Green Line LRT - $4.6 Billion Project

[milomilo]

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.

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.

[MalcolmTucker]

The greenline is special for post 2001 mass transit expansions in Calgary in that any city money is going into the capital cost at all.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

The greenline is special for post 2001 mass transit expansions in Calgary in that any city money is going into the capital cost at all.

What's the likelihood that will continue?

Even if the money does come, I can't see how building the expensive and complex line to the north would win on balance vs the cheap and simple line to the south. You'd need to go much further than 16 Ave northward to get the ridership needed.

Or perhaps in 2028+ the economy has recovered, everyone forgot why they were scared of getting on a bus and the "BRT" on Centre Street is packed with no chance of increasing capacity. In this scenario, I hope the line is built properly - underground.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

It cuts the ridership for sure. The most important thing now is making sure the plans don’t try to save more money by making decisions which cause massive future costs, like locking us into a tunnel under the river.

Presuming a business case approval of course.

Is there any short term advantage to an alignment that would lock us into tunneling under the river? That option never seemed sensible to me vs crossing the river on a bridge then tunneling under Centre street.

The city has already endured the "cost" of people whining about severing a tiny sliver of PI Park and done a good job mitigating it by showing off snazzy renderings of the bridge. I feel like the bridge was never as unpopular as was assumed in the ranking system and will stay as the "default" option, whether they tunnel under Centre or go on surface.

[Cage]

Originally Posted by milomilo

Is there any short term advantage to an alignment that would lock us into tunneling under the river? That option never seemed sensible to me vs crossing the river on a bridge then tunneling under Centre street.

The city has already endured the "cost" of people whining about severing a tiny sliver of PI Park and done a good job mitigating it by showing off snazzy renderings of the bridge. I feel like the bridge was never as unpopular as was assumed in the ranking system and will stay as the "default" option, whether they tunnel under Centre or go on surface.

The Greenline daylights at Eau Claire. Beyond a few underpasses for major cross streets (e.g. McKnight, Country Hills), don't expect any further underground sections.

There is no short term advantage to sinking the Greenline underground beyond Eau Claire. It is technically not feasible to go under the river, the depth puts 7th Ave station 7 stories underground.

I expect that Eau Claire to 16th Ave N will require an additional $1B to complete. Existing budget will cover $250MM leaving federal, provincial, Calgary to come up with the rest.

[Cage]

Originally Posted by milomilo

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.

The city requires the front lawn (3m) for about 300 homes that front onto Center Street.

There is a tricky section between 16th and 30th Avenues where Center has all ready been given the Mainstreet treatment with more density than RC-2.

The homes North of 30th will probably have to be expropriated through eminent domain if the city only wants the front yard. If the city buys the whole property, there is insufficient remaining land to build anything other than a RC-2 style house that faces the other direction toward the backyard lane.

I have talked offline to many "in the know" and Center Street alignment gets very expensive and complicated land acquisition process beyond 16th Ave.

[CTrainDude]

And when it comes to the LRV type, my understanding is that the separate RFP for LRVs continues as planned, so it's likely you won't get a change to high-floor.

The short-listed parties are:
Alstom Transport Canada Inc.
Bombardier Transportation Canada Inc.
Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles (CAF)
Kinkisharyo International L.L.C.

Alstom and Bombardier have since merged, so I'm not sure what their plan might be.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by milomilo

Is there any short term advantage to an alignment that would lock us into tunneling under the river? That option never seemed sensible to me vs crossing the river on a bridge then tunneling under Centre street.

The city has already endured the "cost" of people whining about severing a tiny sliver of PI Park and done a good job mitigating it by showing off snazzy renderings of the bridge. I feel like the bridge was never as unpopular as was assumed in the ranking system and will stay as the "default" option, whether they tunnel under Centre or go on surface.

Yes, it would be cheaper for the short term to not provision for daylighting.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by milomilo

What's the likelihood that will continue?

