Premier Danielle Smith mused about resurrecting a north Green Line plan that would take it through the Nose Creek Valley – a plan thrown out after analysis by the City of Calgary more than a decade ago.

The Premier made the comments Wednesday when asked about Calgary’s failed Green Line alignment, and how they intend to move the project forward.

The province pulled its funding earlier this month as the province doesn’t want a downtown tunnel and would like to push the transit line further south to the South Health Campus and the southeast community of Seton.

In Wednesday’s comments, Premier Smith reiterated her government’s desire to have the current version of the Green Line go from Calgary’s under-construction Event Centre and then determine how far south they can go.

“Then, the second phase of that, we’ll see what would be the alignment for us to be able to serve north Calgary as well,” Premier Smith said.

“It may be that using the Deerfoot Valley on the route to the airport and then further up to Airdrie, which is one of the things we want to do using the existing CP rail line, maybe that’s the best way to serve North Calgary.”

In a 2012 document called “Review of Planning for North Central LRT,” the Nose Creek Valley option is laid out, including the rationale for and against.

The report outlined seven reasons for that proposed alignment, and 11 reasons against, including that it wouldn’t provide service for most communities south of Beddington, the isolation of Nose Creek Valley, limited TOD, and no existing transit supportive land use within walking distance.

At that time, the City of Calgary began a further review of alternative alignments, including those along Edmonton Trail NE, 4 Street NW and Centre Street.

‘Stuck in a 1980s commuter rail kind of perspective’

Ward 9 Coun. Gian-Carlo Carra said that the version being suggested by Premier Smith was panned a dozen years ago for a couple of primary reasons. First, the plan involved a spur line from the blue line, he said. That wouldn’t work due to the capacity entering the downtown from another quadrant of the city.

“I think the province’s plan is to run commuter rail up the Deerfoot valley as sort of an intercity rail and, that alleviates that problem,” he said.

“But the problem, of course, is that you’re putting transit where nobody lives. You’re putting transit very far from people.”

Coun. Carra said that when he’s talked with people about transit systems across the globe, he said they’re often surprised that Calgary’s performs as well as it does. It subscribes to the theory of putting transit where a city deems it convenient and inexpensive, not where a rider finds it convenient.

“The entire story of the Green Line was trying to find a way to do it, the best way possible, the cheapest way, the most effective way, the most city shaping way,” he said.

“To sort of get rid of all of that and to go back to yesterday’s conception of transit as we’re trying to build tomorrow’s conception of transit, it’s very disheartening.”

Premier Smith said they’ve committed to bringing their plan forward to the City.

“We’ll bring it to them and see if they’re committed to continuing to partner with us on that,” she said.

“We’ve reached out to our federal counterparts as well to let them know that that’s the approach that we would like to take.”

Carra said that he hopes on Sept. 17, when the Green Line wind-down costs are brought to a full meeting of Calgary city council, that a criterion is set for city participation in the province’s project.

“If we’re going to bring our money to the table, it has to meet a minimum set of criteria,” he said.

“If the province is just looking for cheap it’s not going to meet our criteria. If they’re not bringing the transit to where the people are, that’s a problem.”

Data: Analysis of the population centres

LiveWire Calgary looked at the population density and population values from the last Canadian census in 2021, around each of the Centre Street and Nose Creek alignments for the Green Line. (Best viewed horizontally)

Using a technique called an isochrone analysis, LWC was able to determine the distance from each station that an average adult could reach while walking at a brisk pace in 20 minutes.

Those areas were then compared with Statistics Canada’s census dissemination areas to determine the population that would potentially access each set of Green Line stations.

That analysis found, that for census dissemination areas that overlapped with the Centre Street Line, there was an average population density of 3693 people per square kilometre, representing 116,207 people.

For the Nose Creek alignment, there was an average population density of 3444 per sq. km, but served less total population of 60,812.

The locations of the Nose Creek alignment were approximate to a 2012 review of the Nose Creek alignment plan before it was abandoned by Calgary City Council.

The Government of Alberta has said, in their removal of funding for Calgary’s current Green Line alignment that they want to ensure that the south line gets to more populated areas than are currently proposed.

Nose Creek Green Line Alignment Map

Centre Street Green Line Alignment Map