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  #2541  
Old Posted Feb 4, 2019, 10:07 AM
accord1999 accord1999 is offline
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Originally Posted by milomilo View Post
I would at least expect the per rider subsidy to go down - I haven't seen the numbers yet to determine if that is the case.
In TT2015-0881, for their projections of revenue from ridership, they use the formula of $1.61 (average fare) x daily ridership x 310 days to get annual revenue. For 65K/day that would be about $32.4M/year in revenue and $72.4M/year in operating costs (in 2016 dollars). A fare recovery rate of about 45% which is probably poor compared to the existing LRT lines, and noticeably lower than the 2015 projections for more complete variants Green Line.

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  #2542  
Old Posted Feb 4, 2019, 2:52 PM
milomilo milomilo is offline
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Interesting. I'm surprised both by how little additional ridership you get from extending the LRT to the outer burbs, and how much impact it would have on the cost recovery. It's a shame they didn't chop it up further to see how only going to 16 Ave affects things.
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  #2543  
Old Posted Feb 4, 2019, 7:26 PM
accord1999 accord1999 is offline
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Originally Posted by milomilo View Post
It's a shame they didn't chop it up further to see how only going to 16 Ave affects things.
I always felt, after reading the Green Line documents produced by the City such as TT2015-0881 and the November 2016 LRT Business Case Report (https://www.scribd.com/document/3392...-November-2016), that planning always assumed that the minimum core would be Beddington to Shepard.
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  #2544  
Old Posted Feb 4, 2019, 7:37 PM
suburbia suburbia is offline
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Originally Posted by accord1999 View Post
I always felt, after reading the Green Line documents produced by the City such as TT2015-0881 and the November 2016 LRT Business Case Report (https://www.scribd.com/document/3392...-November-2016), that planning always assumed that the minimum core would be Beddington to Shepard.
It is clear that they didn't think that central portion, from 16th ave to Inglewood, would not cost as much as it is going to. While I accept that being largely underground for that piece is fully defensible, it annoys me greatly that they couldn't make it up till 78th Ave.

But like with everything, we need to move forward. IMHO the important thing is navigating funding opportunities so that phase I completion rolls directly into phase II construction, and further, that phase II is north where the greater number of people are, and the greater number of transit users.
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  #2545  
Old Posted Feb 4, 2019, 7:44 PM
suburbia suburbia is offline
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Originally Posted by milomilo View Post
Interesting. I'm surprised both by how little additional ridership you get from extending the LRT to the outer burbs, and how much impact it would have on the cost recovery. It's a shame they didn't chop it up further to see how only going to 16 Ave affects things.
An annoying part of the analysis is that because people in the NC corridor are already heavy users of transit, the numbers penalize them because the increment does not reflect that actual volume of ridership. But if you were to look at the NC corridor, it would actually decrease drastically the number of buses running there currently. I'm unclear if their calculations took that into account (IE greater savings on buses), as they look to only be considering increase in ridership.

My comments assume that a majority of the 92K users listed as "base" are from NC and not SE.
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  #2546  
Old Posted Feb 4, 2019, 11:58 PM
milomilo milomilo is offline
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Originally Posted by suburbia View Post
But like with everything, we need to move forward. IMHO the important thing is navigating funding opportunities so that phase I completion rolls directly into phase II construction, and further, that phase II is north where the greater number of people are, and the greater number of transit users.
But by building the wrong section of the line first, the city has put itself in a position where it will be harder/impossible to finance the rest of the line. Any extension to the north will probably have to be fully funded by external sources, and I will eat my metaphorical hat if it does not turn out that it has to be tunneled all the way to 64th. Even running on surface will be mega expensive, so the chances that we can roll straight into it are slim to none, IMO.

Building to the SE should be much easier at least, but I'd rather we were replacing all those packed 301 buses on Centre St with trains, not spending billions for people who chose to move to a transit wasteland.

Last edited by milomilo; Feb 5, 2019 at 12:39 AM.
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  #2547  
Old Posted Feb 5, 2019, 12:35 AM
suburbia suburbia is offline
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Originally Posted by milomilo View Post
But by building the wrong section of the line firsts ...
My recollection is they needed to go south because of the storage and maintenance facility. They did conduct a review for if there was an appropriate site to the north, but nothing was found that would have been a good fit. This piece probably had the biggest impact on phase one going south.
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  #2548  
Old Posted Feb 6, 2019, 7:58 AM
accord1999 accord1999 is offline
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Originally Posted by suburbia View Post
I'm unclear if their calculations took that into account (IE greater savings on buses), as they look to only be considering increase in ridership.
Those projections do take that into account. You can see in the table where the operating costs gradually decline as the line get longer; though in hindsight it would have been interesting to see what the operational savings would be going from 16th Avenue to Beddington.

