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Originally Posted by TorqueDog
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.
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I live near Centre street and I'm concerned but the city seems to be aware of the concern and trying to not mess it up. The low floor trains that they are using for the Green line can integrate with the street environment much better than the current train lines as they essentially run at the same level as the traffic. It won't be 36 St NE.
Also, the reason for the switch was because going under the river was going to add significant risk because of where the Bow River's water table is. We would be talking about MAJOR cost overruns if they stuck with the original alignment.
I think it's really got the potential to add some vibrancy to the area. Rather than a 4 lane quasi-highway into downtown we'll have opportunity for some more interesting developments. At the City Council meeting the other day they had a developer on there that had already purchased land on Centre/16th in anticipation of the Green Line. There is a lot of potential along the Centre Street/16th Ave NW corridor, it's prime for development.
Most of the debate and opposition is on whether we cross the river now, but the business case is extremely solid to do it now if you want to extend it to the north within our generation. Rather than future councils having to find billions of dollars in funding to cross the Bow they would just need enough to extend stations at a time.
16th Ave NW would be one of the busiest stations based on their projections so it's not like we're just building it north for no reason as well. Crossing the river and going to 16th Ave would add more ridership to this first phase of the Green Line than going all the way south to McKenzie Town!
