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Old 07-30-2019, 10:48 PM   #3281
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2 things -



1) How did the planners for the Green Line not anticipate the tunnel under the Bow River being such a problem that they are now considering to, or decided already, to kibosh it at the last minute?



2) Is tunneling under a river really that big of a deal? There are lot of places with tunnels running beneath bodies of water. What is so different about our situation? Doesn't every tunnel construction face similar risks of flooding and variations in the topology? I mean, around the world there are some very deep train station platforms. I don't know about 7 stories, but it would make for a unique experience at least.

Simple answer, they only considered anything between Seton and 7th ave SE. the entire purpose of including anything else was lip service to gain the political will to fund a tertiary transit need ahead of higher priority regions identified in transportation studies.
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Old 07-31-2019, 12:03 PM   #3282
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Simple answer, they only considered anything between Seton and 7th ave SE. the entire purpose of including anything else was lip service to gain the political will to fund a tertiary transit need ahead of higher priority regions identified in transportation studies.
Then why all the drilling/coring in and around the river at that time?
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Old 07-31-2019, 02:04 PM   #3283
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I agree. Why are they even going across the river in this first phase?

Just go from Chinatown to Seton.
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Old 07-31-2019, 02:26 PM   #3284
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Convert Center Street to a BRT flow-way, establish Park and Rides through the line. Leave the Green Line from Eau Claire to Seton.

Either go full bore on doing the Green Line right, or save the North leg for another day when the City has the will and the money to do it properly. BRT might be that happy balance, assuming the 14th st. SW BRT project turns out successfully.
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Old 07-31-2019, 02:30 PM   #3285
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I agree. Why are they even going across the river in this first phase?

Just go from Chinatown to Seton.
Seriously? You don't know why they'd want to access the busiest bus corridor in the city(the north central corridor)? If you don't do it now, it will be decades before they get to it. No, the correct way is you do the most expensive difficult part first. The easy stuff can come later.
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Old 07-31-2019, 02:37 PM   #3286
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BRT might be that happy balance, assuming the 14th st. SW BRT project turns out successfully.
That's going to be quite the walk-back when the City Admin specifically used Centre Street N as the reason to skip BRT and jump directly to expensive light rail. Though it's increasingly likely that Centre Street N in the middle-term is not going to get any improvements for transit service, since the Green Line has gone so massively over-budget.


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Old 07-31-2019, 02:41 PM   #3287
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Seriously? You don't know why they'd want to access the busiest bus corridor in the city(the north central corridor)? If you don't do it now, it will be decades before they get to it. No, the correct way is you do the most expensive difficult part first. The easy stuff can come later.
But I don't live there, so #### those people.
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Old 07-31-2019, 02:48 PM   #3288
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Why not rethink this and just go up Edmonton trail? The river crossing there looks a hell of a lot less complicated than Centre Street.
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Old 07-31-2019, 02:51 PM   #3289
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So do North Leg of Green Line when we have the money. I don't see the issue? BRT could be a handsome alternative if they're not going to commit funds to doing to right the first time.

Who cares if they have to walk back on the idea, it's what cogent city planners do if it makes sense for city. Pride and ego be damned. Too much of that crap in politics at all levels, especially in Alberta.
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Old 07-31-2019, 02:51 PM   #3290
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Why not rethink this and just go up Edmonton trail? The river crossing there looks a hell of a lot less complicated than Centre Street.
Because you then miss the vast majority of downtown, and miss the opportunity to densify around centre street, and at that point you may as well go up Nose Creek, in which case you are building commuter rail that doesn't serve 3/4 of the current corridor. And that idea was already thrown out almost a decade ago.
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Old 07-31-2019, 02:56 PM   #3291
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So do North Leg of Green Line when we have the money. I don't see the issue? BRT could be a handsome alternative if they're not going to commit funds to doing to right the first time.

Who cares if they have to walk back on the idea, it's what cogent city planners do if it makes sense for city. Pride and ego be damned. Too much of that crap in politics at all levels, especially in Alberta.
You could serve the south end with BRT(as was one of the plans), but the north end is where the capacity is needed. But they already picked the south end for the barns, so you have to go down there too...


You can start to see where it isn't a simple decision a couple people on a forum will just sort out. All sorts of ideas have been considered, the cheapest easiest options are also the most useless, and not really worth doing as an LRT when a busway would serve that capacity, if we are looknig at saving money. An LRT makes no sense for that route alone currently.


The SE leg is going to have similar low ridership like the west leg, which was a bad enough decision to begin with(thanks Bronco). The North leg will be closer to NW ridership.
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Old 07-31-2019, 03:02 PM   #3292
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So do North Leg of Green Line when we have the money. I don't see the issue? BRT could be a handsome alternative if they're not going to commit funds to doing to right the first time.

