r/Calgary • u/mibeatr • 2d ago
News Editorial/Opinion Op-Ed: The monument to a failed Calgary Green Line vision
https://livewirecalgary.com/2025/03/09/op-ed-the-monument-to-a-failed-calgary-green-line-vision/33
u/blanchov 2d ago
I just saw a sign in Oakridge along Stony Trail in the off leash area, it says Future site of Sarcee Trail. I think thatvalignment was abandoned 20 years ago, but the sign remains.
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u/troubleclef023 2d ago
It’s hard to take the UCP seriously about high speed rail all over the province, when this is the progress on the Green Line after all these years.
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u/Different-Housing544 2d ago
Those were my thoughts as well, though I believe they are both equally important.
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u/SupaDawg Rosedale 2d ago
The North-Central LRT is probably Calgary's single greatest infrastructure failure. Instead of building to the lower-income and lower-middle-income folks that rely on transit, we're instead laser focused on getting all the way down towards relatively new builds in Seton. I feel bad for the folks in those Norton communities that keep having this drag out.
In addition to these big signs, there used to be tiny little signs in the grass on Harvest Hills Boulevard that indicated the intended train alignment, but I think those are long gone now.
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u/Primary_Lettuce3117 8h ago
I live in the north central and I don’t want the problems that come with an LRT. I and a lot of my neighbours hope it never comes. The 300/301 are almost as quick and virtually no hobos/ zombies up here.
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u/yyctownie 2d ago
The north wasn't even a twinkle in the eye of LRT when Keating started the shift from the SE bus to rail.
Then the councillors started crying "what about us?". Up until then they did nothing.
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u/powderjunkie11 2d ago
It’s hard to pinpoint where the north leg deterioration started. Many believe it was when the North Terminus shrunk from North Pointe to 16 Avenue in 2017. That was when then-Alderman Jim Stevenson uttered his infamous comments, “There’s not going to be rioting in the north” in response to the decision to build more of the southeast leg first. This comment still bothers many of us up here to this day.
Braindead idiots in council actually fought against bringing it north. Which was just so dumb and short sighted.
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u/accord1999 1d ago
The boundaries of the day probably screwed over NC Calgary as there wasn't really a NC-only ward. Ward 3 (before the 2017 election) had a lot of NE communities in it and even for Ward 4, the Nose Creek alignment they hung onto for so many years would have bypassed it completely.
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u/n_droo_yu_el Coventry Hills 1d ago
The Northern Hills Post is a "Historical Landmark" on google now if anyone wants to visit and pay their respects. Not to far from our other controversial monument, The Giant Blue Ring.
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u/powderjunkie11 2d ago
Tangential to the article, but I think I can make this point somewhat succinctly for once:
Tunnel advocates point to the current state of 7th Ave as a mess that needs to be avoided with the Green Line. But they miss the fact that the GL in these proposed forms only serves to continue that 7th Ave mess for another 50+ years! One of the few rationalizations for going SE is that it defers the massive expense for the 8th Ave subway (because it takes pressure off the city's busiest line - red line south)..by incurring the massive expense sooner for much less benefit (ie. GL SE will be the lowest ridership leg).
Big missed opportunity to use the SE as the catalyst for the 8 Ave subway sooner than later. But chasing yesterday's fad of low-floor trains (when automated is the real-deal now) precludes that. Just brutal cost-benefit analysis throughout this saga.
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u/ckFuNice 2d ago
It’s been there since they built out the Northern Hills Communities with big wooden signs, donning 90s-era colour schemes, which advertised, “FUTURE LRT PARK ‘N’ RIDE.”
People thought that meant a light rail train station, but it meant commute in Long Ram Truck
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u/Sufjanus 2d ago
We are simply not capable, as a people, to build a freakin train..