Imagine the current CTrain lines extended to Tuscany in the northwest, Saddleridge in the northeast and Silverado in the south. Three new lines stretch west to 69th St. S.W., southeast to McKenzie Towne and north along Centre Street to the edge of the city. New commuter trains ferry people from Cochrane and Airdrie to Calgary, and a high-speed train connects Edmonton and Calgary.
This could be the future of Calgary’s transit network, and a new injection of provincial cash could help to get a few of these ideas off the ground. However, officials caution there’s a long way to go before most of the development goes ahead.
Two weeks ago, the provincial government announced that it would front $2 billion for transit infrastructure in the province. Cities and towns will have to apply for the money and offer proposals.
“We want to expand public transit and make it accessible to people it hasn’t been accessible to before,” says Jerry Bellikka, spokesperson for the province’s Ministry of Transportation. “We’re going to be doing consultations with the municipalities.”
The province will meet with local governments to decide on a bidding process for the funds. Only new, unfunded projects will be eligible.
Although Calgary won’t submit any bids until later this year, the city has a number of ideas on the drawing board that could be eligible for funding.
Calgary Transit wants to build a CTrain line to the southeast end of the city, passing through Inglewood and Ogden before veering off to a proposed hospital and business area south of Marquis of Lorne Trail. The line isn’t scheduled to be built for another 15 years, but this could change as soon as next week. Prompted by the province’s announcement, area aldermen Joe Ceci and Ric McIver will submit a motion to city council to bump the new line to the top of the priority list. If successful, construction on the line could start as soon as 2012.
“It’s been on the books for so long. It’s just not been able to go very quickly to the top of the list because of the cost,” Ceci says. It’s estimated the price tag for the entire line could be over $2 billion, but Ceci says it’s worth it. The communities in the area currently have close to 200,000 residents, and he argues that building the line would encourage denser, more environmentally friendly development near the new train. “This would give all of these potential users an alternative, to get on the train rather than the Deerfoot,” he says. “We’ll see better air quality.”
The city wants to build another new line that would run north from the Zoo station along the west side of Deerfoot Trail, plus an express line to the airport. To accommodate some of the new trains, Calgary Transit hopes to build a subway downtown.
Calgary is also looking to create a network of commuter trains and buses to outlying towns. “They are working on ways at getting service to Strathmore, Okotoks, all of those places,” says Teresa Keddy, spokesperson for Calgary Transit.
Commuter trains would be cheaper to build than the CTrain, since they could use existing CPR tracks. “It could be fairly easy to put that into place,” says Airdrie Mayor Linda Bruce. “It’s a really exciting time.”
Bruce estimates that as many as 10,000 people commute from Airdrie to Calgary for work every day. Hypothetically, she says an express train could run from the centre of Airdrie to downtown Calgary, while buses could run from Airdrie to Calgary’s northern suburbs, or connect with the CTrain.
Since the province announced the money, discussions on commuter trains have sped up, says Bruce, who chairs the Calgary Regional Partnership, an inter-city organization that helps co-ordinate work between different communities in the Calgary area.
Meanwhile, the city plans to start building the west LRT next year, to be completed by 2012. Once finished, it will stretch from downtown along Bow Trail to Westbrook Mall and across Sarcee Trail to 69th St. S.W.
