Quote:
Originally Posted by 19Yzerman19
I think the main reason it's continuously brought up is that intuitively it seems like it would be such a simple thing to accomplish. Most people who have been paying attention realize that there are significant and complex issues, but in the interest of simplification, is there actually a set of numbers to quantify the difficulty?
I.e., assume that the proper approvals have been granted from every level of government and everyone is on board. What is the time and dollar cost? Once you have that you can address these comments much more quickly and decisively; i.e. "it would cost X million dollars and take X months to accomplish even if you could get approval" would shut people up pretty quickly.
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I think a rough guess for moving the tracks would be in the 5-10 billion range.
I don't know if it makes a difference whether you go around the south end of Calgary or the North end.
There's a big reason why the line generally follows the river valley. Moving the rail line requires getting the line out of the river valley one one side, and then back into the river valley where it connects on the other side. At railway maximum allowable grade (whatever that is), that's a HUGE deal. Really the only solution would be to tunnel a large part of it.