Green Line LRT - $4.6 Billion Project

[YYCguys]

Originally Posted by milomilo

There isn't though. If anything, we're not spending the required amount to get the minimum acceptable end product. If we are just going to get something comparable in quality to BRT, we should just build BRT. Bus lanes on Centre St and some bridges and overpasses in the SE would give more benefit than Green Line phase 1 to more people, and be cheaper.

I should clarify: by “more affordable alternative” I meant that for the river crossing. One that will also not destroy the park.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by YYCguys

I should clarify: by “more affordable alternative” I meant that for the river crossing. One that will also not destroy the park.

Oh I see.

This is one issue I think is overblown, it's not going to destroy the park, there will be a cool looking bridge over a small part of the end of it. The issue is what happens at the north end.

[YYCguys]

Originally Posted by milomilo

Oh I see.

This is one issue I think is overblown, it's not going to destroy the park, there will be a cool looking bridge over a small part of the end of it. The issue is what happens at the north end.

I can’t wait to see the approved engineering drawings.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by YYCguys

I can’t wait to see the approved engineering drawings.

Or the next rubber stamping by city council where they either defer a decision or downgrade the line (quite possibly by deleting the north section), delay it by another year, increase the cost and decrease the benefits. And all the while, we'll hear how it's still the bestest project ever, and this was always the plan.

[N McCity]

This is the current alignment map taken off the city's website:

If we are to assume the stations are marked in the correct location I don't see how the line can go from basically under the Eau Claire Market to ground level to sufficiently above ground to make it over the park space without badly disrupting it (which would still badly disrupt it imo). There is, of course, the chance that the station is marked by where its access would be but it still is aligned in such a way that I don't see how it could make it through without a disruption. Honestly with the way our city is doing things I could see them making an at grade ped crossing on the river path just to be cheap to ensure more people get run over by our trains. Judging by the map, regardless of where the station is, it being underground causes the next portion to be a noisy disturbance to one of the best park spaces in the city if it is to cross above ground.

[N McCity]

Originally Posted by Corndogger

I was hoping the province would seriously question the low floor stupid and force the city to nix the idea. When the public realizes they're getting a glorified street car and not a true LRT line people are going to be livid. This going to be one the "legacies" Dru leaves this city with.

With a Centre St street car you gotta wonder at what point calling an uber or just hopping in your own car and getting on Deerfoot is faster... or just driving in general. If it is significantly faster, this is a failure of design and the whole segment becomes a bit of a waste.

If I were running a city (there would be a lot of problems if I was) I would impose a rule where there is no rapid transit that has a significant stretch that is designed to operate under 80km/h and I would encourage options that can reach 90km/h like Seattle's LRT supposedly can.

[N McCity]

Originally Posted by s211

Edmonton's about to live that dream for real, when its newest line opens. Construction of it also opened a massive scar through downtown because the zealots wanted a street car feel through downtown. That scar is a hefty reason why Edmonton's downtown has declined precipitously during its construction period.

Just say no to low floor!

Oh man I didn't even consider the impact to businesses the construction of the street car portion would have. That will be even more of a disaster than the finished product will be.

My qualm is that we all get fed this story that trams and street cars work elsewhere so they will work here too. The difference is they are supplementary to an actual rapid transit system, not in lieu of it.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by N McCity

Oh man I didn't even consider the impact to businesses the construction of the street car portion would have. That will be even more of a disaster than the finished product will be.

My qualm is that we all get fed this story that trams and street cars work elsewhere so they will work here too. The difference is they are supplementary to an actual rapid transit system, not in lieu of it.

An advantage to the north section being cut from phase 1 would be that if extension northward ever finds funding, the discussion will entirely be focused on the effects of street level lrt. Right now I doubt most people are aware of the horror show that is being planned on Centre St.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by N McCity

With a Centre St street car you gotta wonder at what point calling an uber or just hopping in your own car and getting on Deerfoot is faster... or just driving in general. If it is significantly faster, this is a failure of design and the whole segment becomes a bit of a waste.

