Leong: Calgary’s Green Line saga entangled in too much politics

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For all the delays and problems that have faced Calgary’s long-awaited and long-suffering Green Line LRT, I could hardly believe the project’s next stop would be utter chaos.

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And yet here we are, with the provincial government suddenly announcing last week it would no longer hold up its end of the bargain due to a disagreement with the decision to continue building the train underground in downtown Calgary.

While the underlying intention might have been noble — the idea that we can get more transit for the same budget by finding a way to get the Green Line built some other way — the government of Alberta’s execution of the entire matter was utterly botched, done in the least helpful and most disruptive way possible.

Given the time and money already spent on the project, you’d think there would have been an interest in presenting assurances that much of the work already undertaken can be salvaged.

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Instead, even a week in, it’s entirely unclear what the next steps and the province’s full intentions will be.

Just this past weekend, construction continued in downtown Calgary for the relocation of utilities linked with the planned (and now presumed dead) tunnel for the Green Line.

Over the past many months, properties have been acquired and preparatory work undertaken for stations and tracks outside the downtown core.

In downtown itself, the most high-profile and visible changes have been occurring in Eau Claire, with the closing of a shopping mall and the expropriation of a number of condos.

Whatever the Green Line turns into from here, taxpayer-funded work to this point must be safeguarded to the utmost.

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The province’s letter to the city last week was quick to label the Green Line as a boondoggle but the actual waste may be yet to come.

The utility rebuild might have come sooner than planned, but renewing such infrastructure would have had to be done at some point. It’s a useful, albeit expensive, change.

If the Green Line is to reach the farthest reaches of south Calgary, the train still has to go through places to get there — and the people in charge of this monumental transit project have been taking possession of the necessary land for this purpose. And while the shorter Green Line might have directly reached fewer people, it would still have had some limited usefulness.

But should the provincial government choose to start the whole thing over from scratch, the potential expense of breaking contracts and the like could possible eclipse the $1 billion plus spent so far.

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We’d also be losing the experience and expertise of all the folks who’ve been attached to the project.

Cost of transit projects everywhere ballooning

There’s also an interesting side-issue continent-wide: Transit projects everywhere are ballooning in cost. Vancouver, Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal have all experienced escalating costs with building light rail and metro systems.

Same story in the U.S. The first three-kilometre section of New York’s Second Avenue Subway cost an eye-watering sum of approximately C$6 billion. The next planned section is shorter and will cost even more. Meanwhile, San Francisco’s Central Subway came in over-budget as well, costing about C$2.7 billion for 2.4 kilometres of track.

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Clearly, there are wider issues beyond Calgary with budgets for big transit projects.

It doesn’t help that the latest Green Line disruption is covered in the stench of overt, over-the-top partisan politics.

Parts of Alberta Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen’s widely circulated letter read more like an election attack ad aimed at the NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi than actual public business.

Not only was the city blindsided by the change, so too was the federal government, the third partner in this troubled transit endeavour.

While it’s probably too much to expect the total absence of politics in public works projects, especially something the size and scale of the Green Line, the UCP might have overdone it by mixing overzealous campaigning into the day-to-day work of governing.

While I understand governments have an obligation and a right to demand public dollars be spent wisely, Alberta’s ambush of the Green Line project could inadvertently make things even more expensive than they already are.

rleong@postmedia.com

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