Quote:
Originally Posted by GirlySports
So the north leg is vital? But nobody in council supports it? What Notley's point?
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Have we not learned our lessons from 7th Avenue, the LRT stretch from downtown to the south side of Cemetery Hill, and the stretch from Westbrook Station to 45th St. Station? These are all projects that should have been completely tunneled to open up proper TOD infrastructure development on the surface. Now, we get to wonder 'what if', and now have to consider spending even more money to rectify these problems because we couldn't properly plan for future growth and density. There was already discussion about tunneling 7th and the Stampede Station-Erlton stretch, and now we can't because it's simply too much now.
The downtown portion of the Green Line should be tunneled as much as possible, and this shouldn't even be up for debate. Do this project PROPERLY from the start, spend the money, and you'll be completely thanking yourself later. We are a cold-climate city and underground rail is essential for year-round usage, and we dually need the space at-grade for other transporation connections.
Value engineering is NOT what we should be doing here for this project. We ALWAYS, ALWAYS fall for this and then continually ask ourselves later 'why did we do that...'.