The benefits for NC were mainly in increased capacity and reliability. When the economy was good and DT employment high, nearly half of the cases of Transit bus overcrowding and overloading occurred on just the 3 and 301. The Green Line going to Panorama Hills was supposed to fix that and hopefully remove enough buses and vehicle traffic that its impact would be positive.

But now if the Green Line does end up going at grade up to 16th Ave and stopping there and taking away two lanes, that'll probably end up slowing all vehicle traffic while adding little to no new transit capacity for the NC. Truly a worst of both worlds.

[CalgaryTransit guy]

Nice to see that I am not the only one calling foul on the Green Line. It has suffered from a lack of adequate planning and political wrangling.

I have seen outsiders (who have never even been in Calgary) chastise opponents of the Green Line (will not name who) for essentially "coming out of nowhere" and opposing such a line because of car interests - and I have to go: this is thanks to a lack of research.

I saw specifically how egregious the designs of the Green Line stations were: what, in God's name, is this disaster? http://www.sturgessarchitecture.com/portfolio/green-line-lrt/. Now, in all fairness, this might just be a preliminary design, however, I don't see much promise in it. It feels like a generic station with no consideration for the surrounding environment. That's that.

But perhaps design isn't the worst part - it's the nonsensical political wrangling I have seen over the years. I don't see City Council being able to do much on this project without some controversy erupting over how the project was planned or, for example, the downtown alignment. How is it that City Council is unable to decide, on how to get out of downtown to 16th Avenue. I like to say this shouldn't even be that hard, although I know by saying this I am not factoring in something. I now think, at this rate, by 2027 (jokingly) that they will discuss how the tunnel is bothering some weird part of nature that has yet to be discovered.

Even more disturbing is how, from reading this thread, this project was supposed to hypothetically be completed by 2024, and not even chopped up into multiple parts to be built later in a hypothetical time in the future (which we will probably not know because of the overall secrecy the City of Calgary has been regarding this project's ultimate stage).

I would NOT be surprised if the federal government, whom have been promising billions over the last several years, saw this nonsense and pulled out althogether.

[craner]

Originally Posted by milomilo

An advantage to the north section being cut from phase 1 would be that if extension northward ever finds funding, the discussion will entirely be focused on the effects of street level lrt. Right now I doubt most people are aware of the horror show that is being planned on Centre St.

Agreed.
I really hope they cap the north end at Eau Claire for the time being and wait until they have the funding to build the NC portion properly.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by accord1999

But now if the Green Line does end up going at grade up to 16th Ave and stopping there and taking away two lanes, that'll probably end up slowing all vehicle traffic while adding little to no new transit capacity for the NC. Truly a worst of both worlds.

Plus there will be similar numbers of buses as today stopping in the single car lanes, since we are putting in "BRT", LRT and cars all in the same narrow roadway, and not forcing bus users to transfer. So worst of three worlds.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by CalgaryTransit guy

But perhaps design isn't the worst part - it's the nonsensical political wrangling I have seen over the years. I don't see City Council being able to do much on this project without some controversy erupting over how the project was planned or, for example, the downtown alignment. How is it that City Council is unable to decide, on how to get out of downtown to 16th Avenue. I like to say this shouldn't even be that hard, although I know by saying this I am not factoring in something. I now think, at this rate, by 2027 (jokingly) that they will discuss how the tunnel is bothering some weird part of nature that has yet to be discovered.

They assumed the line was going to be cheaper than it was, so set the budget before they knew what it would get them. And then even a line half the length of the original sales pitch was too expensive, so they had to downgrade it further. And because of that faulty assumption, they linked two lines together that in hindsight probably would have been better kept separate.

