Sprawlcast is Calgary’s in-depth municipal podcast. Made in collaboration with CJSW 90.9 FM, it’s a show for curious Calgarians who want more than the daily news grind.

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JIM GRAY: We're not opposed to the Green Line. In fact, we're trying to save the Green Line, if it's possible to save it.

ADAM WATEROUS: Most mass transit rail is frankly a real bonfire for capital.

PREMIER DANIELLE SMITH: Just looking at commuter rail within our biggest cities is too small a vision for us.

NAHEED NENSHI: The provincial government doesn't understand transit and how transit works—in that you actually have to get people from where they live to where they work.

JEREMY KLASZUS (HOST): September can be rough. Summer’s over, people are back from vacation and school’s back in session. You want to ease back into things. But there was no easing into September for Calgary city council.

TARA NELSON (CTV CALGARY): Alberta’s government is putting the brakes on the Green Line LRT once again, this time telling the city it won’t fund the recently revised project as is.

KLASZUS: A couple weeks later, this was the scene in front of city hall.

RALLY LEADER: What do we want, everyone?

CROWD: Green Line!

KLASZUS: Transit advocates gathered to show support for the beleaguered LRT project.

TALA ABU HAYYANEH: We’re here to defend the Green Line. Students need transit, and we are asking the provincial government to reinstate the funding.

MATEUSZ SALMASSI: As the student housing crisis has only gotten worse and worse every year, students are pushed to the far corners of the city where they're poorly served by transit.

PETER OLIVER: Danielle Smith has said she wants to dump people off at the arena. She doesn’t want to run it underground. People will be stuck in traffic, blocked by trains, and have unreliable CTrain service. The Dani Line will be a disaster.

KLASZUS: NDP MLA and former Calgary city councillor Joe Ceci was also on hand.

JOE CECI: What is happening to Calgary is ridiculous, and it’s akin to wasting, burning money. When I was on city council, and I left in 2010, we had already looked at alignments like the premier’s musing about now—up the Nose Creek valley. There is no people up the Nose Creek valley. What would be the point? I think the point is to further her interest in getting regional rail out to Banff, actually.

KLASZUS: Here’s what Premier Danielle Smith told reporters a couple days later.

PREMIER SMITH: Look, we need to rethink the way that the Green Line is being built.

KLASZUS: There’s a lot to get into here. There always is with the Green Line. But this project is just one piece of a larger puzzle. To better understand what’s been happening with Calgary-area transit and why, we need to zoom out. Let’s get into it.

In April of 2024, the provincial government announced big plans for passenger rail in Alberta. Premier Smith mentioned how her government is partially funding the extension of the CTrain to Calgary’s airport.

PREMIER SMITH: But just looking at commuter rail within our biggest cities is too small a vision for us. We want to connect more than just neighborhoods. We have a bigger, bolder vision.

KLASZUS: Smith’s 15-year vision is for a rail network across Alberta which would include a high-speed line from Calgary to Edmonton—and a train line from the Calgary airport to Banff.

PREMIER SMITH: There’s an opportunity here that we would be foolish to disregard.

KLASZUS: This was at the same time the province was introducing Bill 20, a new law to strengthen provincial powers over Alberta municipalities. And with her train announcement, Smith made it clear that she also wanted to get more involved in municipal transit projects.

KLASZUS: When it comes to transit, Calgary city hall has always been focused on transit for Calgarians. But with the population in the Calgary region booming, Smith was talking about commuter rail between Airdrie and Okotoks.

PREMIER SMITH: We were asking, I think, the wrong level of government to lead the conversation on this. I think there was a hope that the City of Calgary would be able to build out the LRT into different municipalities. And you have to ask the question of why would the City of Calgary be motivated to spend that much money building out into the outlying communities, when it’s not their tax base?

And so, when you’ve got these inter-municipal issues, it seems to me that’s the very definition of when the province has to step in to be able to help.

COUNCILLOR GIAN-CARLO CARRA: I would 100% agree with that.

KLASZUS: Premier Smith had some unlikely allies on this, including Councillor Gian-Carlo Carra. He says the UCP's rail plan is one of the only things they're doing that he supports.

