Downtown Green Line alignment options have been made public, and there are many opinions on how Calgary city council should proceed – including staying the course on an underground train.

An update on the Downtown Green Line alignment comes to the Sept. 8 Executive Committee meeting, and in it are three options — two are elevated and one that remains on the surface along 10 Avenue SW.  

In June, city council directed administration to look at potential alternatives to the provincially proposed downtown Green Line alignment.

The Green Line unit is asking the Executive Committee to recommend that council choose one of the options, and to begin advanced planning, design and procurement to move the project along.

The three options were pared down as a part of a functional planning review that began months ago. Earlier this summer, Green Line director Wendy Tynan told LWC that there would likely be only a handful of options to come forward, as many of the options had either been ruled out previously or didn’t succeed through a criterion set by all funding partners.

The first option would see an elevated alignment along 10 Avenue SW to 2 Street, where it would turn north toward a terminus at 7 Avenue. That option is estimated to cost roughly $1 billion over the available funding of $6.25 billion.

Option two shortens the downtown portion, having it turn northward along 1 Street SE, with an end point around 6 Avenue. That would also require a significantly different path to get to North Calgary. This option was estimated at $500 million over the available funding.

Finally, a surface-level option was added along 10 Avenue SW, taking it to 2 Street SW before it turned north. This is the only option that was available within the current funding envelope.

“The three shortlisted options were compared using criteria that reflect the key considerations influencing Council’s decision and the areas where meaningful differences between the options exist, including cost and value, downtown integration, mobility, ridership, constructability and future network connectivity,” read the city admin report.

“The criteria were informed by technical analysis, planning work, engagement findings and project delivery considerations.”

No Goldilocks option: Transit advocate

Ward 8 Coun. Nathan Schmidt said that they’ve studied the downtown options to death, and there’s not much more to understand about the options.

“I just keep coming back to the fact that we are kind of between a rock and a hard place,” he said.

“It comes down to a political decision at this point about how we want to move this project forward, and that is, I think, going to be a difficult decision for all of us.”

Schmidt said the fact that the options don’t really stretch further into the downtown, nor do they present a reasonably viable path to the north, should be considerations.

“Now we have to do that arithmetic of what is the best option that is before us, and if there’s not an option that we can live with, then what does that mean for the future of the Green Line?” Schmidt said.

“And to be honest with you, that is a decision that I am still struggling over.”

Ward 13 Coun. Dan McLean said that he liked the surface level option.

“We’re picking the option that I think is most amenable to the province and to Calgarians, and it’s the most cost-effective,” he said.

There’s long been concern over Calgary’s current surface-level LRT system, with pedestrian crossing concerns, traffic snarls and other potential disruptions if there are service issues.

“What we need to have there is the timing, the synchronization of the lights,” McLean said.

“Like we’ll see at different stops where the train has to stop for traffic, not the other way around. So, if we do that and let the traffic flow properly, then I think that we can satisfy everybody.”

Jeff Binks with the transit advocacy group LRT on the Green said every option that’s been presented is asking for some sort of a compromise.

“There’s no Goldilocks option in front of us,” he said.

It will be a difficult decision for Calgary city council, but it’s one that must be made, Binks said.

“We’ve already lost almost a decade due to delays and debate, and to kick the can further down the road isn’t, I think, something that Calgarians want to see,” he said.

Mayor Farkas still wants an underground downtown line

Binks said that a surface line isn’t necessarily a bad idea, especially considering that the Green Line will be operating with the new low-floor LRVs, and it offers a different design option for stations to integrate into the surrounding area like other Green Line stations that have completed design.

The one thing Binks said was a red flag was the lack of a launching point for the north portion of the Green Line.

“We can’t forget about that link. Unfortunately, this report doesn’t address the biggest question of all, which is how the Green Line is going to link north and south through downtown,” he said.

“If council can’t figure out how to answer that question at committee in the next few days, I think that’s going to be a big concern.”

Mayor Jeromy Farkas said that it’s high time to lock in a downtown alignment. Right now, he favours the one that stops shorter in the downtown, because it may free up money to go further south.

“I believe that this could potentially set up the city of Calgary for a phase two application that could do the downtown underground using modern technologies that have been proven, say with the micro tunneling, with the Bearspaw South feeder being replacement,” he said.

“Potentially the city and the federal government could partner as part of that downtown underground portion, and then have the province come back to be the partner to continue the line north past the Bow River.”

The province has long said that they won’t support an underground Green Line alignment in Calgary’s downtown. Farkas had stated in the past that he was willing to go it alone with the feds in an underground option, or use it to push the province to come to the table.

“We understand their concerns with the cut and cover or the tunneling technology as it may have existed 20 years ago, but modern evidence, modern science, and geotechnical evidence shows us that going underground through the downtown is by far the most cost-effective,” Farkas said.

“It’s the least disruptive to local businesses, and critically, it maintains the property tax revenue that’s collected from these properties.”