Many decisions that were made were incremental and not bad on their own merits, but the end result has been a project that looks much different to what was originally planned, and it is very questionable that it now fulfils any of the original goals adequately considering how expensive it is.

[MalcolmTucker]

Change the 'any' to 'many', and cross out adequately and end the sentence there.



Fulfilling goals isn't related to expense in that sense. It is whether the goals are worth pursuing given the expense.



I say yes, given I don't think we can reasonably say there will be a more economical way to accomplish the goals in the future.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

Change the 'any' to 'many', and cross out adequately and end the sentence there.



Fulfilling goals isn't related to expense in that sense. It is whether the goals are worth pursuing given the expense.



I say yes, given I don't think we can reasonably say there will be a more economical way to accomplish the goals in the future.

To be honest I think we've all forgotten what the point of this LRT even is - at some point the goal of building the Green Line became the building of the Green Line.

But does it provide users in the north with better transit? No. Better transit to the SE? A little better, a bus to an LRT. Are the billions spent on building it going to be cheaper than the marginal increase in road capacity required? Are the operational costs per rider going to decrease due to the increased efficiency of mass transit? No! Not by the cities own numbers!

The LRT as planned on Centre St probably makes things worse by every measurable metric, at least until it gets far north enough that they can stop running buses. The line to the SE has more practical benefit, so if we must build LRT for LRT's sake, then the dollars should go where they achieve the highest marginal benefit, and that's getting it out to the SE and not the pointless stub to 16th.

[N McCity]

Originally Posted by accord1999

The benefits for NC were mainly in increased capacity and reliability. When the economy was good and DT employment high, nearly half of the cases of Transit bus overcrowding and overloading occurred on just the 3 and 301. The Green Line going to Panorama Hills was supposed to fix that and hopefully remove enough buses and vehicle traffic that its impact would be positive.

But now if the Green Line does end up going at grade up to 16th Ave and stopping there and taking away two lanes, that'll probably end up slowing all vehicle traffic while adding little to no new transit capacity for the NC. Truly a worst of both worlds.

See here’s the problem, that section of the line will probably serve as the transit access from downtown and the rest of the south side of the city to airport if the people mover ever gets built.

For a good couple billion do people really want to sit on a “train” that’s as slow as a bus and still has to stop at intersections with the only advantage being more room to stand in. You spend the billion or billions to build it to find out that it does have more capacity than a BRT but in the long run maybe not enough more capacity than a BRT. The question is just how much can you scale up a street car on Centre St with intersections as close together as they are and with how little space and much congestion there is in general. Probably not as much as one would like.

Traffic lights and 50km/h max speed (I assume) can’t make for a fast ride from the river to Panorama Hills. I don’t see someone saying, “yeah I’ll use that instead of driving because it totally won’t add a bunch to my trip time” if that’s the way it’s gonna be. I don’t see that reducing car traffic significantly. See I think people are just assuming because it’s called LRT it’s gonna be an LRT. I wonder if opposition would grow if they appropriately labeled this portion a street car.

In a way it’s similar to the Broadway subway. Money could’ve certainly been saved opting for the “LRT” from VCC-Clark, but it was decided against because it wasn’t good enough for a multitude of similar albeit maybe somewhat worse reasons.

You have to build something significantly better than what you have now. You have to build something that can be scaled up in the future with relative ease. You have to build something that is viable enough to actually take some cars off the roads rather than merely take busses of the roads. Otherwise, what’s it all for?

[N McCity]

Originally Posted by CalgaryTransit guy

Nice to see that I am not the only one calling foul on the Green Line. It has suffered from a lack of adequate planning and political wrangling.

I have seen outsiders (who have never even been in Calgary) chastise opponents of the Green Line (will not name who) for essentially "coming out of nowhere" and opposing such a line because of car interests - and I have to go: this is thanks to a lack of research.

