The Watch
LATITUDE
HEAVY SUPPORT PROVIDED TO LIGHT-RAIL TRANSIT The province has officially greenlit Phase 1 of the most extensive single transit project in Alberta’s history: Calgary’s much-anticipated Green Line, connecting neighbourhoods in the north and south ends of the city. In a recent funding agreement between the Government of Alberta and the City of Calgary, the province committed its financial support to Phase 1, which comes with a $3-billion price tag to connect 16th Avenue North to the Shepard area in the city’s southeast. The cost is being split between Alberta and the federal government, with much of the province’s contribution coming from the carbon levy. The Green Line is expected to create 8,000 direct jobs and 12,000 support jobs in industries like engineering and administration over the next eight years, plus hundreds of maintenance jobs thereafter. The project is also expected to cut carbon emissions by 30,000 tonnes each year by the end of the first phase. The province is simultaneously investing $1 billion in Edmonton’s $2.6-billion Valley Line West LRT expansion, which will move about 40,000 Edmontonians between downtown and Lewis Estates in the west every day by the time it’s completed in 2026. Also in Edmonton, the Government of Alberta has committed $131 million towards the $328-million expansion of the Metro Line, connecting NAIT with the new Blatchford community.
TRAINSPOTTING IN ALBERTA Top, a surface station on the City of Calgary’s Green Line, and bottom, the Edmonton Brewery District stop. -artist’s renderings courtesy City of Calgary and City of Edmonton
Both Edmonton projects will connect large suburban communities with the city’s core, allowing Edmonton’s transit system to cover a larger area of the growing city. It is predicted that the number of people living in the Edmonton metro area will grow to 2.2 million people (from about 1.4 million today) by 2044.
60 | PEG SPRING 2019
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