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Originally Posted by frinkprof
A few things:
1. It is critically important to cross the Bow River to a station on the north side in Phase 1. The danger in stopping at Eau Claire is having the Nose Creek alignment go back on the table. Even a subpar solution to get the alignment on to Center Street is far better than this scenario rearing its head again.
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Is it? At this point it's becoming debatable, especially when it's clear that the NC LRT is becoming a more and more distant dream. But the real problem with Nose Creek is that the capacity at that end of 7th Avenue is already limited.
And I suspect "crossing the river" is only really important to maintain political support from the NC to keep the Green Line alive. I'm sure the team will try their best to make it happen but if costs continue to go up, they'll cut it just like the rest of the NC.
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3. Everyone (particularly Fuzz) should keep in mind that the conversation and information coming out right now is strictly dealing with the Phase 1 plan. 16th Avenue will be crossed, likely grade separated, in a future phase.
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Yes, and the same thing was said in 2017. Don't worry, we'll find more money and savings in construction to continue the very important NC LRT. And three years later, there's no new money, construction is delayed, the City is desperately trying to find savings to build Phase 1 and had to gut the river crossing to the worst possible configuration, still hasn't finished the NC preliminary plan (despite it already being delayed years), and barely acquired any properties on Centre Street.
Heck, the Green Line team still hasn't recommended Phase 2, even though Council asked for a decision for Q1 2018! I think it's pretty clear that any new phase for the NC will be decades away at best. Really, the Green Line team's only good job so far has been sabotaging the NC LRT, which should have been the easy choice for Phase 1 but instead the City decided that a maintenance yard 18 km from the heart of Downtown was more important.
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4. There's potentially much more drama and disruption to come, likely at the hands of the provincial government.
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The provincial governments back-loading of funding changes the numbers by what? A few tens of million in financing. A pittance compared to the catastrophic failure of the City to accurately forecast costs and risk.
The Green Line in 2015 was sold as this:
It's turned into this:
And where getting to Panorama Hills is still going to cost well over $2B.
And it's hilarious going back to the 2015 pitch for the Green Line and reading how LRT for the Green Line was needed because even BRT would not be sufficient for Centre Street N ridership in medium term:
