There is opportunity cost to everything - both in terms of money and time. Whether this stub got built or not, we would have spent a lot of time and money for very little function. Still gotta extend a lot to be useful.
The SE always suffered from 2 main problems:
1. Expensive and risky and time consuming to navigate the core (but this is absolutely necessary)
2. Gotta get way south before it's really useful (ie. not just facilitating a bunch of park and rides)
Another small problem is that a N-S alignment through downtown doesn't serve it as effectively as E-W.
There was always one option that mitigated all three of the above: BRT.
Two downsides:
1. A bit slower - mostly navigating the core, but also things like slower boardings. The speed through the core could be mitigated to also benefit Max Purple and Max Yellow by making a bus only lane on 6th and 9th Aves. But you're also serving E-W.
2. Potential to overload BRT in the midterm. Which is currently acceptable on Centre St and would simply mean its a terrific success!
Realistically the stub line wasn't opening until 2032, with another 3-4 years to get all the way south. 20 years from initial announcement. BRT could start opening within 1-2 years. It could have been fully open by ~2018, meaning 17 years of operation compared to our best case scenario pre-Sep3.
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There is opportunity cost to everything - both in terms of money and time. Whether this stub got built or not, we would have spent a lot of time and money for very little function. Still gotta extend a lot to be useful.
The SE always suffered from 2 main problems:
1. Expensive and risky and time consuming to navigate the core (but this is absolutely necessary)
2. Gotta get way south before it's really useful (ie. not just facilitating a bunch of park and rides)
Another small problem is that a N-S alignment through downtown doesn't serve it as effectively as E-W.
There was always one option that mitigated all three of the above: BRT.
Two downsides:
1. A bit slower - mostly navigating the core, but also things like slower boardings. The speed through the core could be mitigated to also benefit Max Purple and Max Yellow by making a bus only lane on 6th and 9th Aves. But you're also serving E-W.
2. Potential to overload BRT in the midterm. Which is currently acceptable on Centre St and would simply mean its a terrific success!
Realistically the stub line wasn't opening until 2032, with another 3-4 years to get all the way south. 20 years from initial announcement. BRT could start opening within 1-2 years. It could have been fully open by ~2018, meaning 17 years of operation compared to our best case scenario pre-Sep3.
Yeah. A stand-alone north central line plus BRT to the SE was the right choice 10 years ago, 5 years ago, and now.
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Yeah. A stand-alone north central line plus BRT to the SE was the right choice 10 years ago, 5 years ago, and now.
Things went off the rails (pun intended) when 2017 realized the whole line couldn't be built in one phase, and NC wasn't made the priority. The bus ridership map posted earlier today in this thread shows how preposterous the effort has been to make the SE work, while the north has been completely neglected. Even a stub north line to say 64 Ave (I know it would have to go to 96th at least, just saying for this point) would probably yield more day one ridership than to Shepard in the SE.
I would be okay with all of this blowing up, if it realigns everyone to do the NC LRT instead, and allocate all resources to make that happen in the near term. Get all the ROW and studies done now to know exactly what you need, and the costs.
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You are right about north central. During the debate about phase 1/2/3 the argument for including 16th ave NW as part of the first phases was that it would be the highest ridership station of the line and getting over the river to 16th was critical. Money ran out tho.
Beyond 16th Ave nw it's tricky because the city hasn't acquired all of the land along the ROW so the south is more shovel ready.
Refocusing on north central is not going to happen though, UCP are talking about going all the way to Seton.
Best we can hope for in the north is a train along deerfoot up nose creek where nobody lives or works.
Yeah. A stand-alone north central line plus BRT to the SE was the right choice 10 years ago, 5 years ago, and now.
This approach would also have enhanced the case for building 8th Ave subway a bit sooner than it may otherwise happen. If you drop the need to connect the lines and don't paint yourself into a corner with low-floor trains for the SE (where they don't make a lot of sense anyways) then the likely choice would be to send the SE straight to 8th Ave tunnel when you eventually convert it to LRT.
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$1.5B for the pipeline. $30M/yr for the energy war room. $2.25M kickback to Preston Manning for a report he previously wrote for the COVID response. $1.6B in accounting errors. $4.7B on tax breaks for O&G companies that don't pay their taxes. $2B cancelling the railcar for oil transport because it was an NDP idea before TMX was built. $700K for Marlaina and her Saudi vacation. Moratorium on green energy projects in AB costing over $11B in investment. $900M gifted to oil companies to clean up orphaned oil wells they were legally required to clean up. $1.1B for the Sturgeon Lake refinery.
Sure, but the original at least built the core of the line with an eye to the future. Now the north will suffer for the next what...50 years? As a (inner) north resident right near Center Street I was okay with the previous trade off. Now we probably won't see a train in my neck of the woods until my toddler is approaching retirement age, if ever.
If you can spend less money in the DT and SE, funding for the NC can be available earlier. With the Green Line plans, there still was no time line for the NC since it would all depend on the tunnel and SE getting funded and finished first
And if you don't need to connect the NC and SE, there can be more flexibility. Something like this (In the 2020 review, this was about 15% more expensive than a contiguous 16th Ave to Shepard with tunnel ):
This approach would also have enhanced the case for building 8th Ave subway a bit sooner than it may otherwise happen. If you drop the need to connect the lines and don't paint yourself into a corner with low-floor trains for the SE (where they don't make a lot of sense anyways) then the likely choice would be to send the SE straight to 8th Ave tunnel when you eventually convert it to LRT.
