Calgary Public Transit II

[Wooster]

Originally Posted by DizzyEdge

What would be the route through downtown of connected lines?

Could still be 2nd SW via 10th Avenue.

[DizzyEdge]

Would be interesting to have an elevated station at the east edge of olympic plaza with escalator down to grade to connect with 7th ave and then 2nd escalator underground to tunnel connection to city hall underground station for 8th ave.

Oh wait it was originally going to be 2nd st W not E to Eau Claire wasn't it.. hmm.

[Policy Wonk]

Originally Posted by Wooster

With regard to the downtown segment and compromise, one question to folks, curious what people would think of the idea (just my own random thought) of going above grade through a segment of Beltline and Downtown? It would be much less expensive than underground, but would need to essentially sit at the plus 30 level. It would require probably 2-3 stations. I wonder whether it might be possible to retrofit or design some buildings that could tie in to such stations (to provide elevator infrastructure and such). It also has the potential to be a bit ugly, but maybe at the same time an interesting design opportunity?

Modern day elevated rail proposals have met a lot of opposition, (i.e. Oahu)

One practical reason to connect the two legs is the desire to have only one transit garage, which is a big expense. I think it's also desirable to have both legs go into the heart of the downtown core (including touching 7th Avenue) for connections to other lines.

I seem to recall Oliver Bowen cost about $120m. Could the connections between 7th, 8th and 9th not be made with large indoor Plus 15 concourses with moving walkways? This is not a long distance.

[mellbell416]

Originally Posted by mellbell416

Oh, that is just fabulous news! Getting a NC SE LRT is going to be a total gamechanger....Right now, I loooooove Shane Keating.

I am really looking forward to seeing how the plans get fleshed out - if money is only coming in 2015, does that mean that construction of the SETWAY only starts in 2016 or something?

Ok, I found an answer to my question:

Mayor Naheed Nenshi sided with the transit plan, and said construction could begin on the project next year or in 2015, depending on whether council found further dollars or a good borrowing plan to help fast-track the project.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Counci...+southeast+transitway/9219709/story.html

[MalcolmTucker]

A good day for the city for sure. Unless the federal government introduces a new transit plan outside of the building canada fund, getting matching funds for a specific project is only a matter of accounting.

Provincially there will likely be the second tranche of green trip in the project time frame, and the province has begun looking at consolidating municipal grants to make them more flexible.

[Colin]

Originally Posted by Wooster

One practical reason to connect the two legs is the desire to have only one transit garage, which is a big expense. I think it's also desirable to have both legs go into the heart of the downtown core (including touching 7th Avenue) for connections to other lines.

With regard to the downtown segment and compromise, one question to folks, curious what people would think of the idea (just my own random thought) of going above grade through a segment of Beltline and Downtown? It would be much less expensive than underground, but would need to essentially sit at the plus 30 level. It would require probably 2-3 stations. I wonder whether it might be possible to retrofit or design some buildings that could tie in to such stations (to provide elevator infrastructure and such). It also has the potential to be a bit ugly, but maybe at the same time an interesting design opportunity?

Design is still very early days, and funding availability will certainly drive alignment and other decisions on this.

So something similar to the L line in Chicago?

[sim]

From the Construction Thread:

Originally Posted by Policy Wonk

I'm baffled by it. There would never be enough transfers between discrete NC and SE lines to justify combining them at the cost of a mile long urban tunnel.

You got a little bit of an endogeneity problem in your equation there: How can you know the know the number of transfers that would take place when in the second case there would be no transfers?

Either your wording is incorrect, or you are sitting on an OD matrix that might allude to this being a likelihood. I'd wager a guess that there is actually a fairly significant amount of trips that have an OD pair closely along this diametrical (combined) alignment.

In any case, it's not just about these exact trips. It's about building a functional, well connected network that even further down the road acts in a way that is much greater than the sum of its parts: The ability to get from near anywhere to near anywhere with 1 transfer. This piece of infrastructure would be a large piece of that puzzle.

Or we could have moving sidewalks (sorry)

[Allan83]

Yay for the green line! I think a transitway is a very good solution for this route. It may not be quite as nice a ride as an LRT, but in a city where both transitways and LRTs exist I think people will come to see that it’s still a pretty good option, and a whole lot better than the standard bone shakers.

[fusili]

Originally Posted by Wooster

One practical reason to connect the two legs is the desire to have only one transit garage, which is a big expense. I think it's also desirable to have both legs go into the heart of the downtown core (including touching 7th Avenue) for connections to other lines.