Who cares if they have to walk back on the idea, it's what cogent city planners do if it makes sense for city. Pride and ego be damned. Too much of that crap in politics at all levels, especially in Alberta.
But why not reconsider the SE for BRT as well then? Because of low ridership, even if they did get LRT built from 16th Av N to Shepard, it was expected to lose $40M/year. The recent $7M cut to Transit's operating budget will cut something like 80,000 hours of service so how are they going to handle a $40M increase in costs? Even before the budget issues, Mayor Nenshi was concerned about it.
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To run the mammoth project, administration calculated it would take about $40 million in annual funding, which in the current budget would make up 15 per cent of Calgary Transit's operational costs.

Nenshi said the city's investing in transit service to places in Calgary that don't currently have good service, or they have no service at all, which means the city will have to come up with new cash to pad the line – especially in the southeast.

"When we built the West LRT, it actually had very little impact on our operating budget because we replaced buses that were more expensive on a per-rider basis," said Nenshi. "The BRTs, we'll be able to absorb, it's not a problem ... council is going to have to find significant money between now and 2026 to operate the Green Line."

https://web.archive.org/web/20180313...sh-nenshi.html
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Old 07-31-2019, 03:34 PM   #3293
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Then don't do it at all. Leave it at BRT if the south leg is going to be a money-losing proposition.

Why even bother doing this at all then?

I am referring to not doing the north central line correctly, which should not be cheaped out on - go underground and do this right. Cutting corners and applying the "pink stucco" approach is going to bite us down the line.
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Old 07-31-2019, 03:40 PM   #3294
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Right, and that's kind of where they are at, I think. It doesn't make sense to do the south on it's own. Which is why re-examining the most expensive portion to see if it can be done completely differently probably makes a lot of sense right now. But that risks losing provincial and federal money. It is, as they say, a dilly of a pickle.
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Old 07-31-2019, 11:17 PM   #3295
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Right, and that's kind of where they are at, I think. It doesn't make sense to do the south on it's own. Which is why re-examining the most expensive portion to see if it can be done completely differently probably makes a lot of sense right now. But that risks losing provincial and federal money. It is, as they say, a dilly of a pickle.

A pickle of their own dilling. I think they should reconsider the southern leg of the Green Line. With the NC, they can redeploy all of those buses currently running up and down Centre St to service the south, once they determine that ridership really means they need this then build the Green Line down further.


It's going to be a PITA if there are future budget cuts to public transit that impact bus routes, but keeps a train running where there's low ridership.
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Old 08-01-2019, 09:21 AM   #3296
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I will probably never ride either line, but they should move the garage to the north and build that piece first.
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Old 08-01-2019, 10:32 AM   #3297
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I will probably never ride either line, but they should move the garage to the north and build that piece first.
Ideally this is what should've happened, but with the ROW costs and acquisitions required for the northern section, it makes sense to do the southern section first since it's all owned by the city already, and ready to go. It was only a decade ago that the NCLRT was switched from nose creek, to centre street.
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Old 08-01-2019, 10:45 AM   #3298
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I don't think it is totally correct to say it was "switched". They considered several options, from 4th, Centre, E Trail, and Nose Creek. It had never settled on Nose Creek at any time, as far as I know.


There will be some land acquisition costs, but those will just get more an more expensive the longer you wait. And it depends what option they go with how much they will need. It isn't a lot, from what I can tell.
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Old 08-19-2019, 09:03 AM   #3299
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Some points made about the Green Line. AlthoughtI find the the idea of keeping a BRT along Centre St. horrible since ridership is already proven, his point that the north portion doesn't have to necessarily connect to downtown isn't bad. A short walk over the bridge through Chinatown to the Red/Blue lines is fine for most people, and there are always buses for people who can't walk that distance.


https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...gers-1.5247339
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Old 08-19-2019, 10:26 AM   #3300
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4) The north LRT line at grade will not be rapid. In fact, it will only be marginally faster than the existing bus services, as it has to negotiate the same at-grade crossings as the buses. Trains do not operate quickly in mixed traffic environments. Even the Seventh Avenue transit corridor, with no car traffic, doesn't move very quickly.
Never looked at the plan for the north, but are we paying a boatload to create a bunch of terrible at grade crossings (a la 36 street)? Moving E-W anywhere north of Memorial is already a nightmare...

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Bill Lambert is a recently retired, Vancouver-based transit and transportation consultant with 30 years of experience. He also agrees with McKendrick and adds "LRT services operating at ground levels in the north and southeast corridors will be very disruptive to cross-traffic movements at traffic intersections all along the corridors and create increased traffic congestion."
That sounds like a yes.


Put me on team BRT. Nobody knows exactly how it will play out, but I think AVs have the potential to change the way we look at mass transit. Dedicated BRT routes seem to offer the flexibility and potential for earlier adoption.

I know carpool lanes don't seem to be in vogue any more, but I wonder about BRT 'luxury toll roads' (ie. very expensive so it doesn't create any congestion within that system) could be possible. The biggest problem with both train tracks and BRT lanes is they are completely useless when there is no vehicle on them...
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