Even if the money does come, I can't see how building the expensive and complex line to the north would win on balance vs the cheap and simple line to the south. You'd need to go much further than 16 Ave northward to get the ridership needed.

Or perhaps in 2028+ the economy has recovered, everyone forgot why they were scared of getting on a bus and the "BRT" on Centre Street is packed with no chance of increasing capacity. In this scenario, I hope the line is built properly - underground.

High. These issues helped defeat Ralph Klein, helped elect Ed Stelmach, helped defeat Danielle Smith, helped elected Rachel Notley, and were important enough that Kenney kept the commitments to spend (the problem is in the end city council--Edmonton's project funded at the same time has had their contract close).



Greenline only has City funding at all because of scale - the SETWay funding was an over and above after the City had allocated most of MSI and GreenTrip for the 2010-2020 period.



Also: the SetWay funding is ultimately from the province in a roundabout way. The province vacated tax room, and the city filled it.

[jules_landlocked]

Originally Posted by Cage

The city requires the front lawn (3m) for about 300 homes that front onto Center Street.

Assuming they have to expropriate all of that property, that's at least 200-300 million alone, probably more, with very little usable land parcels left to resell/redeploy once you put install the LRT lines, bike lanes, traffic calming measures, etc...

With those startup costs, you might as well spend 1 billion, and go underground for 6 km, and introduce some special zoning code that allows homeowners/developers to build anything up to MH1 or mixed use, with zero parking requirements, within 2-4 blocks of 'subway' portion of the line. Build your business case on the additional property tax revenue over the next 50 years.

To me, with Centre Street, downtown to McKnight, you either have to go small - i.e. 'traditional' streetcar network - sharing lanes with vehicles during non peak periods, requiring way less capital development costs, or go big (underground), but not this in-between model they seem to be proposing. The go big and underground approach is definitely more elegant and appealing - with way fewer operational issues once it's up and running.

That said, people like to dismiss the small approach, but even at the proposed future peak ridership, the North portion of the Greenline, wouldn't even crack the Top 3 of daily street car line ridership numbers seen currently in Toronto, so it is feasible - even if would result in longer travel times, additional accidents, and other delays.

Personally, I'd go bridge/underground - contingent on a special zoning requirement - at a min. around the underground stations, but preferably along the entire 6 km line.

[craner]

Originally Posted by jules_landlocked

Assuming they have to expropriate all of that property, that's at least 200-300 million alone, probably more, with very little usable land parcels left to resell/redeploy once you put install the LRT lines, bike lanes, traffic calming measures, etc...

With those startup costs, you might as well spend 1 billion, and go underground for 6 km, and introduce some special zoning code that allows homeowners/developers to build anything up to MH1 or mixed use, with zero parking requirements, within 2-4 blocks of 'subway' portion of the line. Build your business case on the additional property tax revenue over the next 50 years.

To me, you either have to go small - i.e. 'traditional' streetcar network - sharing lanes with vehicles during non peak periods, requiring way less capital development costs, or go big (underground), but not this in-between model they seem to be proposing. The go big and underground approach is definitely more elegant and appealing - with way fewer operational issues once it's up and running. That said, people like to dismiss the small approach, but even at the proposed peak ridership, the North portion of the Greenline, wouldn't even crack the Top 3 of daily street car line ridership numbers in Toronto.

Yes - please & thank-you !

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

High. These issues helped defeat Ralph Klein, helped elect Ed Stelmach, helped defeat Danielle Smith, helped elected Rachel Notley, and were important enough that Kenney kept the commitments to spend (the problem is in the end city council--Edmonton's project funded at the same time has had their contract close).



Greenline only has City funding at all because of scale - the SETWay funding was an over and above after the City had allocated most of MSI and GreenTrip for the 2010-2020 period.



Also: the SetWay funding is ultimately from the province in a roundabout way. The province vacated tax room, and the city filled it.

