Dozens rally to save Green Line as council considers project's future

About 100 people took to the steps of Calgary city hall on Monday to try to keep the Green Line LRT project on track.

City councillors will debate Tuesday whether to "wind down" the $6.2-billion transit project and hand over control and risk to the provincial government.

A plan approved in July to build a costlier, shorter line resulted in Alberta's transportation minister writing a letter to Calgary's mayor to announce the province's $1.5 billion in funding would be pulled pending a review of alternative alignments for the Green Line.

"There is so much uncertainty around what it is the province wishes to do. The only certainty we have is that the Green Line program, as we knew it, is gone," Mayor Jyoti Gondek said Monday.

"It has been terminated by the province."

The province has previously said its review will be finished by the end of the year.

Premier Danielle Smith has said publicly her government prefers an alignment that reaches the far south without tunnelling through the downtown core.

"A lot of blood, sweat and tears have come into developing this plan and to throw it all out at the last minute, it's just madness," said Jeff Binks with the LRT on the Green advocacy group.

It's not yet public what the cost would be to halt the project and turn it over to the province.

"If you wind down a project like this, yes, there's a financial risk, but there's a reputational risk," said Sonya Sharp, the city's councillor for Ward 1.

"So we are hearing that, you know, there's contracts and there's (some in the) construction industry that don't want to do business in Calgary. I get that."

The City's Green Line committee met mostly behind closed doors Monday morning before voting in favour of keeping the update confidential.

Members of the Green Line team declined to comment further.

Councillors will hear a presentation from city administration on Tuesday morning before starting a debate on the future of the project.