🏗️Calgary ready to award Green Line construction contracts this year

Eau Claire station preliminary design (Image source: City of Calgary)

The City of Calgary is ready to start construction of Phase 1 of the Green Line this year: a foundational 18 km segment from Eau Claire downtown to Shepard in the southeast including 13 stations with connections to the Red and Blue LRT lines, and three MAX rapid transit routes. 

The new low-floor LRT cars are soon to begin manufacturing, underground utilities along the line have been relocated throughout the inner city, and preliminary station designs have been completed. Unfortunately, the UCP Government is now suggesting they may not fund inflationary cost overruns triggered by their own government.

📈UCP threatening to not fund cost overruns caused by UCP

May 8, 2024 letter from Alberta Minister of Transportation and Economic Corridors Devin Dreeshen to City of Calgary.

In a surprise letter to the City this spring, the UCP government suggested that they might not fund inflationary cost overruns to the Green Line project. This is despite the fact that the UCP government forced an unnecessary two-year delay to the project during a period of high global inflation. Ultimately, the UCP’s multi-year review was simply a waste of time and money: it failed to find any technical issues with the project. 

Now, the Alberta Government continues to signal through the media that they would rather use the Green Line as a political football and apparently have no intention of covering their share of these inflationary cost overruns. However, the UCP are apparently A-OK with huge cost increases for the Flames arena. 

📈Arena's cost to taxpayers has ballooned to nearly triple the original price tag

Original arena cost to taxpayers in 2021 was $287-million. In 2024 it has ballooned to $818-million.

The cost to taxpayers for the new arena for the billionaire NHL Flames owners has nearly tripled from $287-million in 2021 to $818-million in 2024. While the exact amount of the Alberta Government’s one-third share of the inflationary cost overruns on the Green Line are yet to be made public, the $818-million of working capital reserved for the new arena could potentially cover the full amount.

⚖️A choice between priorities

If the Alberta Government is unwilling to cover their third of inflationary cost overruns caused by their two-year delay to the Green Line, City Council must pause the new arena project to reallocate working capital to ensure Calgary’s most important infrastructure project in a generation, that will create a more accessible city for everyone and support 20,000 jobs, is built.