Thanks.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by Cage

The Greenline daylights at Eau Claire. Beyond a few underpasses for major cross streets (e.g. McKnight, Country Hills), don't expect any further underground sections.

There is no short term advantage to sinking the Greenline underground beyond Eau Claire. It is technically not feasible to go under the river, the depth puts 7th Ave station 7 stories underground.

I expect that Eau Claire to 16th Ave N will require an additional $1B to complete. Existing budget will cover $250MM leaving federal, provincial, Calgary to come up with the rest.

Originally Posted by Cage

The city requires the front lawn (3m) for about 300 homes that front onto Center Street.

There is a tricky section between 16th and 30th Avenues where Center has all ready been given the Mainstreet treatment with more density than RC-2.

The homes North of 30th will probably have to be expropriated through eminent domain if the city only wants the front yard. If the city buys the whole property, there is insufficient remaining land to build anything other than a RC-2 style house that faces the other direction toward the backyard lane.

I have talked offline to many "in the know" and Center Street alignment gets very expensive and complicated land acquisition process beyond 16th Ave.

I am personally very sceptical we will see the Green Line north of the river for a very long time - as you say, complicated. Going south will be much easier.

I also think the city has little credibility when it comes to rebuilding roads. 16 Ave is a dismal failure, with nearly nothing having got built after rebuilding it, and it's the same with TODs.

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

Yes, it would be cheaper for the short term to not provision for daylighting.

The Eau Claire station is already sort of half tunnelled though? It seems like they'd have to go out of their way to lock in an under river tunnel.

Looking back, the fact they even considered going under the river is emblematic of how out of touch with reality the project became. After the river there is a very large upward change in gradient that needs to be made. The last thing you would want to design in is going down immediately before that, when the option of the bridge was available and obviously cheaper.

[Pegasus]

Originally Posted by milomilo

After the river there is a very large upward change in gradient that needs to be made. The last thing you would want to design in is going down immediately before that

I'm thinking a spiral tunnel to get to the top of the riverbank would be a very elegant solution (like the CP Rail tunnels in the Kicking Horse Pass)

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by milomilo

Looking back, the fact they even considered going under the river is emblematic of how out of touch with reality the project became. After the river there is a very large upward change in gradient that needs to be made. The last thing you would want to design in is going down immediately before that, when the option of the bridge was available and obviously cheaper.

Admin was just trying to accommodate all the demands that had been placed on them by Council without a full view of the project. It really shows that you need one person/group with the entire projects goals in mind with the mandate to push back when a request has massive implications.



Calgary sorta lost that with LRT, since up until the Greenline the goal had been defined 4, or 5 decades ago, and the issues with expansion were mostly very local and in the end limited (in dollar amount) in nature. All of a sudden you had a project being driven forward where the very local problems had massive implications for the project as a whole, and so the project very quickly became a massive scope creep issue.



Going back in time, I think it would have been a great service to the city to design the cheapest line possible, and lay out all the compromises that had. Sure us geeks saw a bit of that, but most was obscured and not accessible.



Imagine if there had a been a few weeks of public debate on whether not running at grade across Macleod Trail was worth $250-$500 million or more? Whether not running along the surface through Chinatown and making low speed turns was worth a couple hundred million. The education about the project created by that would have helped disarm the discussions of 'why did the project shrink so much'.



I really think that a lot of the harm comes back to contracting strategy: if most of the actions Administration was taking was about preparing the project for a full on P3 (which hides many of these optimization problems behind the corporate wall); then when the contracting strategy changed they were stuck in a position where they hadn't really optimized based on principles project wide, but mostly on aesthetic preferences: minimizing above ground; minimizing traffic crossings; not crossing over a park (for a long period); avoiding Chinatown and its organized and sometimes cantankerous representatives; moving forward with TOD prep and area planning before the transit project was anywhere close to baked; adding in sweetners like trails, gardens, art, street scaping. The list goes on and on.



