Calgary Green Line: Biggest Project in the City's History | In the News
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- Опубліковано 17 лип 2024
- We've got fresh news about the Green Line, Calgary's biggest transit project ever! The project has been approved by the city (after previously by the provincial and federal governments) and is ready to start procurement and begin construction. Reece gives you a rundown of the project and some predictions!
As always, leave a comment down below if you have ideas for our future videos. Like, subscribe, and hit the bell icon so you won't miss my next video!
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Hi, my name's Reece. I'm a passionate Creator, Transportation Planner, and Software Developer, interested in rapid transportation all around my home base of Toronto, Canada, as well as the whole world!
I'm part of the advocacy group that fought to get this passed. I'm stoked because I've been pushing for this since Highschool a decade ago.
Congrats! Glad it paid out at the end, I'll go an see it once is done :)
Thank you for your service!
Funny how public opposition groups "sleep" for so long. Same thing happened here in Albuquerque with our Albuquerque Rapid Transit BRT. I went to the first meetings in 2011. And they had already approved the system in 2015 and people were saying it was "shoved down their throat, forced without democratic votes, etc etc..." even though the city had MANY meetings about the ART for years. I'm glad Calgary is pushing ahead!
They aren't a real public opposition group, simply special interests who want to kill the project
@@RMTransit honestly so frustrating when climate change and social inequality are requiring us to fundamentally change our cities and lifestyles.. hopefully this project shows why this obstructive way if thinking isnt helpful
As a Calgarian seeing the greenline approval and potential banff train network; this makes me excited to all sorts :)
It's awesome isn't it? More transit is good for so many reasons
What's happening in Banff?
@@therealGLAD there's a feasibility study being done for a 130km Calgary-Banff passenger railway. The proposed railway will run from Calgary International Airport, Downtown Calgary, Cochrane, Morley, Canmore and finally to Banff.
I've heard that calgary has a pretty huge (like 80% huge) dependency on oil. It makes sense that special interest groups would try to lobby against a new train line. Thank god the city counsel decided to go thru with it
Alberta is Canada's biggest emitter by far. They run on coal and natural gas, drive big trucks.
Seeing mass transit going coast to coast to coast truly brings a smile to my face :-) Keep up the amazing content Reece!
Thanks so much! Making videos for you guys brings one to mine!
Damn man, your dedication to getting these videos out quick is amazing!
Thanks David!
As a human watching a video I am mostly seeing and hearing content (vowel and consonant sounds, colors, movement etc). Some of the content is bad and some of it is good. What I can say about this content, is it firmly rests in the "good content" category.
Never change Paige, Never Change XD
Your opinion as a human is much valued. Human opinions are among my most valued opinions.
Thank you for making this! I live in North Calgary, and was wondering why they were building so far south first, and not evenly splitting it north and south. Makes sense since that is where the depot will be!
Yeah for sure! Thanks for watching!
Thanks! Appreciate your content.
My pleasure! Thanks for watching!
Thank you for this, really looking forward to an update on the green line as well as a whole city wide transit update for Calgary. I'm a daily transit user that's moving from Hamilton Ontario to Calgary and will continue to use transit so I'm super excited for improved transit over the HSR system and to learn what's in store for the future of Calgary! 😁
The green line is to start in 2027 and Siemens Mobility will be supplying the S200 LRV which will be used on the green line. Lots of the stations will be underground. We are also planning for express LRT routes to the airport and downtown along with a new transit station.
Not correct, CAF will be supplying its Urbos 100 LRV’s for the green line.
Wow, that is great for Calgary!
For sure! Now the city needs to focus on orbital connections!
There is apparently a crazy guy running for mayor who wants to cancel this project to build a Alien beacon instead, I wish I was kidding
Great news! Hoping we can get something similar over the line in Auckland
Honestly I think the REM is a better model!
Would love to see an update video on the green line since development has started once things get going a bit more :)
The issue I have with Calgary’s bus network is scheduling. It looks great when they schedule cross city routes to run every 20 minutes but when it’s actually more like 40 minutes to an hour frequency at peak times because busses are stuck in traffic it’s often faster to walk/take the train and walk. I can understand that network planning isn’t always straightforward but we live in the age of data and surely there’s enough data (or a means of collecting the necessary data) that they can plan a schedule that’s actually pretty close to achievable (give or take a few minutes) rather than a network built around what seems like an arbitrary (and quite often not achievable) frequency.
Agreed. those bus frequencies are great on paper but don't pan out when the buses are getting stuck in traffic along with all the cars. I think the issue is less so with planning and data and more with political will- the only real solution to that problem is more dedicated transit lanes, and more transit priority at intersections, which requires more effort from city council.