With regard to the downtown segment and compromise, one question to folks, curious what people would think of the idea (just my own random thought) of going above grade through a segment of Beltline and Downtown? It would be much less expensive than underground, but would need to essentially sit at the plus 30 level. It would require probably 2-3 stations. I wonder whether it might be possible to retrofit or design some buildings that could tie in to such stations (to provide elevator infrastructure and such). It also has the potential to be a bit ugly, but maybe at the same time an interesting design opportunity?

Design is still very early days, and funding availability will certainly drive alignment and other decisions on this.

I would not be averse to such a study. Using 10th and 2nd could still work, but 2nd has a whole bunch of +15s.

Policy Wonk's idea of using the CP ROW could very well be a very cost effective way of getting the SE line into downtown. Stations could be at 4ST SE, Centre Street (threre are platforms there already), 4th ST SW, 8th ST SW and 11th ST SW. If that was the case, 2nd street becomes less needed for a NC alignment coming into the downtown.

[Fuzz]

Would CP really give up part of their ROW? What is the likelihood of that?

What about stations? Would the train be on the outside 2 lines? otherwise I'm not sure how stations would work...

[Chadillaccc]

I just think the whole idea of not connecting them and especially using a low density railway ROW is really small town thinking, tantamount to the South Line in the 80s when Calgary was less than half a million people.

[mersar]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Would CP really give up part of their ROW? What is the likelihood of that?

What about stations? Would the train be on the outside 2 lines? otherwise I'm not sure how stations would work...

Unlikely, and it would cost many tens of millions of dollars (possibly into the hundreds of millions) even if they were interested.

The stations would also be quite complicated, at best you'd do a side load with an elevated crossing joining the two platforms (so its at least level to downtown or the beltline for each platform), at worst centre load and force every person to go up and over either the CP and/or LRT tracks depending on the direction they are coming from, and down to the platform. Or go below ground with virtually the same pattern.

[DizzyEdge]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

A good day for the city for sure. Unless the federal government introduces a new transit plan outside of the building canada fund, getting matching funds for a specific project is only a matter of accounting.

Provincially there will likely be the second tranche of green trip in the project time frame, and the province has begun looking at consolidating municipal grants to make them more flexible.

Are you saying that it's pretty much in the bag that they city will have 1040 million to build this?

[Chadillaccc]

Is that how much both subway portions will cost together?

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by DizzyEdge

Are you saying that it's pretty much in the bag that they city will have 1040 million to build this?

The City of Calgary builds too much new infrastructure to get a 1/3rd match from the federal government on all projects. So it doesn't really matter which projects get the match, since the City will always be getting its full allocation. The provincial funds would have to come from MSI freed up by the Green Trip announcement (I am not really sure on the accounting around it), phase two green trip or by out year MSI/ other grants (like the airport tunnel).

[DizzyEdge]

The main thing I've been trying to wrap my head around is whether this will be built in usable stages, or if the announcement just means that in 2024 it will open.

[mersar]

Originally Posted by DizzyEdge

The main thing I've been trying to wrap my head around is whether this will be built in usable stages, or if the announcement just means that in 2024 it will open.

I don't think anyone, even those down at city hall, know that yet. From the perspective of efficiency it may be best to do it all at once as a single multi-year contract perhaps, but the fact that now the funding is 'secured' means it may be possible to borrow money against that future funding to get it done sooner than that date (or 2025, which is actually 10 years from when the fund starts getting money into it)

[DizzyEdge]

Originally Posted by mersar

I don't think anyone, even those down at city hall, know that yet. From the perspective of efficiency it may be best to do it all at once as a single multi-year contract perhaps, but the fact that now the funding is 'secured' means it may be possible to borrow money against that future funding to get it done sooner than that date (or 2025, which is actually 10 years from when the fund starts getting money into it)

That would be ideal. Borrow and get it done now. I was unclear what was happening on Centre St. Rush hour transit/2 person lane converted to permanent transit only lane?

[fusili]

Originally Posted by DizzyEdge

The main thing I've been trying to wrap my head around is whether this will be built in usable stages, or if the announcement just means that in 2024 it will open.

It means that they are allocating the 52 million each year until that year. Actual build out will be a separate story

[Chadillaccc]

I agree it would be good to build both downtown subway segments at the same time. It would certainly save a lot of headaches once they decide which one is going to go under the other, as they will have to dig pretty deep for that, and will probably have to build the deeper section first. The problem is having Stephen Avenue businesses shut down for years, unless they bore, which I doubt they will do.