Green Line LRT Project Undergoes Upheaval

The Province of Alberta suddenly withdraw its funding for Calgary’s Green Line LRT on September 3, 2024, forcing the city to stop work on the project, which had only just been finally approved by Calgary City Council on July 30 after many years of study and procurement.

Losing the expertise assembled to work on the project, work completed already, and around $850 million in shut down costs including cancellation penalties on contracts, including for the CAF Urbos LRT vehicles, would have set both the city and the province back many years.

Thankfully, following considerable discussion between the City and Province, it now appears that the project will go ahead after all, but with the provincial government taking the lead and making significant changes to the downtown alignment. Transport Action Prairie looks forward to seeing the Green Line get back on track!

Meanwhile, let’s look at how we got here and some of the lessons that should be learned.

Calgary’s early LRT Success

C-Train Siemens-Duewag U2 light rail vehicle at Saddletowne station
Siemens-Duewag U2 – these trains are now being replaced by Siemens S200 vehicles

Calgary is one of North America’s leaders in urban LRT, with two successful lines and high per capita ridership.  Initially approved in 1976, the Red Line opened in 1981 with seven stations outside of the downtown and eight stations downtown, providing badly-needed transportation capacity to Calgary’s busy downtown core.  It became an important transportation link for the Calgary Olympics in 1988, following the opening of the northwest leg to the university in 1987.  Along with the Edmonton LRT, this catalyzed a renaissance in urban LRT in North America. The Red Line now has 20 stations outside the downtown.   

The first small section of the Blue Line was built in 1985 with LRT service to the first seven stations in the north east, sharing the eight downtown stations with the Red Line. A major project to extend the Blue Line to its current 17 stations outside of the downtown, including the western leg, became operational in 2012 and was completed on schedule and within budget.

New C-Train Siemens S200 at a station
New C-Train Siemens S200 Light Rail Vehicle

Subsequent progressive extensions of these lines now result in a C-Train system length of 50 km, with 45 stations.  Because of pre-existing railroad rights-of-way and wide main roads, most of the system is at grade, with only small portions tunnelled or elevated to bypass other land use.  Both lines share an at-grade downtown track on 7th Avenue, resulting in an easy connection.  A unique feature is the free-fare zone downtown.

In contrast to LRT projects in many Canadian cities, the Red and Blue Lines were relatively uncontroversial and were successfully completed on time/on budget.  In hind sight, these successes were due to:

  • Obvious routings in most areas, along existing rail or road rights-of-way
  • Wide rights-of-way, meaning little tunnelling or elevating was needed, saving costs
  • Ongoing commitment from government

A Short History of the Green Line

After Blue Line completion, there was clear recognition that growing development in the southeast quadrant of the city, plus a major new hospital there, required LRT access to downtown.  However, it had significant challenges compared to the previous lines:

  • The downtown LRT corridor could not handle any more traffic and there was hesitation to utilized other surface roads in the downtown for more LRT tracks due to traffic impacts.  Hence tunnelling, considered to be risky due to groundwater control issues, was planned.
  • Many citizens wanted an LRT connection to the airport in northern Calgary.  This failed to make it into the Green Line plans.
  • North-south streets directly north of downtown were not sufficiently wide to easily accommodate the existing high-floor LRT vehicles and stations.  Low floor, at grade, trains on these roads had station footprints that could fit on these streets.
  • There were fewer naturally aligned road or rail rights-of-way to reach the southeast quadrant from downtown, so more expropriation was needed than for the Red or Blue Lines.
Map of the Green Line as proposed in 2016, from 160 Ave N to downtown and Seton, with a future airport connection shown.
Route as proposed in 2016

The Green Line was first envisaged in 1983, and in 2010 it was decided the project would be needed once the city reached 1.25 million population. An early assessment of alternate alignments occurred in 2011. The population trigger was passed in 2015, and since then the lack of this line has resulted in major traffic congestion.

In 2015, just before the federal election, an agreement was reached between the federal, provincial, and city governments split the expected approximate $5 billion cost equally three ways.  This $5 billion was similar to the cost of the Blue Line. More serious planning began, and in 2017 the city unveiled the line’s suggested alignment, also noting that the project would have to be built in stages. The first stage, utilizing the full $5 billion allocated, was to be from about halfway to the southern edge of the city, tunneled through downtown and under the Bow River, and extending just 2 km into north Calgary.

Significant public consultations were always part of the Green Line planning.  Because there was no clear best alternative, different ideas were floated by citizen groups, which added controversy.  In response, the newly elected UCP Government in 2019 cut their part of the budget by 86% and passed legislation to allow them to withdraw all funding with 90 days notice.  The project team reduced risk and cost by replacing the under-river tunnel with a bridge over the Bow River in the downtown.

Major construction was planned to begin in early 2021. However, difficulty securing provincial agreement made it impossible to proceed.  In mid-2021, the Prime Minister of Canada met with the Premier of Alberta, and within three hours of that meeting, the Alberta Government announced it had approved the Green Line without modifications and would contribute its pledged portion of the line’s funding.  In April 2022, procurement started to secure construction contracts.  Unfortunately, the costs that came back exceed the 2017 estimates considerably, and although “Bow Transit Connectors”—a consortium including EllisDon Capital, Flatiron Constructors, and WSP—were selected, the City of Calgary then had to create a Phase 1 from the Stage 1 plan, limiting the southeast extension to about a quarter of the distance to the city’s edge, and stopping at the Bow River.

Blue CAF Urbos tram running on the street in Birmingham, England.
CAF Urbos tram in England, similar to the vehicles ordered for the Green Line.

Suddenly, at the beginning of September 2024, the Province withdrew its contribution, blaming former Mayor Nenshi, now leader of the opposition, for the situation and compelling the city to call a halt to the project once again. Much political wrangling ensued over the possible $850 million in wind-down costs. A month later, saner heads prevailed, and the Province of Alberta took over control of the project, saying it would build the shortened south extension to the southern edge of downtown, and hiring consulting form AECOM rework the plan to traverse downtown.

The province wants to forgo tunnelling through downtown Calgary to save money, and thus be able to build more of the southern section of the line into the city’s southeast, while still providing downtown connections with both the existing LRT routes and a future passenger rail hub. This will be difficult to achieve with a surface alignment. One plan for downtown that has been suggested would elevate the Green Line LRT above the CPKC right of way near 9th Avenue, but this would make a 500-metre connection gap to the 7th Avenue lines.  No firm plans on crossing the Bow River or extending north have been floated.

The lessons learned from the Green Line drama are common everywhere in Canada and around the world:

  • Controversy can lead to delays and the primary result of delays is cost escalation
  • Lack of an obvious conceptual plan leads to controversy and delay.
  • Political interference on a large project like this is inevitable, but always raises costs and can lead to non-optimal transit solutions.

Transport Action would like to thank long time Calgary resident Rick Kry for providing information and guidance on the writing of this report.