Calgary Transits Green Line has been shrunk down in size Brian, August 10, 2024August 10, 2024 It was recently voted by the City of Calgary to cover cost overruns on the Green Line, but also to shrink the line down to 7 stations from 13. Also it means that the maintenance facility is being relocated as well. Back when I moved to Calgary around 2007 Calgary was planning to start building the Green Line from the North end of the city to the South. When I moved to a neighborhood close to the airport, I was told by my landlord at the time, that construction was scheduled to start in about a year for the Green Line project. My community was near the proposed to Beddington stop. According to a newsletter that was mailed to my residence before I moved in, the LRT was going to be opening by 2010. In the time I lived there, the project was delayed, and never started. In the years since, there have been delays, higher costs, and even changes to the plan, as well as to build the line in phases. Each one of the changes had resulted in delays. Now the current delays have resulted in a much smaller line. On July 30, the city voted to invest another $705 million in to the project. One of the approved changes includes building the core of the project from Eau Claire in downtown Calgary to Lynwood/Millican in the southeast. The line would connect with Calgary Transit’s Red and Blue lines in downtown Calgary and would include a new maintenance and storage facility at Highfield. The original maintenance facility was to be built in Shepard. Green Line main construction for Phase 1 will now begin by building the core from Lynnwood/Millican at Ogden Road, around 60th Avenue S.E. in the southeast to Eau Claire downtown, connecting into the existing Red and Blue LRT lines. Construction of the remainder of the council-approved Phase 1 south to Shepard, as well as any future extensions north or south, will proceed when additional funding is in place. Up until this, the plan was to extend Calgary’s next LRT route to the 130th Avenue retail area. Its estimated daily ridership will be 32,000 trips. That’s down from the projected 56,000. It will open with seven stations — instead of 13. Council approved this scaled-back ambition to save money. This project will now cost $6.2 billion, rather than the previously reported $5.5 billion. My thought if I were the city of Calgary is to sit down with the Provincial and Federal government and discuss the future of this plan. If more money cannot be put into this to build the line all the way down to 130th Avenue, then there should be a negotiation between the three to build a better transit plan. By that I would see if the Province and Feds would allow Calgary to keep the funding as long as it goes to fully improving the transit system. I would look into how much it would cost to cancel the current Green line. If there are LRT vehicles built already, I would look at selling those to Edmonton or using the provincial funding to allow the cars to be shipped to Edmonton. From there I would pay all cancellation fees, and then use the remaining funds to buy more buses, expand bus garages and do a full revamp of the transit system. Create new bus routes, cancel others and modify the remaining routes. Currently there are a lot of areas that see duplication of bus routes. In some areas duplicating services with different end points is fine. Currently there are a lot of areas in the city where there are duplicated services, but low ridership. Those routes could be merged together or cancelled, leading to the creation of a new route that covers the same areas but simplifies some of the routing. There can also be some areas that “lose” service, but in reality it is potentially going from 3 or more routes down to 1, that could run more often, but are also running on more of a main route. Meaning some people will have to walk a little further. Another option with possibly cancelling the Green Line Stub service, would be that there could be drastic improvements to the 302 service. Possibly even creating more bus only lanes or a bus only roadway for that bus to operate, similar to what has been done on the Max Routes. Even for the long term with the projected growth in Calgary, doing that would be more efficient. By improving the 302, there is potential for route extensions at little to no additional cost. There would also be the potential for shorter trips, that start part way along the route and run into the core, or the other way around. It is a lot harder to bring a train out for a short trip as it would have to slot in between other trains and then it would potentially only run for a half trip. At least with additional buses that join the service in the middle of the route, they can also move onto other routes or stay on the 302, while other buses from the route move to a different route. The city and Calgary Transit should work on a plan to improve the bus service so that frequencies can be improved. Routes should have frequencies of 30 minutes at the most. No more service that operates on odd frequencies. There are currently several routes in the city with frequencies that make it hard for people to connect to other routes. Some routes are scheduled on a 33-37 minute frequency others are every 36 or 37 minutes. I do understand why the frequencies are not always frequent on certain routes, and it is to save money by having less buses on the route. But what can make the service better would be for a route to go from one route to another route at different terminals. In fact some buses could end up traveling all over the city, as it goes from one route to the next. The perfect example of cities operating runs like that, is Edmonton. Currently as I am writing this I am looking on transit55.ca and one of the blocks operates from 5:30 until 19:48. It operates on the routes 9, 52, 103, 917, and 922 throughout the day. Operating service like that allows for more of a consistent schedule on routes. I believe now is the time to take whatever funding Calgary can get and do a major change to transit throughout Calgary, as well as talking to neighboring cities about helping with some funding so that transit can operate from Cochrane to Strathmore as well as from Olds to High River potentially. It could be different cities partnering with Calgary Transit to operate a bus service the whole way through and operating 7 days a week. Or it could be Airdrie, who already operates bus service into Calgary working with Calgary as well as Crossfield, Carstairs and Olds to provide a route that operates all day everyday. Routes like that would help reduce the number of cars entering Calgary, thereby reducing congestion on local roads. By implementing a better transit system from the Greater Calgary area, and improving transit within Calgary, it could allow more people to leave the cars at home and take transit. Especially if transit is vastly improved. There was a study done years back that found that people who took transit to work, would generally take transit outside of work hours to go to events or to functions or even to run errands. The problem though is a lot of cities do not have a good weekend transit system or even a good later evening system. Therefore it has forced a lot of people to buy cars to use cars on the weekends or later in the day. So most people who have a vehicle for weekend or evening travel use the car for work, instead of public transit. However that is not always true as evidenced in Toronto, where GO Train service operates 7 days a week on certain lines but it is very busy on weekdays for those traveling to the offices downtown. That is because trying to drive in Toronto especially on the 401 or DVP could be sitting for hours trying to get to work. Part of that is because there is a lack of good transit service in some of the surrounding areas of Toronto. But that is not what I am focused on here. I am focused on the fact that as Calgary grows the transit in and around Calgary needs to improve, to help reduce congestion now and in the future. Building a shortened Green line service is not the way to do it. It does not make sense to spend $6.2 billion to build 10KM of LRT train, as a start. But officials have said the elements stripped from the budget — including a Beltline station at Centre Street and finishing at the 130th-Avenue area Shepard station — would have added an extra $1 billion to the upwards-revised budget for the Green Line. That isn’t much additional money — relatively speaking — to double the project’s distance and service population, having already gotten the tracks through downtown and across Deerfoot Trail and the Bow River in the south. The problem is trying to find that money. And without it, the cost is only going to rise in the future when it is time to extend the line. So my opinion is if they cannot get the additional funding to extend the line all the way to 130th Ave, then the project should be cancelled and money should go into building a better bus network across the city and region. Is this ideal? Depends. Building the Green line is ideal if it is built all the way to 130th Ave. In the current state it is not and should not be built. But that will be up to the city to decide. Do they sit down and discuss transit with the Province and Feds? Do they ask for money? Or ask to change the plans? Building a stub line will not benefit Calgary now or in the future. Related Alberta