CALGARY -- Coun. Jeromy Farkas is expected to submit a notice of motion Monday morning that questions the current Green Line project and calls for it to be altered to stay on track with the city's "new reality."
Farkas maintains economic and societal changes broughts on by the pandemic have changed the project's viability.
"The Green Line was based on pre-crash, pre-COVID assumptions," said Farkas in a release. "The current proposal is an unacceptable risk of financial catastrophe to taxpayers at every level of government."
The total cost of the current plans for the LRT project — which would extend from 16th Avenue N. to Shepard in the southeast — is estimated at $4.9 billion. The original plans were to have the Green Line stretch 46 kilometres from 160th Avenue N. to Seton.
In the motion, Farkas is calling for council to consider an alternative plan and questions the route through the core.
“I’ve been hearing from many Calgarians regarding the COVID situation, the global recession, the crash in oil prices and they’ve been urging us to look at every single project we have on the books,” Farkas said Thursday.
Coun. Shane Keating says council is already supposed to get an update on the project in June and Farkas’ suggestions are shortsighted.
“The Green Line isn’t to start construction for a year. It isn’t to be finished until 2026,” Keating says.
“To say we have to stop the project now because of COVID-19 when we really don’t know what’s going to happen in the next five-to-six years and all of the sudden you’re putting 400,000 people without transit in the future because you’re scared of today.”
The Green Line Committee will hear results of public feedback on the project June 1.
