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Originally Posted by jawagord
You seemed to have skipped over the “rock solid” cost estimate part of Point 2 along with using proven technology, keeping costs low etc.
Where is the “rock solid” cost estimate for a center street line, in a tunnel or at grade there isn’t one, it’s a financial fail from the get go for a city the size of Calgary.
That leaves us with the SE line which is financially viable, it doesn’t have proven bus ridership but does have good forecast ridership and the potential to get 1000’s of cars off of Deerfoot
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Originally Posted by Corndogger
If increasing transit usage is the goal then the SE line makes a lot of sense. Transferring people from buses to trains while increasing operating costs makes no sense.
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Those are valid reasons for building the SE LRT. Are they more valid than the reasons for the NC? The City not properly publicly providing details of the scoring is why there is still this argument today.
And I question whether the SE line is truly financially viable (on an operating basis). In the article that I've posted a couple of times, it's clear that the Mayor is concerned about how expensive Green Line Stage 1 will be to operate. The irony of transit is that it is incredibly expensive (for governments) to replace private cars with transit.
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Nenshi said the city's investing in transit service to places in Calgary that don't currently have good service, or they have no service at all, which means the city will have to come up with new cash to pad the line – especially in the southeast.
"When we built the West LRT, it actually had very little impact on our operating budget because we replaced buses that were more expensive on a per-rider basis," said Nenshi. "The BRTs, we'll be able to absorb, it's not a problem ... council is going to have to find significant money between now and 2026 to operate the Green Line."
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https://web.archive.org/web/20180313...sh-nenshi.html
How would the NC alternative, 96th Ave to 4th St SE do? We don't know since the City never bothered to give details about ridership and operating cost but I'd expect it to do better simply because you replace vast numbers of buses. The 2015 report on the Green Line also expected that LRT will increase ridership in the NC as much as it would in the SE, approximately 27K more people in each area using transit for work for 2039.
Note the end paragraph, the NC corridor is at capacity. This is repeated again and again as a reason for building the Green Line and using LRT.
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Build the SE line to the South hospital for $3.5 billion, build the Center street line later when the city lines up the $6 billion dollars for a tunnel system.
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Originally Posted by Corndogger
For me that alone is reason enough to build the entire SE line first. If it can be done for $3.5 billion I say we use the other billion or so to finally put the trains below ground through downtown. That will give us a lot more options for future lines not to mention open up 7th Avenue for some major renewal.
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I think it would cost more than that. 4th Street to Shepard is already around $2.4B, not including LRVs. The estimate for Shepard to Seton was upwards of $1B and even only going as far as the 7th Av/2 St station should push it well over $4B.