The Government of Alberta is sticking to its guns on an elevated Green Line in downtown Calgary, though city council could once again look at alternative alignments.

Members of Calgary’s Executive Committee approved an amendment from Ward 13 Coun. Dan McLean to explore other downtown Green Line alignments over the next couple of months in light of overwhelming downtown opposition to the elevated option. This will still need approval at a future meeting of Calgary city council.

Councillors got an update on the $6.25 billion transportation project on June 9, with construction moving full speed ahead on the southeast leg.

Green Line director Wendy Tynan said there are two major projects underway, with the maintenance and storage facility, and a 700-metre elevated guideway at Barlow Trail and 114 Avenue SE. She said they are firmly in construction mode.

“It is exciting to see all the work that’s underway,” she told reporters.

Calgary has been down the road of reviewing downtown options for the Green Line, with several iterations done over the past decade or more. Feedback was solicited, stakeholders had expressed their concerns, and ultimately, city council landed on an underground option through the core.

The project was then bumped off the rails when the province threatened to pull funding for the rail line, and there was an impasse on the project until a new deal was struck – one that included the prospect of an elevated line.

Tynan acknowledged that considerable historical work had already been done on these options.

“There are a finite number of options to connect into the downtown, but how it’s changed is the decision makers around the table,” she said.

“We’ve got great feedback from key interest holders along the alignment, and so with that, we’ll work together to put an option that will work to support the long-term vision for the Green Line, which is to extend the full 46 kilometers from Seton all the way up Center Street to 160th Avenue north, and with an alignment that can be supported by both our funding partners.”

Province has indicated flexibility: Mayor Farkas

Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas said that he’s had conversations with both Premier Danielle Smith and Minister of Transportation and Economic Corridors, Devin Dreeshen. He said he was “adamant” about addressing fears and concerns over an above-ground option.

“In conversations that I’ve had with them, they’re pragmatic, they’re practical, and if the vast majority of downtown residents and businesses can’t see support for this version of what the province had asked for, my understanding is that they’re willing to course correct, they’re willing to make adjustments,” Farkas told reporters.

“So, us going into this consultation, engaging with Calgarians, it’s important evidence to be able to build the case for a better option.”

While the city and external consultants have already concluded, on multiple occasions, that an underground option is the best alignment overall, Minister Dreeshen sanded the tracks on that idea.  

Dreeshen once again blamed the former Naheed Nenshi-led city council for the years of delays, though it was the province who had ordered multiple reviews of a project that was already carefully vetted.

“We’re open to discussing refinements to the alignment, but a downtown tunnel is not on the table,” he said in an emailed statement in response to specific questions.

“The elevated alignment will reach more neighbourhoods, deliver five more stations, and boosts commuter ridership by 60 per cent. Our focus is delivering an above-ground alignment that respects commuters and taxpayer dollars.”

The Government of Alberta has committed $1.53 billion for the Green Line, but Dreeshen noted that this is a City of Calgary project.

Mayor Farkas doubled down, however, saying that right now it looks like the elevated option is “irreconcilable” with a planned Calgary airport connection, and the Banff to Calgary rail line outlined in the province’s recently released passenger rail master plan.

“If you lay the two maps down on each other, it looks like the two trains crash into each other at a certain intersection, so if we were to build the Green Line in the same format that was asked for a year and a half ago, it could potentially preclude us from building that airport to Calgary downtown to Banff rail Connection,” he said.  

“So, there’s some other considerations where we have to think bigger in terms of what the location might be for this Grand Central Station that wasn’t on the table even a year and a half ago, but it is now a very active and live conversation as part of the master rail plan.”

More Green Line delays to get to a better place?

Ward 3 Coun. Andrew Yule said that Coun. McLean’s amendment opens the doors to look at other options. Previously, council had directed city administration to look at just the elevated option.

He said that was especially important given the opposition to the elevated line they found in the downtown. It wasn’t useful for them just to continue examining that path.

“I think it was very clear that that’s not the right direction, and with the mayor working with the province, allowing us to kind of expand the view of downtown core, I think it provides us with more data by the end of this year that we can kind of make better decisions, decisions on the alignment for the downtown core,” he said.

Guy Huntingford, director of strategic initiatives at NAOIP, a commercial and industrial real estate stakeholder in the downtown, said they were happy to see the city expand the downtown alignment potential. He was hopeful it resulted in a meaningful change to the Green Line path.

“We were quite clear that we felt that just looking at one alignment was not going to really make this project the way it should be,” Huntingford said.

Huntingford reiterated many of the concerns around loss of assessed value, noise, vibration and overall detriment to businesses around the elevated line. He said their members weren’t happy with those outcomes.

“As you can imagine, we did our own survey, which was specifically addressed to property owners, but the greater survey, I don’t think anything in there surprises us at all,” he said.

Ward 7 Coun. Myke Atkinson said that unearthing the work that was done previously is an important tool in helping move the project forward. He said the city is in a better position, with Green Line work already underway and more information gathered, to scrutinize the details of a downtown alignment.

“Those were levels of detail that we actually didn’t have when we were doing those early explorations,” he said.

While this may be the latest hiccup in a long-delayed project, Atkinson said “it doesn’t delay the right downtown alignment. He added that this is a public engagement process that the province wanted all along.

“I think it’s just the province living up to their word that they do want to hear from Calgarians about the potential alignment and are just going forward with the process that they committed to well,” Atkinson said.

City councillors will make a final decision whether to look at alternative alignments when the matter comes up again at a future city council meeting.