Green Line LRT - $4.6 Billion Project

[polishavenger]

Somehow Vancouver and Toronto are able to build required infrastructure such as subways which are expensive, so what is it about Calgary that cant?

Construction costs are not coming down any time soon, so delaying the project wont save money, just result in an underutilized line that will become as self fulfilling prophecy that mass transit is not a good investment.

[countastic]

I hate to say this, especially as someone who wants a massive shift in investment into mass transit in this city and province, but the latest descoping of the Green Line, suggests the City Council and the Green Line planners have lost the plot.

Moreover, the province would be fully justified into withdrawing their funding until the City can create a plan for the Green Line that at least achieves 1 or its original primary goals which was providing a mass transit service to residents of the deep SE and/or the North Central communities of the city.

Building tunnels downtown and underground station for a line that will at best have ridership of about 1/10 of the current red and blue lines is madness.

It was questionable, back in 2015, when the Green Line was a 42 km, 25 station project with projected ridership of 149,000 riders per day, to go underground for a low floor light rail service.

It's just wildly irresponsible to continue on with spending 6 billion dollars for 7 stations? Only reaching communities within a 15 minute bus ride from the core?

[countastic]

Originally Posted by polishavenger

Somehow Vancouver and Toronto are able to build required infrastructure such as subways which are expensive, so what is it about Calgary that cant?

Construction costs are not coming down any time soon, so delaying the project wont save money, just result in an underutilized line that will become as self fulfilling prophecy that mass transit is not a good investment.

The bigger question is why was it ever a requirement for the Green Line to go underground? It was never expected, even when fully built out, to have ridership numbers, frequency of trains, etc... close to the Red Line. Even back when it was conceived as a 42 km, 25 station project, stretching from North Pointe to Seton it was projected to have ridership numbers of about 5,000 more people than than the Blue Line currently has (144,000 riders per day).

Once the city and it's planners had decided that they were unwilling to build out the Green line at street level downtown, even though it would have been completely feasible (see Sydney, Australia or Paris, France and lots of other cities that have rolled out new low floor tram lines in the last decade), this hastily conceived project was doomed at the outset.

The only reason to go underground would be if they had a vision of fully integrating all the lines (Red, Blue, Green) and share a common rolling stock/stations downtown, etc...) But that was never the vision on the table.