Dreeshen Alberta to Build Proper Calgary Green Line
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Summary
Calgary's Green Line project has been in the news lately, and there's a lot of misinformation about it. So let's set the record straight. To understand the Green Line, we first need to take a look at the history of the project, and exactly how it is that we got where we're at today.
Transcript
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There's been a lot of talk about Calgary's Green Line project lately and
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unfortunately a lot of misinformation as well. So let's set the record straight.
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To understand the Green Line we first need to take a look at the history of the project and
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how it started and exactly how it is that we got where we're at here today.
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The Green Line was first introduced in 2015 by Nahid Nenshi when he was the Mayor of Calgary.
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It was promised to be a 46 kilometer line that would run from 160th Ave North
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all the way to Seton at the south end of the city and include 29 stations.
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The project was also supposed to include a tunnel running under the Bow River and through the
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downtown core. Back then this mega project was going to cost $4.65 billion. The only issue the
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City Council back then failed to do any of the proper costing, engineering or planning before
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coming up with that $4.65 billion price tag. At best it was drawn up on a napkin.
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Now as you could probably imagine that's not how competent or responsible organizations build
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large and complex mega projects like this one. It's impossible to determine how much any project
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will actually cost if you don't plan, design and engineer it beforehand. So it didn't take long for
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the Green Line project to start falling off the rails. Under the previous government in 2017, the Green Line
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was slashed from the original 46 kilometers and 29 stations to only 23 kilometers and 15 stations.
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The City also abandoned the entire north side of the Green Line. Now this alignment was done to make the
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budget fit inside an over-promised and poorly planned project design. But the shrinking of the Green Line
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didn't stop there. Even after cutting it by half of the original size, the Green Line project was
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facing massive cost overruns. Calgary City Council was still finding it impossible to build the project
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with a $4.65 billion budget. So they cut it down to 18 kilometers, abandoning any stations north of the
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Bow and only going as far south as Sheppard. But they kept the big expensive tunnel under downtown which
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was responsible for the majority of the costs. Unfortunately, even with these further cost-saving
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measures, the Green Line could still not be built. And so the City shrunk the Green Line even further
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and reduced the Green Line scope down to only 10 kilometers and seven stations running from Eau Claire to
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the Linwood Millican station in the southeast. So from an original lack of planning, the Green Line
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shrunk from 46 kilometers and 29 stations that Calgarians were promised almost 10 years ago down
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to just 10 kilometers and seven stations. Now this just goes from bad to worse. The most recent 10
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kilometer mini version of the Green Line doesn't serve a lot of Calgarians at all. And the project costs
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have now, brace yourselves, gone up to $6.2 billion. Now to put that into perspective, that means that
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taxpayers will be paying $630 million for each kilometer of track. Now that's just ridiculous.
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For example, Montreal's REM line only costs around $86 million per kilometer or seven times less than
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this current Green Line. Now this new alignment would make the Green Line one of the most expensive
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and least effective LRT projects in North America. And all this taxpayer money, while Calgarians need to
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build a new water line to ensure this summer's water crisis isn't repeated. And unfortunately,
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lack of poor water infrastructure has been a decade-long issue, but that's for another day.
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Now as your provincial government, we have an obligation to ensure taxpayers' dollars for
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infrastructure are spent efficiently, responsibly, and in a way that benefits the most amount of
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Albertans possible. We are not going to throw billions of taxpayer dollars away on a vanity project
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that fails in every way to address the actual transit needs of Calgarians. This is why we are
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taking immediate action to fix this nightmare. We will be working with experienced engineers to design
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a new above-ground Green Line alignment that integrates with the Red and Blue Lines, connects
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to the future Grand Central Station at Calgary's new Arena Entertainment District, and then stretches
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south to the community of Shepherd and beyond. We also have big plans for the City of Calgary
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and for the province when it comes to passenger rail, and we are going to deliver on them in a way
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that respects the hard work and investment of our taxpayers. This government finished Calgary's
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Ring Road on time and on budget, and we're adding lanes to the Deerfoot to help Calgarians spend less
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time in traffic and more time at home doing the things that they love. We want to improve the quality
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of life for Calgarians, and we're committed to work with this City Council to deliver a Green Line
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that actually goes somewhere, and that Calgarians can be proud of. Thank you and we'll see you around.