COUNCILLOR CARRA: The fact that we have an Alberta transportation ministry that is focused exclusively on moving cars and trucks and doesn't know what it’s doing in terms of rail or transit or active modes or anything… I mean, when, when the NDP government was in, there was the beginnings of a change of tone coming out of Alberta Transportation, where they said transportation is about more than just cars and trucks. It's about moving people and goods in the most effective ways possible.

And it was a very exciting time. But it lasted four years, and then it was gone. And it's exciting that that conversation’s coming back.

KLASZUS: But then, just over a week after Smith announced her train ambitions, Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen told Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek that “under no circumstances” would the province provide any additional funding for the Green Line beyond the $1.5 billion already committed to the city.

COUNCILLOR CARRA: That was a surprise and a blow.

KLASZUS: Different elements of Smith’s rail plan have been talked about for years. Especially high-speed rail between Calgary-Edmonton. Numerous studies have been done over the decades on that—but nothing has come to fruition.

But more recently, a plan has been pitched for a rail project between Calgary and Banff by the family of oil tycoon Adam Waterous. Here’s Premier Smith on her 630 CHED and 770 CHQR radio show in November 2023.

PREMIER SMITH: You may have seen in the throne speech that I started talking about that—how do we get commuter rail in? How do we get that rail line built from Calgary airport all the way to Banff? How do we get ultimately—and I call it inevitable—the inevitable line that we’re going to need between Calgary to Red Deer to Edmonton?

KLASZUS: The Waterouses own the Norquay ski resort in Banff National Park. Their family has donated almost $14,000 to the UCP since 2019, according to Elections Alberta records. And the Waterouses' holding company, Liricon Capital, pitched the rail project to the province as a P3, or public-private partnership, in 2021, with the support of a co-developer called Plenary Americas.

ADAM WATEROUS: Having a train between Banff and Calgary is a very obvious project, but very difficult to undertake.

KLASZUS: Here’s Adam Waterous speaking to BNN Bloomberg in September.

ADAM WATEROUS: Most mass transit rail is frankly a real bonfire for capital. There’s no faster way to try and lose money than to build mass transit rail. And so, we said, geez, well, let’s do it differently. And so, what we did is, we said, all we’re going to do is a brownfield project, which is just twinning the track as opposed to having to go in and expropriate land.

KLASZUS: The $2.6 billion train would have luxury and economy classes, similar to airlines. It would run west from Calgary along the CP track through Cochrane, the Stoney Nakoda Nations and Canmore. Then it would end at the Banff railyard lands, where the Waterouses own a multidecade lease from CP.

LIRICON VIDEO: Banff doesn't have a visitor problem. Banff has a transportation problem.

KLASZUS: This is a Liricon promotional video.

LIRICON VIDEO: With over four million visitors a year to the park, personal vehicles aren't working anymore. They're degrading the ecosystem. So what's the solution? Give people another way to get to and explore the most beautiful place in the world.

KLASZUS: Liricon wants to redevelop the railyard lands as a transportation hub with restaurants and shops, medium-density housing, and parking for over 1,000 cars to keep them out of the Banff townsite. They’ve previously described this as an “eco transit hub.” And the Waterouses hope to pay for the redevelopment by building a new gondola from the railyard lands to the base of Mount Norquay, their ski resort. Here’s Jan Waterous speaking to Banff town council in March.

JAN WATEROUS: The revenue to ensure economic sustainability comes from aerial transit, not the taxpayer.

KLASZUS: Banff town council approved Liricon’s redevelopment plans for the railway lands in June, but the plans would still need Parks Canada’s approval to proceed. Meanwhile Parks Canada has repeatedly panned the gondola idea. That’s a whole story and controversy in itself—maybe that’s a future Sprawlcast episode.

KLASZUS: But let’s stay focused on the train, which would connect the Calgary airport with Banff, stopping at the edge of downtown Calgary on the way.

The Waterouses have been lobbying the Smith government for the green light on their rail project. And while Smith has been keen on the Calgary-Banff line, earlier this year proponents of the Liricon project accused the province of dragging its feet and jeopardizing the line’s future.

