Building on What Can Work: Line 201 Buildout — 2019

With the completion of the northwest leg of the C-Train’s Line 201 to Tuscany and Rocky Ridge expected by the end of 2011, only one stage would remain for Line 201 to operate at its full length. This 5.5-kilometre, three-station extension of Line 201 would continue along existing rights of way in parallel to the Canadian Pacific Railway, and would satisfy revenue passenger service for emerging and planned residential communities south of Alberta Highway 22X, which exists both as a vital east-west motorway artery across the southern flank of the city and as a critical barrier to north-south passenger travel. As a highly economical and thoroughly sustainable means of offering rapid transit to a sector of the city slated for a long-term residential population of 70,000 (City of Calgary, 2007l:10), the buildout of Line 201 represents a quick win for the City of Calgary, and a strategic transportation objective that would easily be met by the year 2019.

The extension of Line 201, as already anticipated in The City of Calgary’s 2007 “South Macleod Regional Policy Plan”, would consist of 5.5 kilometres of electrified double track paralleling the CPR, passing underneath existing bridging along Alberta Highway 22X to serve three light rail stations. Silverado Station would be a surface-level station located about one kilometre due south of Alberta Highway 22X, serving passengers in the new Silverado subdivision. The line would continue from that point to Dawes Road Station, approximately 300 metres south of 194 Avenue SW, which would serve as the epicentre of transit-orientated residential, commercial, and recreational developments in the area (City of Calgary, 2007l:19). Roughly 300 metres north of the current southern city limit, and at the heart of a transit-orientated development supporting a commercial centre (2007l:19), the Line 201 extension would come to its ultimate end at 240 Avenue Station.

The total capital investment required for the extension of Line 201 comes to $200-million, a figure that could be carried over thirty years in instalments of $10-million from 2020 onward, or financed through an MSI-equivalent funding mechanism from 2017 to 2019 in three instalments of $67-million. The details of the necessary capital investment are identified as follows:

* South Surface Track and Way of 5.50 km @ $25-million per km: $138-million
* plus three surface stations (Silverado, Dawes Road, 240 Avenue) @ $10-million each: $30-million
* Rolling Stock of 8 LRVs (SD-160) @ $4-million each: $32-million

The primary opportunity deriving from the southward extension of Line 201 is that of serving residential passengers travelling within the city to destinations on the C-Train system. With intensified residential, commercial, and recreational development in the vicinity of Dawes Road Station, non-residential traffic along this extension remains an outside possibility.

Works Cited

City of Calgary (2007l). “South Macleod Trail Regional Policy Plan”. URL as of 22 Apr 2008 http://www.calgary.ca/DocGallery/BU/planning/pdf/south_macleod_trail_rpp/south_macleod_trail_rpp_one.pdf