crossing!

[*Stardust*]

*Crosses fingers for tunnel*

Have they decided what stations will be downtown? One in Eau Claire, one on 7th avenue, one on 10th ave (where would this go?) and one on Olympic way beside Arriva? Does that sound about right?

[lineman]

I thought it was already decided that NC would have been built first based on current ridership numbers. Alas, I hope it just gets built in one shot.

[H.E.Pennypacker]

I'd like to see the LRT line at least built out from Harvest Hills through Quarry Park if anything

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by lineman

I thought it was already decided that NC would have been built first based on current ridership numbers. Alas, I hope it just gets built in one shot.

If it isn't in one shot, it will be really close to it. $4.5 billion. Cost may leave off some stations at each end, but we won't know that for a few years.

It could open in phases if construction delays the north central segment more than the downtown segment, or if the builder comes back with a proposal that saves money by phasing within the completion timeline.

I think people are a bit confused by the numbers: this is the hole shebang. The city can't go out and get the federal money with only the current greenline fund and start digging. The rest of the grant stack needs to be put together to get to $4.5 billion, but that shouldn't be hard at all.

[You Need A Thneed]

Originally Posted by lineman

I thought it was already decided that NC would have been built first based on current ridership numbers. Alas, I hope it just gets built in one shot.

There's no place to put the storage and maintenance facility along the north portion.

SE portion to roughly Quarry Park in the first phase essentially was mandatory.

[Policy Wonk]

Originally Posted by Surrealplaces

Why would Centre Street at grade be doomed and stupid? I realize that we don't have anything like this in Calgary, but other cities do, and it seems to work fine.

Because it just won't work very well for any of the users of the corridor, transit included. It has been previously rejected for that reason, the only thing that has changed is these decision makers are willing to accept compromises those who came before were not.

The real problem though is the hacks who will emerge promising a "commonsense" subway alternative and the simpletons who will vote for them.

[Cage]

Originally Posted by You Need A Thneed

There's no place to put the storage and maintenance facility along the north portion.

SE portion to roughly Quarry Park in the first phase essentially was mandatory.

If one was to throw the SE LRT completely under the bus, or more accurately conclude that BRT was the only viable alternative for ETERNITY on the SE portion, its possible to find a suitable location for a NC LRT mtce facility. Basically this would involve a single track spur line starting at about Center and 40th Ave to Spring Gardens and turning the land at Spring Gardens into the LRT yards.

Of course this is a colossal waste of dollars, probably close $150-$200 million. This is why one must be certain the SE will never be able to support ridership to justify an LRT. Finally good luck ever getting the Ward 9,12, and 14 Councillors to approve the plan.

[You Need A Thneed]

Originally Posted by Cage

If one was to throw the SE LRT completely under the bus, or more accurately conclude that BRT was the only viable alternative for ETERNITY on the SE portion, its possible to find a suitable location for a NC LRT mtce facility. Basically this would involve a single track spur line starting at about Center and 40th Ave to Spring Gardens and turning the land at Spring Gardens into the LRT yards.

Of course this is a colossal waste of dollars, probably close $150-$200 million. This is why one must be certain the SE will never be able to support ridership to justify an LRT. Finally good luck ever getting the Ward 9,12, and 14 Councillors to approve the plan.

Theoretically, there could be a storage facility in Aurora business park, or up by Stoney too.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by You Need A Thneed

Theoretically, there could be a storage facility in Aurora business park, or up by Stoney too.

The line is so long that I bet the eventual P3 partner will put storage at both ends, with one being a heavier maintenance facility. Otherwise they will have to pay for deadheading for 20-30 years.

[CTrainDude]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

The line is so long that I bet the eventual P3 partner will put storage at both ends, with one being a heavier maintenance facility. Otherwise they will have to pay for deadheading for 20-30 years.

If your storage and maintenance is in the Deep South, you won't pay for that much deadheading - just like now, it just means you sacrifice late night trips on the opposite end of the line from the garage, to have all scheduled trips end in the south. Maybe not ideal if most of your ridership is in the north though....

[DoubleK]

Electioneering at it's finest.

At least YYC will benefit.

[PPAR]

So
Downturn circa 1990s= Klien cuts and stop all public spending.
Downturn circa 2010s= Notley stimulus and grow public spending

At least there will be a very informative economic history for future Albertans to reference!

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by PPAR

So
Downturn circa 1990s= Klien cuts and stop all public spending.
Downturn circa 2010s= Notley stimulus and grow public spending

At least there will be a very informative economic history for future Albertans to reference!

Well, the Klein cuts were after how many years of what we would today call stimulus? Not really comparable. Also, until the economy picked up in the late 90s I don't think anyone contemplated the difficulty of getting back to speed and the construction cost inflation that came with it.

A more accurate comparison would be Klein in 2001 where they cut the south hospital and deerfoot extension to balance the budget in year (plus some stuff in Edmonton), even though those projects were needed and the government could safely run a deficit. Turned out to be a huge blunder with both those projects growing in cost many times over.

[holhm22]

Looking at the video render that was released, it shows fully articulated LRVs. Sure hope that will be the actual case. Also, it looks like the platforms will be built extra long from the beginning, and if that is true also, we won't have to deal with all the platform extensions later on.

This is definitely not a big thing in NA, but I'd like to see APGs even though it is low floor (Although most likely it will never happen)

[Govertical]

Whatever happened to the On-It regional transit? the website seems to have no update and I can't find any more info on the net.