The Liricon line relies on over $1 billion in federal funds from the Canada Infrastructure Bank, which Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has said he would cut if he becomes Prime Minister. And if that happens, Liricon says the project’s dead. So it’s a bit of a race against time.

In June, after the province said it wouldn’t give any additional funding to the Green Line, Jan Waterous wrote a column in the Calgary Herald. “Government directly leading rail projects typically leads to horrendous results,” she wrote, pointing to the Green Line’s “disastrous cost management” as an example.

“With its regional rail initiative,” Waterous wrote, “the province has the opportunity to avoid the Green Line’s mistakes by dumping its big-government, consultant-led planning model and replacing it with a small-government, private-sector-led delivery model.”

A first step of a private sector-led model for the province’s rail plans, she said, could be “development of the Calgary airport to downtown” passenger rail line—a key link in Liricon’s route.

KLASZUS: Here’s Premier Smith speaking to reporters on September 18.

PREMIER SMITH: We have a number of different proponents for a number of different projects—there’s a hyperloop, and there’s EllisDon’s proposal from Calgary to Edmonton, and then there’s the Banff [rail] proposal, and then there is a proposal for how we might be able to build Airdrie to Okotoks commuter rail, as well as integrate within our existing system. I mean, we’re very complicated now.

Toronto was in this exact same position when they launched their Ontario Metrolinx so that they could coordinate between buses, both local and regional; transit, both local and regional; as well as the GO Train. And I feel like that’s the conversation we need to have, is how do we make all of these pieces fit together? So I don’t want to prejudge what that might look like, but that’s the reason why we have to be a lot more involved in this.

It’s not Calgary’s job to solve all of the problems for the entire Calgary metro region, or figure out a way to be able to get service between Calgary and Edmonton. That, by definition, because it goes across jurisdictions, is our job to solve.

KLASZUS: I reached out to Jan and Adam Waterous requesting an interview for this story and did not hear back. But in September, Adam Waterous told BNN Bloomberg he expects a deal within the year. The project would also require agreements with the Stoney Nakoda Nations and municipalities.

ADAM WATEROUS: I think that we’ll probably have a project development agreement in place by sometime next summer with Canada Infrastructure Bank and the Province of Alberta. That’s our hope. That’s what we’re working towards.

KLASZUS: This brings us to Calgary’s Grand Central Station, just north of the new Calgary Flames arena. If you’ve never heard of this Grand Central Station, there’s good reason for that: it doesn’t exist. Not yet, anyway. But it’s a key component of the province’s rail plans.

Premier Smith has recently mused about this Grand Central Station as being the northernmost point of a revised Green Line, stopping short of tunneling downtown. The Calgary-Banff line would also stop at the Grand Central Station.

Here’s what Smith said on her radio show back in April about all the various train lines going into downtown Calgary.

PREMIER SMITH: Here’s the problem is that there’s a choke point getting in and out of Calgary. And so, if you want to get the line off to the airport, or you want to be able to have a train going between Calgary downtown and Edmonton downtown, you have to figure out that choke point with CP. You have to be able to have a Union Station, much like what they have in Toronto, where everything comes together—your LRT, your commuter busses, your high-speed line, your private sector lines.

And so there needs to be something like that, and quite frankly, it’s going to require the provincial government to have the negotiations with CP. To work with the City of Calgary. A private sector operator cannot do that work. I wouldn’t expect a private sector operator to build a Grand Central Station that includes all of those different elements into it. That’s our work, so we’re going to do it, and hopefully be able to integrate with some of these great private sector operators who want to be able to run their own lines.

KLASZUS: When city council approved the revised and downsized Green Line alignment in July, they did it with the view of tying in the Green Line with this Grand Central Station. This was a requirement Minister Dreeshen outlined in May as a new condition of provincial funding.

City hall had originally planned to put that station underground, after years of public consultation, which would help alleviate traffic in the area. But now city hall was bringing it to the surface to save money and tie in with the province’s plans.

And from there, the Green Line would tunnel under downtown—getting the hard and expensive part of the line done before costs escalate even higher. That was the plan, anyway. Here’s Green Line board chair Don Fairbairn speaking to council in July.

DON FAIRBAIRN: So our view is: Build the core. Build the downtown section from Eau Claire through to Millican. That is the best option from which to build incrementally phases north and phases south.

