'We're going to be moving very quickly': Smith says province has hired AECOM to review alternative Green Line alignment
Smith's comments came after council voted 10-5 Tuesday evening to wind down work on the $6.25-billion Green Line
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A day after Calgary city council voted to wind down work on the Green Line, Premier Danielle Smith said the provincial government is still interested in working with the city and federal government on developing the LRT project, but only if the funding partners are willing to consider a revised alignment.
Smith said the province has “inked a deal” with international infrastructure project consultant AECOM to study an alternative alignment to extend the proposed train farther south and scrap a previous plan for an underground tunnel through downtown.
“We have a number of different items we’re going to ask (AECOM) to look at to see if there’s a better way to have it integrated into downtown,” Smith said at an unrelated news conference Wednesday.
“I want to continue working with the city on that, I want to work with the federal government on that and I think we’ll be able to come up with a proposal in pretty short order. We’re going to be moving very quickly.”
AECOM did not respond to emails from Postmedia on Wednesday to confirm the company’s involvement.
Smith’s comments came after council voted 10-5 Tuesday evening to wind down work on the $6.25-billion Green Line and consider options to transfer management of the project to the province. The vote capped a daylong meeting where municipal officials stressed the city’s LRT proposal was not feasible without provincial backing.
Councillors Dan McLean, Sean Chu, Evan Spencer, Sonya Sharp and Andre Chabot voted against a wind-down, arguing the city should try to work with the province to salvage a revised Green Line.
At her news conference, Smith applauded eight councillors for supporting, in a separate 8-7 vote Tuesday, a motion to establish a working group with representation from all three orders of government to continue discussions.
“That still shows me a majority of council are entering with a spirit of goodwill to try and find a solution,” she said.
“That’s what we owe Alberta taxpayers and what we owe Calgary taxpayers. We’ve got to do our darndest to at least get the south line built out to Seton and then . . . if we can come to an agreement on that, we can talk about how we get the north line serviced.”
Wind-down costs increase price tag to $2.1 billion
However, in its own statement following Tuesday’s meeting, the Green Line board said the 70-plus negotiated contracts, procurement and construction that was underway were directly tied to the previously approved alignment. All works will be halted as the board oversees the wind-down and ensures that contractual obligations are fulfilled or transferred to the city by the end of the year.
It will cost the city at least $850 million to discontinue the work, according to Green Line board CEO Darshpreet Bhatti. With more than $1.3 billion spent on the project to date, the wind-down costs would increase the total price tag to more than $2.1 billion, despite not a single kilometre of track being laid.
While council also expressed interest in transferring the Green Line’s management and financial risk to the Alberta government, Smith insisted the province has no intention of taking over the project.
“We want to be partners but we don’t want to take over the transit system,” she said. “We want to be able to fund a Green Line that was originally pitched to us, going out to Seton.
“It has to be integrated into Calgary city transit.”
‘An incredibly sad day’: Gondek
Mayor Jyoti Gondek said it was “an incredibly sad day” after Tuesday’s meeting, claiming the city’s decision to pull the plug on a decade of work was forced by Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen, who sent council a letter on Sept. 3 that stated the province would withhold its funding contribution of $1.53 billion.
“This project has suffered a terrible blow because of a decision of the Government of Alberta,” Gondek said in a video posted to X. “We’re left as a city to bear all of the responsibility for the contracts that are in place and we hold all of the liability.”
Gondek accused the province of “pulling the rug” out from under the city by sending that letter, noting the Alberta government was kept abreast of funding escalations throughout the project. She also noted that Dreeshen indicated support for the shortened alignment as recently as July 29.
“The dream of delivering what was originally envisioned in 2015 for the dollars that were put forward back at that time, to think that could be done now, it simply can’t,” Gondek told Postmedia on Wednesday, in reference to Smith’s comments. “We had to begin somewhere and we offered our best possible solution. The province agreed it would work, and then they reversed course.”
In his own social media statement, Dreeshen said the province’s funding contribution was never a blank cheque, and called the truncated alignment approved by council on July 30 an “irresponsible waste of taxpayer dollars.”
“The province promised funding for a line servicing hundreds of thousands of Calgarians in southeast Calgary, not a stub line barely reaching out of downtown,” he wrote on X.
“Should the city change its mind and decide to build a Green Line that serves the needs of Calgary commuters, our provincial contribution remains on the table.”