I saw specifically how egregious the designs of the Green Line stations were: what, in God's name, is this disaster? http://www.sturgessarchitecture.com/portfolio/green-line-lrt/. Now, in all fairness, this might just be a preliminary design, however, I don't see much promise in it. It feels like a generic station with no consideration for the surrounding environment. That's that.

But perhaps design isn't the worst part - it's the nonsensical political wrangling I have seen over the years. I don't see City Council being able to do much on this project without some controversy erupting over how the project was planned or, for example, the downtown alignment. How is it that City Council is unable to decide, on how to get out of downtown to 16th Avenue. I like to say this shouldn't even be that hard, although I know by saying this I am not factoring in something. I now think, at this rate, by 2027 (jokingly) that they will discuss how the tunnel is bothering some weird part of nature that has yet to be discovered.

Even more disturbing is how, from reading this thread, this project was supposed to hypothetically be completed by 2024, and not even chopped up into multiple parts to be built later in a hypothetical time in the future (which we will probably not know because of the overall secrecy the City of Calgary has been regarding this project's ultimate stage).

I would NOT be surprised if the federal government, whom have been promising billions over the last several years, saw this nonsense and pulled out althogether.

You know it’s funny that you get labeled as basically some lover or big roads and sprawl and all that because you are against a piece of public transit infrastructure that fails to do what transit is supposed to do which is provide an alternative that reduces car traffic. This is not logical.

I always get a kick out of train stations that are basically a glorified sidewalk with a wall around part of it and if you’re lucky a roof over half of it with a few cheap bus shelters dumped around the rest of it. Why is this good enough in a city that has a long, cold winter? Oh yeah and no escalators you can forget that. Like when they renovated Anderson station and made it “better” by basically just removing escalators and putting stairs that have to rise high enough to clear the CPR tracks.

As far as the federal government goes, if they really did care about the environment and not their image and the people that line their pockets, then shovel some money into these projects and help our broke cities and provinces out so that maybe we can build a transit system that people actually want to use over the comfort and speed of their own car. I get the whole country is broke due to the events of this year, but as far as the federal government goes, some of that is their own doing or lack thereof (laziness)... or scandals.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by N McCity

In a way it’s similar to the Broadway subway. Money could’ve certainly been saved opting for the “LRT” from VCC-Clark, but it was decided against because it wasn’t good enough for a multitude of similar albeit maybe somewhat worse reasons.

I've made that exact comparison to Broadway on this thread before. It's a very similar situation - it's clearly one of if not the most deserving corridors for transit in each city, but it also happens to be very expensive in both cases to serve because of the narrow, busy road and dense population (though less so in Calgary on Centre). We should do what Vancouver did, focus on buses until they truly can take no more - actually, go further and put in bus lanes - then build proper rapid transit when there is undeniable justification.

[N McCity]

Originally Posted by milomilo

I've made that exact comparison to Broadway on this thread before. It's a very similar situation - it's clearly one of if not the most deserving corridors for transit in each city, but it also happens to be very expensive in both cases to serve because of the narrow, busy road and dense population (though less so in Calgary on Centre). We should do what Vancouver did, focus on buses until they truly can take no more - actually, go further and put in bus lanes - then build proper rapid transit when there is undeniable justification.

The justification certainly becomes undeniable when that corridor becomes the primary transit access to the airport if it isn't already.

I agree though. Busses are far less risk until you can properly replace them rather replacing them with a half done job that is good enough for now but then cannot be replaced again later. Especially if a measly street car isn't any faster than a bus.

[Corndogger]

Originally Posted by N McCity

The justification certainly becomes undeniable when that corridor becomes the primary transit access to the airport if it isn't already.

I agree though. Busses are far less risk until you can properly replace them rather replacing them with a half done job that is good enough for now but then cannot be replaced again later. Especially if a measly street car isn't any faster than a bus.

Streetcar will probably be slower than a bus and a lot less flexible. If the goal is to destroy the businesses along that corridor along with the quality of life of the residents in the area then this might be a worthy investment.