The hard truth is, a business case no longer exists for Green Line
The city needs to pause the project, 12 Calgarians suggest.
When the Green Line was originally conceived in 2013, Calgary was booming. The construction of the largest infrastructure project in Alberta's history was envisioned as a partnership between the city, the province and the federal government. It was meant to support the primary engine of Canada's economic health by connecting the growing suburbs with the vibrant, creative core of Calgary's downtown.
The scale and scope of the differences between then and now are clear to all Calgarians, with the pandemic compounding and amplifying the complications afflicting the city since energy prices in 2014 tumbled into a trough they still have not recovered from. Some 120,000 Calgarians are actively looking for work and office vacancies in downtown Calgary have soared to 30 per cent from just under four per cent in early 2014. And yet, while others ask tough questions about the future of cities, work and society, and as Calgarians — like the rest of the world — struggle with the daily financial, social and emotional challenges inflicted by the pandemic, the city insists that the Green Line can and should still be built now, as if nothing has changed, at a cost of billions of taxpayer dollars.
Alberta's minister of transportation, Ric Mciver, sent a letter, dated Dec. 14, to Don Fairbairn, chair of the Calgary Green Line board, stating that while the province is supportive of the Green Line, the project “is at high risk of running severely over budget.”
Calling the Green Line a “line to nowhere,” the province has asked the city to take a much-needed pause, cease all expenditures and reassess the merits of the project “in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic downturn.” We agree.
The hard truth is that the business case for
It is critical to note that Calgarians ... are on the hook for all cost overruns.
the Green Line may have already disintegrated beyond the point of repair. The business case is primarily one of ridership, and the assumptions upon which the Green Line's ridership were based were made pre-pandemic.
The near- and long-term implications for how people live and work as we emerge from this pandemic have not yet been factored into the Green Line's planning. Journalist Brian Bethune wrote in Maclean's magazine on Nov. 13 that “in North American cities, the internet offers a rough alternative to the economic (if not social) benefits of face-to-face interactions in a services-dominated economy … and for many urbanologists, the supposedly inevitable return to the metropolis no longer seems so inevitable.”
Meanwhile, the current plan to construct tunnels through the downtown core invites the risk for dramatic cost overruns from the same sort of water leakage and damage that has been experienced by adjacent buildings. It is critical to note that Calgarians — and Calgarians alone — are on the hook for all cost overruns.
And what about those taxpayer dollars? In the unlikely event there are no cost overruns, Calgarians will still see an annual average increase of more than $100 in residential property taxes, plus the increases required to fund higher operating costs, which are not even close to being covered by transit fares.
With a cost overrun of 75 per cent, the tax hit jumps to more than $300 per household annually. The burden will make life particularly difficult for low-income families, seniors on fixed incomes and small businesses. The global evidence is crystal clear, that once you physically start construction on megaprojects such as these, it is virtually impossible to stop them and exceedingly difficult to change their scope. The only time to critically examine these projects is before the first shovel goes in the ground.
We are grateful and support the province's desire to get this project right. This is a great opportunity. We encourage all levels of government to pause and work together to rethink the Green Line and build a project that will deliver value for money and make sense in a post-pandemic Calgary.