KLASZUS: What council approved in July was, for many Calgarians, a disappointment. The Green Line—or Green Stub, as some called it—was now shorter and more expensive than it had ever been. Green Line proponents were disappointed that six stations got cut. Critics were flabbergasted by the $6.25 billion price tag.

But even so, Alberta Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen said the province was still funding its portion of the project. Here he is on CBC Radio on August 1.

JOSH PAGÉ (CBC): Is that money still completely secure?

TRANSPORTATION MINISTER DEVIN DREESHEN: You bet, 100%, and I’ve been working closely with the mayor and Calgary city councillors so that they know that that $1.53 billion commitment from the province for the Green Line is in place, and that it is secure, and that they can bank on it.

KLASZUS: Council went on its summer break. And while they were away, there was some news on the Calgary-Banff Liricon line.

CTV NEWS (TARA NELSON): A group pushing to build a Calgary to Banff passenger rail line says it has sweetened its offer to keep the project chugging along. Liricon Capital is now offering to pay for the whole route if the provincial government will cover a piece of the line between the airport and downtown Calgary.

KLASZUS: That piece of rail would run from the airport to just west of Deerfoot Trail. Then it would turn south and run alongside the existing CP rail, by Deerfoot Trail and Nose Creek, and reach the Grand Central Station by the new arena.

And if the province built this portion of rail, integrating it with the Grand Central Station, Liricon says it would pay for the rest…

JAN WATEROUS: ...As long as they guarantee us three trains per hour from the airport to downtown Calgary so that we capture the tourism visitor economy.

KLASZUS: That’s what Jan Waterous told CTV News. Waterous noted elsewhere that Premier Smith has shown enthusiasm for building the airport section of the rail. "It is something that we are getting lots of signaling on," Waterous told CochraneNow in August.

KLASZUS: Fast forward a couple weeks. On September 3, the province told Calgary city hall that it would not fund the revised Green Line as promised. Minister Dreeshen said it was “fast becoming a multi-billion dollar boondoggle” reflecting the failures of Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi when he was Calgary’s mayor.

City hall has spent $1.3 billion on the Green Line so far although no track has been built. And now city admin said winding down the project would push the total tab to $2.1 billion.

MAYOR GONDEK: The finances on this project right now, if it goes into a delay—we've heard this from our CFO. We cannot manage this.

KLASZUS: Smith said it was time to rethink the Green Line to avoid tunneling under downtown. Here’s what she said on her radio show on September 14.

PREMIER SMITH: It’d be wonderful to have a northern leg of our LRT system that goes up to 160th, as well as a southern leg that goes down to Seton. The question is does it all have to be one line? Can you have a different terminal point? Look at them as two separate projects—that’s what we’re asking. We’re saying, if we started where the event centre is going to be, and a downtown Union Station that gathers everybody in one place so that they can go onto the other lines, how far south could we go? Could we go to Shepard, or could we even go to Seton?

KLASZUS: This approach is more or less what a citizen group called Rethink the Green Line has been pushing for for years. The group is led by retired oilman Jim Gray, who is 91 years old. And in 2019, he warned Calgary city councillors against tunneling, saying it was too risky.

JIM GRAY: The Green Line is the largest and most technically challenging megastructure project, by far, that Calgary has ever attempted.

We have no experience in the highly technical underground stations and tunnels of this magnitude, and no experience in the scale of this project.

If we stumble on this, it'll take this city down—not just fiscally, but our reputation will be lost.

KLASZUS: Gray’s group is about 10 people. One of them is Steve Allan, a well-connected forensic accountant and former chairman of the Calgary Stampede board.

STEVE ALLAN: It should be re-imagined. So, the premier has said Calgary council needs to re-imagine the Green Line—and that’s what we’ve been saying. And she’s also said cut the tunnels, which is what we’ve been saying. Take it from city hall to the south hospital, build a line to the airport—actually meet Calgarians’ expectations and desires and serve their needs.

KLASZUS: Allan has been an active figure in conservative provincial politics. In 2019, Jason Kenney’s government contracted Allan to lead the UCP’s inquiry into what Kenney called anti-Alberta campaigns unfairly targeting the oil industry. Allan was paid nearly $400,000 for that gig.

