Danielle Smith and UCP become urban transport planners in response to Green Line

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When Mayor Jyoti Gondek showed interest this week in giving the province government control over the Green Line, there seemed to be a sense of despair and resignation.

The mayor reasoned that if Premier Danielle Smith's UCP is determined to re-engineer the line's route in the manner it desires, after withdrawing its support for the city's significantly reduced Green Line plans, it might as well deliver it completely and pay for any cost overruns that result from further delay.

Gondek told reporters at city hall, "They have an alignment that they wish to deliver, they need to take on the risk on this."


That might work out pretty well for the Smith administration's needs.

Already, the provincial government has passed legislation giving it more control over how local councils are run.
communicate with Ottawa, plan their elections, and enact rules that conflict with the province's policies. The next move could be to take over municipal transportation planning.

Line in Green
The city's plans to move the Green Line LRT via a downtown tunnel at 2nd Street S.W. have since been denied by the UCP government (Green Line board )
Typically, a province serves as the silent, understanding, and sometimes even scrutinizing financial partner for city halls in Calgary and other cities when they design and construct urban initiatives. Similarly, Ottawa expresses a wide interest in the public and economic benefits of increased rail transit, without taking on the position of principal designer or engineer.

For the past nine years of working on the Green, that has primarily been the case Line, with each tier contributing $1.53 billion toward the project, which is currently valued at $6.2-billion. Although the Jason Kenney-led Alberta government requested a four-year delay to evaluate and adjust plans, the project mostly moved forward in accordance with city hall's wishes following those reconsiderations.

That's not what transpired this week, following choices to eliminate six stations from the project's initial phase and an inflation-strained budget.
Read more:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/green-line-lrt-alberta-control-devin-dreeshen-1.7314983


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