Following months of speculation around the future of the Green Line LRT project, the provincial government has unveiled its proposal for a reworked light rail transit route in Calgary that it says would serve more communities and save more than $1 billion.
The province contracted consulting firm AECOM in July to find alternatives to the city’s latest proposal, which would have involved a tunnel through downtown and run a drastically shorter distance than earlier planned.
Council’s decision to shorten the first stage of the line was due to costs ballooning to $6.2 billion.
The downtown tunnel became a sticking point for the province, which then pulled its $1.53 billion share of funding from the project in early September, unless it underwent a major overhaul.
Ultimately, council voted to wind-down the project, which was later revived after further negotiations with the provincial government.
“The alignment that AECOM looked at of not tunneling under downtown saves over $1 billion in Green Line costs,” Alberta’s transportation minister Devin Dreeshen told Global News. “With those savings, we can then extend the Green Line further south.”
According to the province, AECOM’s alignment has the Green Line running from Shepard in the southeast and taking an elevated path through the downtown core from the future Calgary events centre. The route would take it down 10 Avenue S.W., and up 2 Street S.W. to 7 Avenue where it would connect with the Red and Blue line CTrains.
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The province’s alignment also includes five more stops than the city’s previous plan, which was forced to stop in Lynwood/Millican. The new plan would also remove a stop in Eau Claire.
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Premier Danielle Smith said on Friday that eliminating the extra 0.6 kilometre distance to Eau Claire will save an estimated $400 million.
“If you do that, then you can’t take the project all the way to Shepard,” Smith said. “Those are the tradeoffs that have to be made. It’s pretty clear that any future expansion of that line would go through Eau Claire and across the river into the north,” added Smith.
The provincial government said its proposed alignment would also cost $6.2 billion but would see 20,000 more riders on the first day of operations compared to the city’s alignment.
“We’ve got the alignment now,” Dreeshen said. “Now it’s going to be up to city council and Calgarians to support a longer, cost-effective line.”
However, city councillors told Global News that they still haven’t received AECOM’S report on the revised alignment, which will require council approval if it’s to proceed.
In a statement to Global News, the city said its officials also have “not received the AECOM report and it is disappointing that after working collaboratively since September on a reimagined Green Line that the Province shared the details publicly prior to Council’s review. Until Council has an opportunity to review the report including the alignment and costing, we cannot comment.”
The statement went on to say “council has been clear that the City’s commitment of $1.53B remains and look forward to understanding the Province’s plan on their new alignment.”
Dreeshen said the report includes commercial sensitivties, and won’t be released publicly, but promised city officials would receive the report “soon.”
David Cooper, principal at Leading Mobility, said an elevated alignment is less complex than tunneling under the core but will require significant consultation and design work.
“It it something the city has looked at, and obviously there will be impacts to downtown,” Cooper told Global News. “There will be impacts or integrations possibilities with surrounding buildings. It’s going to look very different from what we’re used to in our downtown – picture something like what you see down in Sunalta or the Vancouver SkyTrain.”
Cooper said the elevated route will “probably be the way you want to go” if the province wants to cut costs and complexities but noted optimism in the future of the project as all three funding partners have agree a southeast LRT line is necessary.
According to the province, AECOM considered several factors in its alignment including impacts to existing downtown infrastructure, including the plus-15 pedway network.
However, advocates aren’t as hopeful in the limited details provided.
“I think we’re a long ways away from anything resembling a plan,” said Jeff Binks, head of the LRT on the Green foundation. “We have a new line on a map, and it’s a little longer of a line than we saw before, but we really have a lot of details.”
Binks also shared concerns over the elevated line, after previous city councils voted against the move due to pushback from downtown property owners because of concerns over its impact on businesses and property values.
“For the next four or five years, Calgarians will look at the map and say this looks pretty good,” Binks said. “But for the next 50 years following that they’re going to see this elevated train in downtown Calgary and wonder what the heck were these people thinking.”
More information is expected to be provided next week as Mayor Jyoti Gondek has scheduled a press conference Monday morning, and city council plans to meet on Tuesday.
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