Allan has also been involved at the city level. He’s a former chair for Calgary Economic Development, which is a city agency. And in 2018, he was appointed to city hall’s event centre assessment committee. During that time, Allan echoed the Flames owners’ threats of leaving town if they didn’t get a new arena to replace the Saddledome.

ALLAN IN 2019: I think if we were to have no hockey team, that would have a significant impact.

KLASZUS: Allan was at city hall in July when city council was approving the downsized Green Line alignment. And I asked him why he supports one megaproject—the arena—but not the Green Line.

ALLAN: Yes, I’ve been a proponent of the event centre. I am a proponent of the Green Line—a sensible Green Line that goes from city hall to Seton and the south hospital, and actually serves Calgarians. Big proponents of that.

KLASZUS: Allan said city hall’s tunneling plan for the Green Line threatens other city projects—and potential projects.

ALLAN: I love the vision for East Village. I was part of that visioning. When I was chairman of the Stampede Board, and when I was chairman of Calgary Economic Development—I love it. I love the thought of the event centre and BMO—the opportunity to develop that. It’s a wonderful vision for the future of our city; so there’s an opportunity there. But this is not consistent with that. This compromises our ability to continue to do that.

Where is the money going to come from to build a new football stadium, to fix the assets at WinSport, and the Olympic Oval? It compromises our ability to do all of those things.

KLASZUS: With the city committed and moving ahead with the tunneling alignment, overseen by a board, Gray’s Rethink the Green Line group wasn’t having much luck at city hall. So they took a different tack. Here’s what Jim Gray told the Western standard in August of 2023.

GRAY: We’re just lobbying, we’re just bringing pressure on the provincial government. They’re the ones that we have to focus on—the provincial government—to just pause, and let’s get this right.

KLASZUS: This brings us to the north section of the Green Line. Here’s Premier Smith on her radio show on September 14, musing about splitting the line in two.

PREMIER SMITH: And then let’s have another conversation about an alignment if we were to go north. I know that the Deerfoot valley was considered at one point—maybe there’re some good reasons for it to not be, but maybe there’s a different alignment that can get you from the north all the way to downtown.

KLASZUS: Smith has said that with her vision for passenger rail, she wants to connect more than just neighbourhoods. But running the Deerfoot Valley or Nose Creek alignment would bypass neighbourhoods altogether. It’s an alignment that was considered and rejected by city hall a long time ago because people actually live along Centre Street, whereas the space by Nose Creek is empty.

PREMIER SMITH: My thinking is this—that Airdrie to Okotoks has a line that is currently fed by heavy rail. That’s the kind of rail that CP uses, and we’ve begun our conversations with CP about whether we might be able to build a companion line on their right-of-way that would be dedicated to passenger service, going all the way from Okotoks through the south, stopping in downtown, going north, stopping at the airport, and going on up to Airdrie. And that may be the way that we serve the north, if we’re able to bring in a number of different feeder buses and park ’n rides, that may be a good option that’s more cost effective.

KLASZUS: This seems to jive with Liricon’s plans, since they want the province to build a passenger line from the airport to downtown so Liricon can build the rest out to Banff. But it doesn’t jive with the councillor for north central Calgary, Jasmine Mian.

COUNCILLOR JASMINE MIAN: They’re interested in killing the northern aspect of this line and running passenger rail up the Deerfoot valley. And so that’s not going to be something that’s going to serve north Calgary residents. It’s primarily aimed at people in Airdrie and the Red Deer corridor.

I think the province has their provincial hat on and they’re trying to figure out how they build rail to go all kinds of different places. And I think in the city, we’re focused on: how do we move people within our city borders? And those are competing in the sense that there’s probably only so much public money for rail.

I think we just really felt that this project was safe because it had been planned and consulted and committed to so many times. And now that the rail master plan is out, I think that they’re in competition with each other, and I think that they’re pulling out of our inner city rail projects—or trying to rework them—so that it suits their rail vision. And I actually am not hostile to their rail vision. I just think that both are important.

KLASZUS: So could it work to run feeder buses from north central Calgary to the Deerfoot Valley? Councillor Mian says it wouldn’t.

