Western Standard - August 02, 2024


Calgary Green Line LRT moves ahead with $6 2 billion smaller line


Episode Stats


Length

3 minutes

Words per minute

202.33714

Word count

733

Sentence count

74

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I talk about the lack of progress on the Green Line in Calgary and why we need a light rail transit system in our city. I also talk about why we should be looking outside of downtown Calgary to fill the growing downtown vacancy problem.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 For people who watch Calgary News and things out here, the Green Line, I just like ranting about that one because this is a beauty.
00:00:06.360 This is an LRT, light rail transit, expansion.
00:00:10.080 They've been talking about it for like 16, 17 years in Calgary.
00:00:13.120 Now it's on and on and on.
00:00:15.220 Nothing's getting done.
00:00:16.220 They've done a bunch of ripping up stuff downtown.
00:00:18.200 They're doing some underground utility work apparently.
00:00:20.020 But what the government does, so the city of Calgary managed to get billions out of the federal government and the provincial government.
00:00:26.580 Of course, they get billions of the Calgarian taxpayers and spent a decade on this thing.
00:00:30.640 Still not an inch of track laid yet.
00:00:32.880 I believe they spent one and a half billion so far.
00:00:36.540 The other levels of government basically said, we've given you enough.
00:00:38.920 We're done.
00:00:39.900 Make do.
00:00:40.360 So what have they done?
00:00:40.940 They keep shrinking it.
00:00:42.580 It's like I said, it's like a pecker in a cold swimming pool.
00:00:45.120 This thing is shriveling up so fast.
00:00:47.100 Every time they give a new report on it, it gets shorter.
00:00:49.460 The price doesn't get any lower.
00:00:50.700 It's up to $6 billion now.
00:00:52.200 And this thing is barely going to go outside of downtown.
00:00:55.040 No private business could run that way for 16 years.
00:01:00.580 Shareholders, others would fire them.
00:01:02.840 They would pull out.
00:01:03.520 The business would go broke.
00:01:04.380 But when it's government, they could just keep going and going and going.
00:01:08.060 And you get hooped.
00:01:10.280 So what we're going to have one day is a grossly over-budget project that goes from downtown Calgary
00:01:18.360 into a part of town that doesn't have many people in it.
00:01:22.400 And who knows when it's going to get done.
00:01:25.140 We've got to start rethinking our urban design anyways.
00:01:29.320 Downtowns.
00:01:29.740 Who goes downtown anymore?
00:01:31.760 I mean, people still do, but it's not like it used to be.
00:01:34.280 Calgary has a massive downtown vacancy problem going on right now.
00:01:38.040 And most downtown urban centers do.
00:01:40.000 One of the consequences of COVID that people discovered is a lot of people discovered I
00:01:44.560 don't have to go to the office every day.
00:01:46.500 A lot of those businesses realized we don't need the staff in here every day.
00:01:50.560 A lot of them can work remotely.
00:01:52.120 And they have.
00:01:52.740 And they've stayed that way.
00:01:54.280 Now we've got the government workers who are staying that way, but they aren't actually
00:01:56.280 working.
00:01:56.720 They're just sitting around home playing Minecraft.
00:01:58.200 But that's a separate story.
00:01:59.920 All the same, we have a surplus of office space.
00:02:02.900 These aren't growing areas.
00:02:04.020 We're trying to figure out how to fill them.
00:02:05.980 Adding more train service into these centers isn't the way to go.
00:02:08.980 We should be planning our city's understanding and realizing that people don't need to come 0.99
00:02:12.840 into these dense urban cores anymore.
00:02:14.800 They can live outside.
00:02:17.180 So let's look at transit service and how we can service that rather than these giant
00:02:21.040 projects that don't work.
00:02:23.260 They don't go anywhere.
00:02:24.760 And here we are in Calgary.
00:02:26.380 We've seen the same thing in Ottawa.
00:02:27.560 Theirs is a disaster.
00:02:29.100 Edmonton's is a disaster.
00:02:30.680 And those are the other things too, though.
00:02:32.220 If you're going to do these mega projects, get the private market in on it more.
00:02:36.360 Get the government out as much as possible.
00:02:38.160 But hey, guess who's behind Calgary's?
00:02:41.300 SNC-Lavalin.
00:02:42.540 Familiar name?
00:02:43.700 Yeah.
00:02:44.420 Thought so.
00:02:45.500 Boy, these names just keep popping up with these multi-billion dollar projects where nothing
00:02:48.640 gets done except a lot of pockets get lined and a lot of pockets get emptied.
00:02:53.120 Couldn't mind.
00:02:54.040 Lone Warrior saying, still no train to the airport.
00:02:55.900 Yes.
00:02:56.140 In Calgary, if there was common sense, the north leg of one of the train lines goes right
00:03:01.640 up right across from the airport.
00:03:03.060 It's actually kind of a straight shot across flat ground.
00:03:05.000 A lot of it's undeveloped.
00:03:06.080 It's industrial, light industrial, and nothing out there from Saddletown.
00:03:10.420 They could run a train out there because most of the people who work at the airport, and
00:03:13.280 there's thousands of them, plus people who might want to use the train to get there to
00:03:16.000 fly, would use that.
00:03:18.140 There's something that would make sense that would be used.
00:03:20.960 So, of course, the city isn't doing it.
00:03:23.540 Welcome to the realities, again, of monopoly service and peckerheads in power that really
00:03:27.320 shouldn't be.
00:03:27.820 Thank you.
00:03:36.100 Thank you.