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Old Posted May 17, 2010, 7:09 PM
BP_Brandon BP_Brandon is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: Royal Oak: House Elevation 4160'
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jsbertram View Post
Get the CPR to move their mainline into a tunnel with a West portal at Nose Hill Dr/Bearspaw Dam Rd NW and an east portal at 64 Ave/Hunterhorn Rd NE. This tunnel would connect the mainline at Bearspaw with the Calgary-Edmonton tracks beside Deerfoot Tr. which already connect to the CPR yards east and south of Downtown.

Its easier to build a tunnel big enough for one railway track that only has to get from the East Portal to the West Portal, than it is to build two tunnels with two or 3 lanes each for vehicles that will also need extra subsurface tunnels to connect with surface streets that they pass under (ie: Crowchild, Shaganappi, John Laurie, 14th St, Centre St)

With the CPR mainline out of downtown, you now have a swath of land 2 blocks wide from Crowchild Tr to Inglewood for commercial and residential development, and you can reuse some of the ROW for a high capacity roadway that can connect from the TCH / Sarcee Trail area of Bowness along the river past Shaganappi, through downtown to Blackfoot Tr, Deerfoot Tr. and 17th Ave.

Perhaps CPR can crunch the numbers and may discover that leasing all their land downtown for redevelopment and a high capacity roadway can more than cover the costs of building a new rail tunnel between Silver Springs and Huntington Hills.
Interesting concept…. Some obvious problems however, firstly the corridor through downtown has more then one track, several actually that CPR needs for capacity requirements. With a one track tunnel, those other tracks would have to be duplicated. Secondly, the strip of land downtown would have to be reclaimed before it could be turned over for other purposes. This would be a very big task considering it’s been an active railway right of way for 100+ years. Thirdly, the tunnel would be approx 10 km long, this would require extensive ventilation engineering using loud exhaust fans usually located at each portal and most probably mid tunnel somewhere. (Loco’s pump out lots of hot exhaust) Fourthly, the tunnel would have to be deep enough so the residential folk above aren’t shaken from there beds, and wouldn’t mind the fact of all the highly dangerous product being shipped right underneath them.
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