@@ericjessee 100% that being able to build necessary infrastructure is the most ideal way to address the issues with Calgary Transit. However I do think in the short term leveraging data and building reliable schedules would do a lot to build confidence in the system, which would in turn make it easier to gain the political will to make big investments.
The Centre Street North bus corridor (#3 / #301 / #300(Airport)) already featured very high ridership, the issue north is not lack of demand - it was, frankly, politics. To get enough votes/support, the southeast corridor got prioritized. But as stated in this video, by building it through downtown & to 16 Ave N., extending north will be quite easy & obvious. Making 16 Ave also connects to the MAX Orange crosstown BRT, which connects to University of Calgary, SAIT/AUA campuses / Jubilee Auditorium, 2 major hospitals, connects to both Red & Blue LRT lines, etc.
(MAX is the new BRT routes, the older half-assed "300" series are being phased out / replaced over time)
Also regarding bus network, deep provincial funding cuts fall 2019 killed rapidly building frequency (especially bus), in some respects, it's set the system back to 1990's-level service. It's brutal, as the system had been rapidly reforming from a radial/downtown/commuter-centric system into a more grid-like system that had frequent connections, by cutting so much frequency the transfers start to take forever & city-wide usefulness becomes a proverbial house of cards. It's telling that the next week, car dealerships were running ads to lure transit customers into buying cars...
Very sad to see, that's really shows a lack of vision
...as long as the provincial government is all about taking a chainsaw to literally everything, we're stuck. The only hope for this to turn around is for them to be replaced by voters in (gulp) THREE years...
Great news! Seems LRT becomes more and more popular.
It really does! And I'm happy for it!
This is amazing. If they approve a Banff-calgary train I'm going to get rid of my car.
Very cool! What do you think the next step should be for Calgary's rail network after the green line? (in addition to the regional rail you talked about in a previous video, from YYC to Banff)
Keep building out the Green Line both north and south as the first stage doesn't hit nearly as many residents as it should. There will also be additions to the Blue line further into the NE, extension south on the Red Line, and the People Mover between the Blue and Green Lines to connect the airport.
I would vote for the Red Line tunnel downtown.
@@jeffreygleeson2444 The City would be far better off putting the 800+ Million dollars in extending the Green Line than burying a functional line for not a huge amount of benefit.
@@joncalon7508 there are significant benefits to burying the Red Line
I think priorities should be orbital lines, the existing network is very radial
Your comments about the huge stations and high floor trains need to be taken in the context of the build dates for the trains. The starting of the Red Line was back in the late 70's, opening in the early 80's. Back then, there was no such thing as Low Floor trains, and with the placement of the stations within the medians of 36th Street, Memorial Drive, and Crowchild Trail meant the stations needed to be large for accessibility. To retrofit these stations to be low floor would be astronomically expensive and exceedingly disruptive to the massive ridership that was in place on the C-Train system up to the Covid-19 disaster...
They are though, of course you could build it differently now! That being said elevators could have been used back then and would have reduced the size of stations!
@@RMTransit True, and in the stations, elevators are available (and really, have been from opening day for those in Wheelchairs) but both elevators and escalators both require heating, maintenance etc. No real difference on the outer ramps too. The system in the NE was built on the cheap-ish, and also the median placements was more likely because of the availability of the right of way and to reduce the NIMBY factor - No additional noise from trains running in an already busy roadway.
In all honesty I think Calgary has a pretty good public transport system considering its size and density.
Great video! I’m living in Calgary and it’s quite hard to move the new line projects forward right now due to budget concerns. Oil industry is crushing down, big companies (anchors and owners of those fancy skyscrapers in downtown) are doing massive laying off, and it’s very hard to plan out and secure the finances for the new line project. The 2 ave sw to 16 ave n section was originally planned as a deep tunnel under the Bow river, and was subsequently brought out into the air due to the same budget concern. I’m not totally unhappy with the new design as it features an interesting combination of bridge and tunnel and will be a spectacular scene once completed, but I really don’t like that grimly feeling it tells about the near future of this great city. (Calgary is such a great place to live, seriously)
I’m from China myself, where they just localized the production of tunnel boring machine during the past few years and now each and every major city has begun digging its own mostly (even fully, for some of them) underground metro networks (which make me feel more of a pity when the Calgarian Green Line tunnel was cut in half by length). Some of the networks are truly amazing and I would say check them out, if you don’t mind.
