Quote:
Originally Posted by Kybosh
That's all fair but I personally think that the investment should have been increased to put that portion underground from the get-go (I have no idea what the breakdown was between local, provincial and federal - I'm not originally from Calgary). Having the train at the same level as vehicle traffic slows things down for everyone and we also see frequent vehicle collisions with the train. Just my opinion in this regard.
|
In a perfect world, I'd love to see it underground. It is easy to look back and question the choice to put it at grade, but I can imagine at the time that all sorts of political jockeying was going on to keep costs low. Politically speaking, everyone wants to build for the future, but nobody wants to be responsible for the price tag at the time.
Even with the Green Line, there are many who want to build it right the first time, but we had a mayoral candidate campaigning on "pausing" and reevaluating everything because it was expensive. I'm sure that if a viable at-grade option existed for the Green Line through the core, there would be more of a lobby to explore it. Thankfully for future Calgarians, at-grade through the core has never really been considered, primarily because the river, crossing the existing LRT line, etc. would make it not only foolish, but pretty much impossible.