It was almost performative project management in the wider sense for Council; save for anything an outside group said becoming near dogma because no one had a mandate to say no. Classic public sector problem.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

It really shows that you need one person/group with the entire projects goals in mind with the mandate to push back when a request has massive implications.

Do you think that's why Paul Gianellia left so quickly? He tried to take control but there was too much opposition from existing Green Line team members and council to let any one person or outside group in 2018 get that much power?

Imagine if there had a been a few weeks of public debate on whether not running at grade across Macleod Trail was worth $250-$500 million or more? Whether not running along the surface through Chinatown and making low speed turns was worth a couple hundred million. The education about the project created by that would have helped disarm the discussions of 'why did the project shrink so much'.

Though the Green Line project may have been concerned that it would reveal problems that would lose it popular support, meanwhile allowing the public to believe in "40(46) km for $4.6B" would allow it to get the city too financially and politically committed to back out when the bad news had to be released.

[jules_landlocked]

Going back in time, I think it would have been a great service to the city to design the cheapest line possible, and lay out all the compromises that had. Sure us geeks saw a bit of that, but most was obscured and not accessible.

That definitely should have happened, but when you are low-balling the estimates of some of the more esoteric 'luxury' options (i.e. the tunneling under the Bow river), I'm not sure the on-the-cheap option would have had much of an impact.

Unfortunately and in retrospect, I think the project might have been doomed as soon as they started linking the Centre and SE lines together as the 'Green Line' and it became politically impossible to move forward on either of these projects independently. Each line and populations they are trying to serve have completely different needs and issues. Bundling them together helped no one in the long run.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by accord1999

Do you think that's why Paul Gianellia left so quickly? He tried to take control but there was too much opposition from existing Green Line team members and council to let any one person or outside group in 2018 get that much power?

Leadership changes on 'career making projects' are usually a bad sign, but can't say have inside knowledge on this one.

Originally Posted by accord1999

Though the Green Line project may have been concerned that it would reveal problems that would lose it popular support, meanwhile allowing the public to believe in "40(46) km for $4.6B" would allow it to get the city too financially and politically committed to back out when the bad news had to be released.

Nah, I don't think so. The money on this one was up front, which sorta made decision making easier at the front end because everyone thought they had lots of money.

[accord1999]

Interesting opinion piece by Neil McKendrick on the business case for the Green Line. In it, he echoes a lot of the concerns raised in this thread about the Green Line and also provided a table with information that I hadn't seen in such detail before. The table provides a breakdown of 2019 bus ridership and service hours for the North, SE and SW and shows how hard it'll be for Stage 1 to achieve its projected ridership of 55K-65K even without COVID concerns.

The southeast leg of the Green Line is intended to serve downtown oriented trips. But, in 2019, southeast bus routes serving the downtown were among the poorest performing routes in the city carrying just over 12,000 weekday passengers or only 22 passengers per service hour.

Among these, BRT Route 302, which provides limited stop service along the future Green Line route and is seen as the precursor to the LRT line, carried only 3,400 weekday passengers. Calgary Transit strives to achieve about 25 passengers per hour on bus routes using large buses. In order to maintain service during all time periods, smaller, more cost effective community shuttle buses are used on Route 302 during off peak times.

https://everydaytourist.ca/city-planning-101/is-there-a-business-case-for-the-green-line

[MalcolmTucker]

That table is only east of Deerfoot.

And yeah - people with the worst transit access in the city are going to have poor ridership - their communities were literally designed for LRT and it will speed up access. Better service should help modify the base factors driving ridership instead of being a multiplier of the current transit number. You think of it - base factor is lumpy - change it and you get big changes. Think of university students driving to the NW - they are forced to pay for transit, but until the Greenline launches the travel time is just too high. The first stage will bring that down to still very long but better.

Now would it be better to get to at least McKenzie Lake? Yes! Further expansion would likely push that trip above from 90-100 minutes to sub an hour.