I think the Green Line is an interesting project in terms of a major scope needing to meet budgetary concerns indeed
@@RMTransit It basically connects the two last major parts of the city that aren't connected to LRT corridors. BRT 301 (North) & 302 (Southeast) roughly follows the future alignment of the two legs of Green line. Yes I consider it a definite priority for the city, even in an economic down time.
Transit should always be a priority
@@RMTransit Theoretically, yes. But opinions of people would divide once you foresee a highly negatively unpredictable economic future, which is one thing seperate Calgary apart from the other major Canadian cities right now.
Infrastructure is a good remedy for uncertainty, it provides stability!
Great video. I would like to see something...something for the maritime namely; Halifax busy corridors
Ok!
5:50-5:56 due to European Commission laws, Alstom would have to sell the Flexity (and most of Bombardier's designs) to another company as many of Bombardier's designs are redundant with Alstom's (case in point, Bombardier sold the ABB/Adtranz-made Variobahn to Stadler when they purchased Adtranz as they already had the Flexity series). I see Hitachi acquiring those designs (and also acquiring the Thunder Bay plant for entry into the Canadian market)
This is more similar to a German Stadtbahn system than an S-Bahn
It depends honestly but yeah
AFAIK S-Bahn is really just a way to organise heavy suburban rail lines. They may or may not share track with regional trains, some run on their own track but alongside regional track. Service frequencies are also generally longer than rapid transit, with some lines having 30+ minutes between services in off peak periods. You could take many cities in the world and give them an "S-Bahn" system just by changing the service patterns and route indicators, without changing much infrastructure.
@@RMTransit Not really. The S-bahn are heavy rail except in Karlsruhe, which is the outlier rather than the norm - see Leipzig, Rhein-Ruhr, Rhein-Main, Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Stuttgart, Köln/Bonn, Hannover etc etc
Yes I’m not talking about the rolling stock though, more so the mode of operation
Not that I know much about Calgary (or even been to Canada) but I am wondering why they don't go full heavy rail instead of light rail since it is going to be built so widespread?
Price and Capacity would be more than is needed or reasonable.
Regarding the large pedestrian bridges and ramps at existing highway median stations in Calgary, I think it can save electricity that comes with powering elevators. Still, the ramps are kind of problematic during its winters due to exposure to the elements.
How can it be that expensive? The whole 45 km underground full metro system in my hometown (in Germany) was even a bit cheaper than this line that is „only“ light rail!
There's a lot of different factors, but it is also just because prices are inflated here
RMTransit Ah, I completely forgot, that canadian dollars are worth less, than american ones. But it still remains very expensive. I‘d be happy to learn more about it in a future episode 😉.
It's the beaurocracy and red tape before the first shovel is put in the ground that costs so much over here! Did you know for example that way back in the 1930's the entire Empire State Building was built with planning and to completion in 11 months! GO FIGURE!
Why will the OMF be so large? I understand that the line's ultimate build-out will be substantial, but is Calgary not considering a second OMF for the future northern extension? For the Confederation Line, Ottawa has the main OMF at Belfast Yards, near the central east portion of the line, and is currently building a second, smaller OMF at the west end as part of Stage 2. A third minor OMF for the south end is part of the planning process for Stage 3.
Because it's the only location on the line that can support it. If the City could've had an OMF in the North, the Northern part of the Green Line would've gotten the nod instead of the south. (Imagine all the cost savings by having all the buses running on Centre Street taken off the roads!)
There is a strong possibility as well that this line will tie (even possibly interline through the downtown "core") with other low-floor lines in the future, ie. what is currently the "MAX Purple (east) / Route 305 (West)" corridor, which is planned long-term to convert to LFLRT in the medium/long-term.
If that happens, that will require even more OFM capacity - and centralizing that kind of service/infrastructure is almost always more efficient than multiple shops. The older high-floor system required a second shop to be built in the 2000's due to running out of space on the south leg of the Blue line (by Anderson Station), I suspect they don't want to repeat that.
It's highly unlikely that interlining ever happens with the Blue and Red Lines to be clear. There is also plans to have a second OMF in the far North. The demand is simply because of the ultimate buildout size and long trains.
I'm not too surprised that Bombardier's rail division got sold to Alstom, seeing their declining state!
Yeah, but all manufacturers have prpblems
@@RMTransit Yes, I heard Alstom had a bit of issues with the Citadis Sprint at first!
Will they be using Alstom Citadis in 3-car formation?
What are the average speeds of all these light rail and ICTS in various cities and how long to travel average distance of 10km
They are all different
50km/h for low floor, 90km/h for high floor
What kind of headphones are those in the back?