In the aforementioned 2015 document, it highly recommends again and again that the City build North Pointe to Seton to reduce the need for feeder buses.

Focus on the full extents of the Green Line as a single procurement for construction within the next 10 years.
Administration would continue to conduct functional planning, initiate enabling projects (e.g. utility relocation,
right of way preparation) and await the feedback of the Federal and Provincial governments. Under this
approach we move ahead on the larger program, leveraging the funding we have in hand. This is Administration’s
recommendation.


Quote:
My comments assume that a majority of the 92K users listed as "base" are from NC and not SE.
The projections were 61K in the NC, and 32K (perhaps an addition mistake) in the SE for the Base scenario.

Last edited by accord1999; Feb 6, 2019 at 8:43 AM.
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  #2549  
Old Posted Feb 6, 2019, 8:35 AM
accord1999 accord1999 is offline
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Originally Posted by suburbia View Post
My recollection is they needed to go south because of the storage and maintenance facility. They did conduct a review for if there was an appropriate site to the north, but nothing was found that would have been a good fit. This piece probably had the biggest impact on phase one going south.
A cynical person might say that they didn't bother to look.

IIRC, the City and Council spent months considering the alignment at Ramsay, but the far more critical decision about whether to go North or SE in Phase 1 was decided in an afternoon with one slide.



Would have been nice if they bother to give actual details, such as the ridership and operating costs of 96th Ave-4 St SE to compare and whether its (likely) better ridership and finances would make up for the extra time needed to acquire land, finish planning and less ideal location for a maintenance facility.

Last edited by accord1999; Feb 6, 2019 at 8:58 AM.
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  #2550  
Old Posted Feb 6, 2019, 2:25 PM
milomilo milomilo is offline
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Being a cynic, I'd agree with that. Choosing a maintenance facility should be a late stage consideration. I don't buy that it was impossible to find something suitable, but the other option could simply be 'the line we need does not fit within our financial capacity at this time'.

I wonder why this month's council meeting was cancelled. We have barely had any updates in months. I know these things take a long time but I'd have thought we'd know far more detail by now, and even though I have my doubts about this project I'm still excited for the construction to start.
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  #2551  
Old Posted Feb 6, 2019, 5:04 PM
suburbia suburbia is offline
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Originally Posted by milomilo View Post
Choosing a maintenance facility should be a late stage consideration.
So, which LRT lines have you developed previously?

Joking aside, a maintenance and storage facility is a major installation and absolutely critical to putting in an LRT line.

The Mayor explicitly requested the city staff to look for maintenance facility site options in the north, and they came back with there being nothing appropriate. You wouldn't want to take up something like the prime Aurora Business Park site for something like a maintenance site - it just wouldn't fit.

Anyway, those were the reported facts. If you guys want to discuss about hypotheticals, so ahead, but it is really meaningless.
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  #2552  
Old Posted Feb 6, 2019, 6:01 PM
milomilo milomilo is offline
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What I mean is, cities don't decide the route of transit lines primarily on where maintenance facilities are, they (should) decide them based on where the best ridership lies. Who knows how much effort they put into finding a facility, given how flawed the entire decision making process has been. If the only place we can afford to build a facility is in an industrial wasteland, and that means we have to build a mass transit line mostly through industrial wasteland, perhaps we need to question whether the line is feasible?

I agree I'd rather be talking about stuff that isn't hypothetical, but given that we haven't received any interesting information on the project for about 2 years, there's little else to talk about.
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  #2553  
Old Posted Feb 6, 2019, 6:21 PM
outoftheice outoftheice is offline
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One thing of interest is that the city put out their request for pre-qualification for bidders on the Green Line LRVs this week. My guess is it will be the usual suspects like Siemens and Bombardier but this is the first real steps in tendering the project. A decision on LRVs should be made by the fall.
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  #2554  
Old Posted Feb 6, 2019, 6:32 PM
milomilo milomilo is offline
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Do we know how many they are ordering?
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  #2555  
Old Posted Feb 6, 2019, 7:21 PM
accord1999 accord1999 is offline
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Originally Posted by milomilo View Post
Do we know how many they are ordering?
The original presentation for Phase 1 said 70.

https://pub-calgary.escribemeetings....cumentId=13865
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  #2556  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2019, 2:01 AM
CrossedTheTracks CrossedTheTracks is offline
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If memory serves, complexity of land acquisition was also much greater in the north. Much larger number of smaller properties, and the time to negotiate and/or expropriate would be that much longer, and ultimately cost.

