With Green Line demands, Danielle Smith and UCP become urban transit planners

There appeared to be a sense of frustration and resignation as Mayor Jyoti Gondek expressed interest this week in thrusting control of the Green Line into the provincial government's hands.

If Premier Danielle Smith's UCP insists on re-engineering the line's route in the way it prefers — after rescinding its approval for the city's recently downsized Green Line plans — it may as well deliver it entirely and cover any cost overruns that further delay creates, the mayor reasoned.

"They have an alignment that they wish to deliver, they need to take on the risk on this," Gondek told reporters at city hall.

That could suit the Smith government's wishes rather nicely.

The provincial government has already legislated for itself more say over how local councils deal with Ottawa, organize their elections and pass bylaws that don't jibe with provincial policy. Taking over planning for local transit could be next on the horizon.

Traditionally, a province plays the quiet and supportive (if not scrutiny-applying) funding partner in urban projects that are planned and built by Calgary or other city halls. Ottawa does the same — expressing a broad interest in the economic and public benefits of more rail transit, but not assuming the role of chief engineer or designer.

That's been the way it's mostly been for nine years of work on the Green Line, each higher level putting in $1.53-billion toward what's now a $6.2-billion project. Four years ago, the Jason Kenney-led Alberta government demanded a pause to review and tinker with plans, but after those reconsiderations the project largely proceeded according to city hall's preferences.

That's not what happened this week, in the aftermath of an inflation-strained budget and decisions to cut six stations from the project's first phase.

Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen, despite expressing support for that Green Line phase a month ago, drafted a letter branding the city's shortened Green Line an emerging "boondoggle" that serves too few Calgarians and communities. He declared the existing alignment dead as far as the province was concerned; it would commission its own plans with a new way of getting downtown and which stretched farther south — and that would be the new Green Line.

In an interview Wednesday on CBC Radio's The Homestretch, Dreeshen took special aim at the downtown tunnel to Eau Claire that's been central to the city's LRT plans for at least a half-decade.

"We'd love to see it go down to the South Health Campus, obviously to stretch it as far as possible," Dreeshen said. "And to have an above-ground solution downtown, so we don't have water issues [that] will inevitably come if we were to start digging downtown stations underground in Calgary."

The Kenney government, which Dreeshen served in cabinet, had reviewed and signed off on that tunnel plan. It may attract new scrutiny as the most expensive section of a budget-busting project that no longer extends to as many southeast neighbourhoods. 

The minister's rhetoric echoes that of a citizens' lobby group led by Jim Gray, which has long stood firmly against a train tunnel downtown.

The city has analyzed various downtown LRT alternatives over the years and the 2nd Street S.W. tunnel was the one that maximized ridership and provided the best connection to the future Centre Street N. extension.