Rally held at city hall in support of Green Line ahead of council meeting on passing project to province

A rally was organized outside Calgary’s city hall Monday to call on politicians to work together to save the Green Line LRT as Calgary’s mayor directs blame to the province for quashing the project.

Mayor Jyoti Gondek did not hold back in her criticism of the UCP government pulling funding from the transit line on Monday, saying there should have been a heads up before the decision was made.

“It’s shameful that you wouldn’t have a conversation with the two other partners before you issue a directive like that,” she says. “The fact are the provincial government killed the Green Line without even trying to negotiate with us.”

Gondek says she has been trying to explain to the province that they are impacting thousands of people’s jobs and “shaken the entire construction sector.”

“You don’t have to hear it from me, you can hear it from contractors who now don’t if they are going to bid on future projects.”

Dozens gathered for the rally organized by Calgary Alliance for the Common Good to show their support for the transit line and protest the province’s recent decision.

Alex Williams grew up in McKenzie Towne and says he looked forward to the possibility of the Green Line coming close to his neighborhood at some point.

“It ruined my day, honestly,” he says. “To finally having a deal that the province said we could bank on…and then a month later to find out we couldn’t bank on it.”

LRT on the Green Foundation, Calgary Climate Hub, Calgary Student Alliance, Calgary’s Future, Calgary & District Labour Council ,and Amalgamated Transit Union 583 were also involved with the rally.

Minister of Transportation and Economic Corridors, Devin Dreeshen, announced earlier this month the province would be pulling its $1.53 billion in funding from the $6.2 billion project due to disagreements on alignment. Without the province’s support, the city said it can no longer afford the project.

In a 13-tweet thread Monday, Mayor Jyoti Gondek detailed what she says are the facts of the situation and the “devastating:” impacts.

1/This is a thread with facts on how the Green Line project was terminated by the Govt of Alberta on Sept 3. No attempt at a negotiation, just a letter pulling their support & funding. The impact is devastating. I’ll lay out how they are ignoring the facts & what it will cost us.

— Jyoti Gondek (@JyotiGondek) September 16, 2024

She explains solutions proposed by the province on City Hall to Seton, moving the Red Line to Stephen Avenue, running commuter rail in the Nose Creek Corridor and not connecting the north and south of the city, have all previously been explored by the city and were determined not to be feasible.

“No consultant is going to fix those issues with the Province’s dream alignment, and it won’t be cheaper,” she said. “But we have been told clearly: the existing Green Line is over & no parts of it will be considered until consultant’s report is in by end of December.”

In July, Calgary City Council said another $705 million was being invested in the Green Line while simultaneously cutting down the overall projected budget.

One of the changes approved by council at the time was building the core of the project from Eau Claire in downtown Calgary to Lynwood/Millican in the southeast. The line would have connected with Calgary Transit’s Red and Blue lines in downtown Calgary and included a new maintenance and storage facility at Highfield.

Previous plans had the first phase of the project going all the way south to Shepherd with five more stations in southeast.

The recommendations also included deferring building a Centre Street Station in the Beltline and moving a station at 4 Street SE to above ground. The premier’s office later said the province would restore the money if the LRT was built above ground.

The mayor’s thread post goes on to claim the province squashed the Green Line as a power grab.

“Neither the Minister nor the Premier have any interest in working with partners,” Gondek wrote. “They want control & they have exerted their power to kill a project that had independent third party oversight of the Green Line Board. For their new LRT project, oversight is all political.

“A critical public transit investment has been crushed by a government only interested in power and political stunting,” she continued. “It’s shameful. We exist in a time when we have no hope of partnership & trust. Instead, we are left to watch as the UCP compromises Calgary’s future.”

This comes ahead of a city council meeting set for Tuesday, where council will hear advice on how to abandon the project and offload the costs and delivery onto the province.