COUNCILLOR MIAN: The issue is that people are not going to want to head east to then head south. I just don’t think that that’s something that’s going to happen. We already have a great more central corridor in Centre Street, where we’re running BRT already. And that’s generally where people need to go. They’re trying to get downtown, they’re trying to get to our social services, they’re trying to get to high schools along that area.

There’s no reason to head east unless you’re going to an industrial area or you’re going to the airport. People go to those places, but not with the daily frequency that they go to the other places.

And here we get to the crux of the Green Line issue. There are definitely cheaper and faster ways to build LRT—but what if people don’t use it? The Green Stub approved by council in July was short, with a disappointingly low estimated ridership, but the plan was to continually build on it and expand into more neighbourhoods as more funding becomes available.

In mid-September, while city council was trying to determine if the Green Line was dead or not, Alberta NDP leader and former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi spoke at a lunch for the Calgary Chamber of Commerce.

NAHEED NENSHI: The provincial government doesn’t understand transit and how transit works—in that you actually have to get people from where they live to where they work. You actually have to get people to where they need to go.

So a transit line is not a crayon line on a map. It actually is built very carefully to figure out how to actually get ridership, and take cars off of congested freeways. And the challenge is that this particular line has been studied to death.

So I’ll be very blunt. Why can’t you run it at street level through downtown? Because our north-south streets are short, and trains are long. So the train doesn’t fit on a block—simple as that. Why can’t you have an elevated one? Because you have to get over the CP rail mainline on 9th Avenue. Which means that, to have a ramp at a reasonable grade for the trains where they’re not going to get stuck, you’d have to start the ramp somewhere south of 17th Avenue and the Beltline. It doesn’t make any sense.

These are very basic answers. The minister should have known this, or he should have asked. So what we’re going to end up with is a brilliant plan from the provincial government, which I can tell you exists today—there’s not doing any magic—which is a line that will go from Seton to the new arena that’ll cost probably less than $7 billion. The right-of-way is already procured; the land is already there, but it doesn’t actually get you where you need to go.

KLASZUS: By all accounts, it’s relatively cheap to build at grade and avoid tunneling. On a file where there is much disagreement, everyone agrees on that.

NENSHI: Building surface level stations in the south or the north is not that expensive, but if we spend all the money going from Seton to the arena, then we will never again have the money to bring the thing downtown. And the problem here is if you drop people off two kilometeres away from their work and expect them to get to their job, no one’s going to take the train.

And if you bring it up to city hall, which is sort of part of the plan—I still don’t know how you get over/under the CP mainline to do that—and you drop people off at city hall station and say, "connect to the Red or Blue Line to get to work"—two problems.

Problem number one is that anytime you force a transfer, your ridership goes way down because people don’t want to wait for the transfer. But number two is—anybody ever been to City Hall station during rush hour? The busiest station on the network. Those trains are packed. So if you’re expecting all of the people to get off a Green Line train and get on a Red or Blue Line train, where are you going to put them?

KLASZUS: Mayor Gondek made the same point at city hall.

GONDEK: It has been explained to them multiple times that the trains are at capacity. You would need to add more trains on the Red and Blue Line, and that will bring traffic to a gridlock. Or, you would have to move the Red Line off of 7th Avenue—you would have to put it on Stephen Avenue, and you can’t do it at grade because it will ruin businesses. You can’t elevate it because there are +15s, so your only option is to tunnel. And that’s the thing they don’t want to do, so I’m a little bit confused.

GONDEK: They have mused about using the Nose Creek corridor to run commuter rail to help people get on a train. And that too, is something we’ve looked at before. There are no people along that line. So you’re creating a line where no one lives and no one works.

So I’m not sure why they keep recycling the things that we have already spoken about. We worked with them in 2020 and 2021 to do a provincial review. All of these things were contemplated, and they were all jointly rejected. So I don’t know why it’s Groundhog Day and we keep coming back to the same thing.

Jeremy Klaszus is founder and editor of The Sprawl.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this transcript misattributed the story's final quote to Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi; in fact, the quote is Mayor Jyoti Gondek's. The Sprawl regrets the error.