If we were to go down that route, I think it would make more sense for the Red Line to use the 8th Ave Subway, while the SE line shares the Blue Line on 7th ave. The SE ridership will probably never require frequent enough trains to overload 7th ave along with the blue line, so the amount of trains on 7th today is how much trains green and blue lines should be down the road. The West LRT would benefit from very frequent rush hour trains, although it also wouldn't need that level of frequency. The NC would be it's own separate low floor line, which makes a lot of sense if using Centre Street.
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If we were to go down that route, I think it would make more sense for the Red Line to use the 8th Ave Subway, while the SE line shares the Blue Line on 7th ave. The SE ridership will probably never require frequent enough trains to overload 7th ave along with the blue line, so the amount of trains on 7th today is how much trains green and blue lines should be down the road. The West LRT would benefit from very frequent rush hour trains, although it also wouldn't need that level of frequency. The NC would be it's own separate low floor line, which makes a lot of sense if using Centre Street.
This seems like a good plan to me. Eventually in that case it would be good to build a blue line spur down either Crowchild or 37th to MRU. There would be enough trains to split if you had 2 lines on the other end.
But is the cost of burying the red line less than the green, and benefits of that setup? I'm just wondering if this would be cost savings, or just different.
This seems like a good plan to me. Eventually in that case it would be good to build a blue line spur down either Crowchild or 37th to MRU. There would be enough trains to split if you had 2 lines on the other end.
I do agree that a spur to MRU off the West LRT would be a good idea, but I wonder if a streetcar would be better value and cheaper. If so, I know planning for the West LRT did consider the possibility of a spur line going south on Sarcee Trail instead to service Westhills and Tsuut'ina area.
But is the cost of burying the red line less than the green, and benefits of that setup? I'm just wondering if this would be cost savings, or just different.
Most likely the latter, and probably a bit more money. But UCP doesn't care about making the best financial - or pragmatic - choices.
If we were to go down that route, I think it would make more sense for the Red Line to use the 8th Ave Subway, while the SE line shares the Blue Line on 7th ave. The SE ridership will probably never require frequent enough trains to overload 7th ave along with the blue line, so the amount of trains on 7th today is how much trains green and blue lines should be down the road. The West LRT would benefit from very frequent rush hour trains, although it also wouldn't need that level of frequency. The NC would be it's own separate low floor line, which makes a lot of sense if using Centre Street.
Either could work; there is a fairly open path to get to surface and join with 7th. This would also help keep the hop on/off nature of the free-fare-zone a little bit more useful once it loses the red line trains.
Ideally you'd have the ability to short turn every other SE train to the NE (which has higher ridership than west). There are a few ways this could be achieved, but the best I think would be to add switches and a third siding line on the 200 block west. So after stopping at WB 1st St SW it would cross to stop at 3rd St station and return EB (with 3 lines on 200 block serving as a siding when necessary)...but this could get messy in a few decades.
OTOH the red line has higher ridership and could benefit more from the infusion of extra trains than the blue. But you'd need to do a similar short-turn thing somewhere. Which leads to how you make the 8th Ave Subway not quite so expensive:
Underground from City Hall to 6 St SW with a station at the 200 block west. Then you're at grade for a station at 7 St before going elevated and turning north at 9 St. If you stay at grade across 8 St (which could go under if the Roads Dept. wants to pay for that) then you have a terminus stub around 10 St while the other line turns north and goes elevated over 7th-4th.
So it adds up to ~450 meters elevated (having to tie into the bridge over Bow which is going to be tough either underground or elevated) and 1200 meters of shallow cut+cover with 2 UG stations.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fuzz
But is the cost of burying the red line less than the green, and benefits of that setup? I'm just wondering if this would be cost savings, or just different.
Different...probably more expensive (though the scope of tunnelling I list above is actually a lot less than what they wanted for the GL), but you're getting a 2nd bird stoned with an additional mega-project in there. Which is why SE should start as BRT and then this can all be tackled separately when its actually justified.
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“This is unacceptable and our government is unable to support or provide funding for this revised Green Line Stage 1 scope as presented in the city’s most recent business case.”
Huh, guess we were all supposed to take something different from that.
I’m the other way. Build the infrastructure “good enough”. More people get access earlier and success encourages future investment.
Calgary has 60k of track Edmonton has 38. Would you trade 20-30% of the system for underground downtown? I wouldn’t.
For me, the trouble with "good enough" would be that it is difficult to build the LRT underground (at a later time) while continuing LRT operations on the same routing above ground.
Edmonton did the hard part first. Calgary opted for "good enough" and fifty years later both the capacity of both the Red and Blue lines is limited by the capacity of 7 avenue to accommodate the interline trains and the north/south vehicle traffic.
Indeed, the Bearspaw feedermain was built "good enough" ...and again, fifty years later we are complaining how that was a poor decision.
