Green Line route through Beltline will be complex no matter which option Calgary chooses

The city is asking Calgarians to help figure out how a new LRT line should get through the Beltline.

The $5-billion Green Line, which will use low-floor trains,will stretch across the city from Country Hills Village in north-central Calgary to the southeast community of Seton.

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Members of the public got a chance on Wednesday night to see what options are being looked at for the train's route from downtown, through the Beltline and into Ramsay.

The route could includeunderground, street-level or elevated routeson 10th Avenue, 11thAvenue or 12thAvenue.

Project manager JonathanLea says every option is complex.

"It's not an easy answer. Again, that's why we need the communities to help us.Part of our analysis is public input. So we want to hear what communities think of each of those corridors," he said.

Allison Wolfe, who lives in the Beltline, says she's excited the LRT is coming.

"To my mind it makes the most sense to put it underground. And that's because I think there'd be a lot less disruption on the surface, both for pedestrians, and then there's the cycle track. There's businesses in the area, especially along 10th Avenue but also 11th and 12th, that would be affected."

Public consultations will continue for the next few months.

City council is expected to make a decision on the Green Line's route through the Beltline early in 2017.

The route through the Beltline would connect to the southeast portion of the Green Line, which isfurther along in the planning process, with theroute already determined.

In April, city staffsaid it had been determined that the fastest and least disruptive way to get the train from north-central Calgary through downtown would be tunnelling from 20th Avenue North, beneath the Bow River and all the way under the core, finally emerging in the Beltline.

That option is also the most expensive, pegged to cost $1.8 billion. Other plans under consideration are building a new bridge over the Bow River, then either elevating the line, running it at grade through the downtown, or digging a shorter tunnel below the city centre.

Those options are believed to be roughly $500 million less expensive than the full-tunnel option.

The cheapest option under consideration is to run the LRT down the middle of the existing Centre Street Bridge, pegged at about $700 million less than the full-tunnel route.

The city wants to start construction in late 2018.

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