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Originally Posted by Joborule
Just because centre street will be at grade? Or for some other reason?
Considering that the only difference between that and this is that now Centre Street will have an additional 1km of at grade tracks than originally intended on that road doesn't feel that seem that much of a trade off. In fact with it, it actually includes an additional station for the Crescent Heights community as a result.
The only issue I have is with 16 Avenue. It's possible that the station built as proposed is a temporary station, and they will indeed go underneath 16th when they extend north; but it isn't a sure thing, and due to costs may prefer to cross at grade, which I don't think is a great idea, but isn't a dealbreaker.
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For the two things you mentioned.
First, running Centre Street at grade will be a clusterf—k and makes me glad I don’t live north of the river anymore. Secondly, I am not holding my breath that they tunnel under 16th in the future. Once they’re ready to go north of 16th, they’ll find some reason — probably cost since things aren’t getting any cheaper — to justify keeping that at grade too. Just like how they’ve found a justification to deviate from the original 2017 alignment.
When the LRT was first being built in advance of the Olympics, I could see the advantage of building more of it at grade. There’s a reason our LRT today is more built out in comparison to Edmonton; tunnels are expensive. But we already have a mature LRT system now. Going forward, if we are going to add to it, we should do it the right way the first time (and I say that as someone in favour of the Green Line). The system is a lot less reliable with at-grade crossings because you know some idiot is going to drive their car in front of the train. This already happens with the 7 Ave transit corridor, and the 25 Ave crossing sucks too. I know tunnelling will mean it gets built at a slower pace, but that’s a reasonable trade-off for making sure it is done correctly, IMHO.