Grad planning student here who used to live in Calgary and Edmonton and even did planning work for the Calgary BRT for a class. It's weird that there was so little dissent because the BRT drove people nuts
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/anti-southwest-brt-meeting-draws-hundreds-1.3416663
They had to cancel some events because a planner got death threats so this is great to see. I just hope it doesn't stretch covid budgets too much.
Why not Siemens? Their entire fleet is already, so it would stand to reason that they would be inclined towards the s70. Thoughts?
I mean I don’t really see why you’d want a single supplier situation honestly
@@RMTransit according to Calgary transit that’s why they chose the new s200 trains. I was just wondering if there was a specific reason you left it out?
They weren’t a bidder, the other companies were, or at least they are no longer a bidder
I wouldn't say that the high platform stations are that bad. They do have elevators, and not all seniors or people with mobility issues, large luggages, prams, or health issues can safely take ramps.
Not all have them, some entrances are massive ramp only
When are they’re going to build a metro subway in Las Vegas, maybe a metro subway, or a bullet train that would go to Reno to Las Vegas, or both.
Who is the builder of the green line?
Particularly the track and rail/switches of it?
Siemens mobility
3:11 What’s an OMF?
Operations Maintenance Facility - another way of calling it the garage where the fleet will be maintained.
Jon nailed it
but what about Winnipeg?
(srsly asking)
Will the Green Line be more similar to ION LRT or O-Train
ION - it's going to be electric. O-Train is diesel powered...
@@joncalon7508 O-Train Trillium Line is diesel powered, but the Confederation Line is electric. I imagine the Green Line will be similar to the Confederation Line in the downtown, both being underground in the core, but have more in common with ION outside of downtown due to its surface running nature.
@@jeffreygleeson2444 Right. Forgot the fact there's two different O-Trains. Haven't been to Ottawa in many years...
@@joncalon7508 Makes Sense. The Confederation Line only opened last september.
Jeff's reply is a great explanation
:c Pls make another New York State Based Video because there constructing Long Island Railroad Trains Of MTA To Grand Central & They Gonna Put Metro North To NY Pennsylvania Station:c
I would be surprised if Calgary went with Alstrom given the problems with the Ottawa O-train. More likely they will chose the Seimens S700. The S700 has been a hit in Portland and Seattle just ordered a whole bunch of them. The predecessor S70 is running in multiple cities and the defacto LRT of choice in the US. In addition, Seimens has been supplying high platform LRT to Calgary for years now, so that relationship is already their. But hey, now that Alstrom owns Bombardier, the Canadian government might sway them towards Alstrom.
Alstom! But yeah it will probably be Siemens because as you say they are big in NA and there are prexisting relationships!
Siemens has such a deep history in Alberta (all of the Calgary & Edmonton LRT vehicles are Siemens, started with U2's), & in spite of the plant being in Sacramento they have become so accustomed to building for our climate/etc., I'd be stunned if it went elsewhere.
I just wish the different levels of government would stop bickering and just build the darn thing already... Along with the Alberta HSR and Banff train link...
The only sad part is that I grew up in Calgary in the '50's to sixties as a young lad and witnessed how Ralph Klein our Mayor stuck his neck out and had the LRT built right in our NEP bad times depression when interest rates were 16- 18 per cent for a 89000 dollar bungalo at 1060 square feet which was very hard to afford for a first time buyer, the first leg ran from Anderson road to downtown,! And here I am retired at 65, and still no South West to South East leg, and straight to the North TO THE AIRPORT! Probably not in my lifetime! And times before Covid were great economically, and somehow through two or three mayors since Ralph Klein, we somehow squandered it, one example, the humming and hawing about the New Saddle Dome replacement, and nothing accomplished, but costed us tax payers huge! Which was more important to build? Ralph had it right !
"Build it, and they will come"! I hope I will see my dream of the Green Line in my lifetime, what is left of it because gas prices and driving on a fixed and ever shrinking pension are out of the question!
This is sad because metro Vancouver will now have SKYTRAIN instead of lrt because I would like to train-spot the Lrt
Wanting to train-spot is not a good reason to build something
@@RMTransit I know but I still would like some more SKYTRAIN and at least one small LRT line. I never had the time to even see a LRT, but that's still okay
I wonder if using Musk’s Boring Company would be an option as it would significantly decrease the cost of any necessary tunneling
Lol
The green line and the whole system needs turn style ticketing on all platforms, it will reduce crime, we don’t want it in the quiet suburbs of the north and south east
The greenline will suck
I disliked your comment.