End of Green Line LRT project ‘unfortunate’: Transport Minister

Alberta’s transportation minister says the city of Calgary’s decision to end the Green Line LRT project is “unfortunate” — but it doesn’t completely close the door on the public transit initiative.

The City Council voted 10-5 to stop the project Tuesday. There were several attempts to save the $6.2 billion project and stop it instead, but council members ultimately decided to end it.

The cost of this project will be at least $2.1 billion.

“Unfortunately, some members of city council would rather see the Green Line cancelled altogether than find a much more cost-effective and longer surface line that actually reaches hundreds of thousands of Calgarians in the southeast,” Dreeshen said in a statement Wednesday.

The provincial government has withdrawn funding for a review of the light rail (LRT) line.

The final report on the line is due to be published in December. Dreeshen says the decision will then be up to the commune.

“We actually hired AECOM to do that work and by December we’ll have that new extended alignment running down to the southeast,” he told CTV News. “From there we’ll share it with council and the people of Calgary to see if they support it.”

Gondek said Tuesday that the province’s decision “puts an end to the Green Line as we know it.”

She added that any new route proposals from the province would require new design work, procurement and financing agreements.

“There is a government group that needs to take responsibility for its actions, and there is another government group, ours, that needs to do what is right, which is to end this project — even though none of us wanted that,” she said.

The province prefers a rail line to Seton without boring a tunnel through the city center.

“So today, right now, it would be great if the Green Line folks would work with AECOM and share any information, details, designs or engineering planning that they’ve done,” Dreeshen said.

In July, Calgary councillors approved an updated plan for the first phase of the Green Line that was shorter and more expensive than originally proposed.

The first phase of the project was initially planned to cost $5.5 billion and would cover an 18-kilometer section from Eau Claire to Shepard in the southeast of the country.

However, due to delays and rising costs, the project was changed and now runs from Eau Claire to Lynnwood/Millican at a cost of $6.248 billion.

The updated Phase 1 scope meant there would be five fewer stations in the Southeast and construction of the Centre Street station would be pushed back.

Speaking at an unrelated news conference Wednesday, Premier Danielle Smith said the money promised for the Green Line project is still there, but the province wants it to be the way it “originally planned it.”

“We kept watching and talking to the city as the budget constraints got tighter and tighter to not eliminate the southern portion of the line, but rather cut some of the expensive portion of the line downtown,” Smith said.

With files from The Canadian Press