WARD 9 GREENLINE STATION DESIGN: CHALLENGES + OPPORTUNITIES

As the GreenLine LRT begins to shift from planning to implementation, we are at a place where key challenges and opportunities associated with the current GreenLine station designs in Ward 9 need to be addressed. These challenges and opportunities are grounded in the perspective I have as a 10+ year advocate and champion of the GreenLine in my role as the area’s City Councillor, as well as my 20+ year role as an urban design professional working with East Calgary Communities towards the transit-oriented future we are now on the brink of achieving.

I have been consistent in my communication of these challenges and opportunities with the GreenLine board, however, now is the appropriate and long-awaited time to present these ideas as the GreenLine Team negotiates and finalizes building programs with our Development Partner, Bow Transit Connectors (BTC).

I am very pleased that we are at the stage of undertaking detailed design with a very capable development partner - this is a great place to be after years of buffeting from stiff political headwinds. However, as pleased as I am to be at this point, I am concerned that the GreenLine’s city-shaping mandate has suffered as the necessity became securing the project’s existence as opposed to a creative focus on exploring the next steps of city-shaping design work.

The fact is, that the public, interdisciplinary, urban design-based approach that initiated the project, devolved over these years into a closed-door and specialist-driven engineering focus. Due to this lack of transparency and collaboration, I have had extremely limited exposure to the design details forming the start of negotiations with Bow Transit Connectors. That said, my limited exposure is still enough to understand that there are real disconnects between some of the decisions currently being made and achieving the principles that the City of Calgary committed to the public.

You can read the full letter, addressed to the GreenLine Board, including diagrams and station-by-station feedback, HERE.