In the 2021 spring Calgary citizen survey, taken after the June 2020 decision on the ‘final’ Green Line alignment, the then-$5.5 billion transit project was seen by more than nine-in-ten Calgarians as a way to better connect people, places, and services.
It reached a high of 92 per cent in the spring of 2023 survey, a time when a development partner had been selected and the City was moving rapidly towards track construction with ongoing enabling works and utility relocations.
In the Spring 2025 citizen survey, the number of people who believed the Green Line would better connect Calgarians with people, places and services dropped to 83 per cent. The number of people who disagreed with this statement nearly doubled from nine per cent to 17 per cent.
Ward 8 Coun. Courtney Walcott said he believes the current sentiment is directly related to Calgarians’ fatigue on the project and a lingering feeling of uncertainty that it will be delivered. He said a lot of that has been driven by ongoing provincial interference.
“There’s also a lot of uncertainty even around what is the Green Line project now,” he said.
“So far, the only thing that we have actually confirmed is the Event Center, south. The (initial) city building project was much different than that.”
By late 2023, the City of Calgary had already begun talking about the impact of inflation on infrastructure costs, estimating that a typical project might see an increase of between 15 and 20 per cent. During a Green Line board meeting in March, a report noted that cost risk had changed from orange to red (critical).
In July 2024, dealing with cost pressures, Calgary city council cut several stations, and the budget jumped by roughly $750 million to $6.25 billion.
Instead of a vision for a line that went from 16 Avenue N to Shepard in the south, there was now a plan to go from Eau Claire to Lynnwood / Millican. There were no immediate plans to go north from the Eau Claire station, and the City of Calgary hoped they would be able to secure funding to continue the route further than Lynnwood.
Shortly after, the province cut funding, demanded another route and determined that it would be elevated. Further, it would only go to the Event Centre, but extended down to Shepard, and eventually Seton.
Competing priorities impacting positive sentiment: Coun. Wong
Ward 7 Coun. Terry Wong said he believes the greatest reason why positive Green Line sentiment has dropped is that there are competing priorities in people’s lives.
“When you take a look at people’s concern about affordability, people concerned about public infrastructure, people’s concern about even getting into recreation, swimming pools, those are things that all Calgarians are utilizing,” he said.
“The Green Line will serve, certainly, a lot of Calgarians, but most Calgarians will say, when will I actually take that line north to 16th Ave, downtown, south down to Seton?’”
Wong said that once the line is built from the far south to the far north, it will be appreciated. He likened it to sentiment in the 1980s, when the City of Calgary commissioned the construction of LRT from the University of Calgary into the downtown.
“People asked the question, ‘Is that the investment we should be making in such a short segment?’” Wong said.
“After the fact, when you see that the Red and Blue lines start to expand and reaching all the reaches, yeah, people would never want to give it up.”
Coun. Walcott said there’s an element of recency bias in the most recent Green Line sentiment numbers. Therefore, it’s important to keep a close eye on the survey results moving forward.
“The most recent narrative on the Green Line is how challenging of a project it has been to get off the ground,” Walcott said.
“That story, when we’re in the ground and tracks are being laid, it can change very quickly toward optimism, especially as tomorrow’s costs become yesterday’s costs. That’s always a massive change for us.”