(I'm not defending any such logic; just mentioning it as an apparent factor for the city.)
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  #2557  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2019, 2:24 AM
CTrainDude CTrainDude is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by accord1999 View Post
The original presentation for Phase 1 said 70.

https://pub-calgary.escribemeetings....cumentId=13865
Ultimately it depends on the length of LRVs they decide to order - longer LRVs means fewer cars.
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  #2558  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2019, 3:13 AM
milomilo milomilo is offline
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Originally Posted by CrossedTheTracks View Post
If memory serves, complexity of land acquisition was also much greater in the north. Much larger number of smaller properties, and the time to negotiate and/or expropriate would be that much longer, and ultimately cost.

(I'm not defending any such logic; just mentioning it as an apparent factor for the city.)
Yeah, 300 or so properties apparently. I know I sound like chicken little here but I really feel the scale of construction (and destruction) required on the north side has been massively underestimated. It was easy to just draw a line on a map 5 years ago and say that the Centre St portion of the Green Line can run at grade, but I think making that a reality will be much harder. The idea that we can just keep on building to the north is likely fantasy.
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  #2559  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2019, 7:18 AM
accord1999 accord1999 is offline
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Originally Posted by suburbia View Post
The Mayor explicitly requested the city staff to look for maintenance facility site options in the north, and they came back with there being nothing appropriate.
I think that was just (at the time) private citizen Jyoti Gondek asking Twitter why Admin didn't look North for area for a facility, Mayor Nenshi spotting the question on his phone and asked it out loud.

https://twitter.com/JyotiGondek/stat...40320543825920

And after reviewing the video from the May 2017 meeting, starting at 8:46:22 Fabiola Macintyre actually confirms to the Mayor that it could fit at Aurora.

https://pub-calgary.escribemeetings....a&lang=English

Quote:
You wouldn't want to take up something like the prime Aurora Business Park site for something like a maintenance site
Rough calculations would say that there's virtually no way even 70 acres of land that far away from the downtown core would generate municipal property taxes that would match the higher revenues and operational savings you would get from going NC first.

And I wonder how prime Aurora really is? Despite its good location, the City hasn't done much with it for over a decade. You can't even find the City's current Aurora Business Park page from a Google search. It's last update shows that it's in the "Revisit Aurora project in conjunction with Green Line LRT Program." phase which was supposed to be worked on 2016-2017 and its ASP link goes to Auburn Bay's.

It may be that by protecting Aurora for future development, it actually hampers it because there's not much interest until there's an actual date on when the Green Line gets there.

Quote:
Anyway, those were the reported facts. If you guys want to discuss about hypotheticals, so ahead, but it is really meaningless.
If the Administration reports actually provided real facts, such as revenue, operating costs, and scoring between the NC and SE options and gave the City and Council a chance to debate it, as well as showing actual progress in the last 18 months on getting the NC line ready for Phase 2, we might not have people still questioning the decision.

And these discussion might not be so hypothetical if Phase 1 proposals comes back significantly over-budget and the City has to turn to Premier Kenney for more money.

Last edited by accord1999; Feb 7, 2019 at 10:41 AM.
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  #2560  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2019, 8:23 AM
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The North central Green Line has much better business case compared to Southeast first, that’s why NC got deferrred to phase 2. This is the whacky circumstances for public projects. If you go with your best option, later phases won’t get the same level of support. But if you go with the second best option first, the second phase preserves the better business case for future funding requests.

You guys aren’t seeing the pure politics of the situation. Kenney wants a fight with Nenshi, especially over the Green Line cause the North area is super pissed at getting passed over by Calgary City Council. There is 4-5 ridings up for grabs if the UCP goes after Calgary Council and Nenshi in particular.

The mayor loves a good political scrap, Kenney is only too happy to oblige Nenshi. If you think the political fireworks will stop after the provincial election, think again.

The next city election you will see Magliocca go for Mayor. Its debatable as to whether Keating puts his name forward for Mayor. Nenshi is also recently considering another run in 2021. In any event, Mags and Kenney are super tight. Expect the NC Greenline to be fought over during 2021 civic election. Premier Kenney is going to give a lot of support to Mags and the NC Greenline funding could be a major policy plank.

Every year Mags puts on a major Stampede BBQ for all of Ward 2. It’s also the biggest meetup for Conservative politics in Calgary. MPs, MLAs, Councillors all attend if they bleed conservative blue. Most get introduced and give a quick speech. Last 2 years Kenney has stayed at the BBQ for most of the event. This is guy who’s nickname as immigration minister was “Curry in a Hurry”.

Another conservative angle, there is a stron NC political alliance between Michelle Rempel, Sean Chu, and Paul Frank. Calgary-North UCP nomination vote is this Saturday, and if Paul Frank wins it will be a lock up for federal-provincial-City alliance to get the NC Green Line complete before it gets south of a Shepherd.

But before any new money comes available. Expect at least another 2 years of stalled funding announcements as the province squeezes Calgary a council for more concessions, particularly on the “city building” aspects of the Green Line.
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