CALGARY -- Less than a week after approving a drastically reduced Green Line LRT, the City of Calgary could be setting itself up for another multi-billion dollar train project.

The city’s Transportation and Transit Committee got its first look Wednesday at a proposal for an east-west line connecting the future Blue and Green Line expansions into north Calgary to the airport. 

The report suggests a driverless train running every four to five minutes would travel between 96th Avenue N. and 88th Avenue N.E. over the course of six stops. 

The project is estimated to cost between $900 million and $1.8 billion and is not expected to come to fruition for at least 10 years. 

Committee chair Ward 6 Coun. Jeff Davison says the city will still need to prioritize building the Green Line LRT, but this proposal will help focus on better ways to maximize the transit network. 

“We will require provincial and federal support to build a line like this and that tap may be running dry right now, but this is a chance to piece together a vast transit network system,” he said. 

Members of the committee were told Wednesday that current bus service to the airport is already sufficient, with ridership projections for 2028 seeing less than 1,000 passengers each day. 

However, longer-term projections for the year 2048 show ridership to the airport is expected to increase to around 30,000 passengers each day. 

Davison is optimistic there will be a surge in people using transit as time goes on. 

“What we know now is that people are skeptical about taking transit, but right now we’re seeing about a five per cent increase to ridership every week-over-week,” he said. 

“That will continue to grow, but a vaccine will also change things about how and when they will travel so it will take time to get back to normalcy, but we’ll get there.”

The city is also working closely with provincial officials and Canada Infrastructure Bank to understand the feasibility of a high-speed rail service between Calgary’s airport to the downtown core and out to Banff. 

Planning is in the very early stages, but the infrastructure bank says both services would complement each other well in the long term.