In real life, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. In politics, this is rarely true. If you thought there couldn't be any more twists and turns in the story of Calgary's Green Line LRT project, you were sadly mistaken.
Public Engagement Reveals Ongoing Opposition
Public engagement on the planned elevated section through the city centre and Beltline found residents and business owners nearest to the line continue to express ardent opposition to the idea, which the previous city council was forced to accept as a condition for continued provincial funding.
The province had said the previous plan to bury the Green Line downtown was too expensive and asserted that elevating it instead would save enough money to send the route farther south in its first stage.
Uncertainty Over Cost Savings
It is important to note that we only have the UCP's word to go on when it comes to apparent savings. A study commissioned by the province, produced by engineering firm AECON and released in fall 2024, went out its way to describe its own shortcomings — with the actual cost of elevated tracks among them.
Given compressed timelines, the report wasn't able to delve into the potential impact of an elevated Green Line on directly related matters including noise and vibration, property values and stormwater impact, meaning they require more study and could incur additional costs.
By the way, the province has also said it won't cover cost overruns. How convenient.
City Council Revisits Alignment Options
With all of this in mind, city council members have told administrators to revisit the alignment, including the possibility of putting the Green Line in a tunnel under downtown Calgary. Seeing how this project was so well-studied before, municipal bosses assured elected officials it won't add any time to the project to do so.
With the Alberta government's continued staunch opposition to the idea of the Green Line going underground, Mayor Jeromy Farkas floated the possibility of securing federal financial support for a tunnel. He even suggested that to get the downtown segment of the Green Line done right, we should entertain the idea of building the northern segment and pushing farther south before, and temporarily bridge the gap in the city centre using buses.
Baffling Project Progress
The fact we are even at this point is truly baffling. The province has continually said it's trying to protect taxpayers' money by making Calgary build the Green Line above ground in the city centre so it can provide more Day 1 coverage in the south.
However, it also forced the project to forfeit hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of utility relocation and preparatory construction necessary for the original underground project. These are literally sunk costs with nothing to show for it in the foreseeable future, apart from the renewed pieces of infrastructure themselves.
The province also held up the project for an unnecessary review in the middle of the pandemic — a look-see that found everything was just fine.
