Calgary mayor asks province to salvage parts of halted Green Line transit project

Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek is urging the Alberta government to preserve pieces of the massive Green Line transit project now being dissolved.

In what she described as a 'hail mayor' letter that she penned to the province on Thursday, Gondek suggested that there are ways to 'preserve existing work' and allow for a 'carefully considered rail solution.'

She requested a meeting with the province and suggested retaining existing contracts for low-floor vehicles and retaining existing contracts for the design work segment that stretches form Fourth Street S.E. to Shepard.

That meeting was granted on Friday morning, and despite the Green Line Project ceasing to exist anymore, Gondek said it was a 'very productive' conversation with Premier Danielle Smith and Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen.

"If the province were to start from scratch on a vision for a new alignment, it would require all new procurements and all new contracts, which means more time, and it means more money," Gondek said.

"With what I proposed, they can use carefully considered rail solutions that have already been reviewed and approved by all three funders, and solutions which already have many industry experts working on them now."

Gondek adds that while the Green Line project is over, it is still her responsibility to save money on a north-south solution without compromising the true vision of the line.

She estimated that between 600 to 700 jobs could be saved if a few of the contracts can be salvaged in the new provincial vision for the project.

City council voted this week to wind down the $6.2-billion Green Line project after Smith's government said it would pull its $1.53 billion in funding unless the city altered and extended the line's route.

The city estimates halting work will cost $850 million on top of $1.3 billion already spent on land acquisition, utility construction and new light-rail vehicles.

The province has hired an engineering firm to come up with new proposals by the end of the year.

Dreeshen says the Green Line was poorly engineered and had faced escalating costs even as its scope shrank, but is optimistic now on this new vision moving forward.

"An acceptance of the alignment that we're working on will actually stretch the Green Line into the southeast part of the city, where a lot of Calgarians live and need a transit option into downtown," said Dreeshen.

"It was a very productive meeting, and it was nice to see that the mayor and certain members of council want to work with the province to make sure that the Green Line, after a decade of delay, can finally see light at the end of the tunnel and be able to finally get built."

Both the city and provincial administrations will now review the existing Green Line contracts, and a technical briefing will be held early next week to walk through the complexity of how some contracts are tied to each other and why timelines are so tight.

With files from The Canadian Press