Calgary council to choose Green Line downtown route by September

Calgary's council is narrowing down the Green Line's downtown routing to a single path forward, with the Executive Committee scheduled to recommend one of three options on September 8.

The three alignments differ sharply in cost and scope. Option 1, an elevated route along 10 Avenue SW to 2 Street then north to 7 Avenue, costs roughly $1 billion over the available $6.25 billion budget. It carries a significant downside: elevated infrastructure along Second Street SW could substantially affect adjacent properties, public spaces, and construction in an already constrained downtown corridor. Option 2, also elevated but shorter—running along 10 Avenue and 1 Street SE, ending around 6 Avenue without a Beltline station—costs $500 million. Option 3 runs surface-level along 10 Avenue SW to 2 Street SW then north, stays within the current funding envelope, and avoids the property impacts of elevated design.

Ward 8 Coun. Nathan Schmidt captured the dilemma bluntly: "I just keep coming back to the fact that we are kind of between a rock and a hard place." He said the options don't stretch far enough into downtown or present a reasonably viable path north. "Now we have to do that arithmetic of what is the best option that is before us, and if there's not an option that we can live with, then what does that mean for the future of the Green Line?" Ward 13 Coun. Dan McLean supports the surface-level option as most amenable to the province and Calgarians, and most cost-effective.

The city pared these three from a larger set through functional planning and technical analysis. In June, council directed administration to explore alternatives to the province's previously proposed downtown alignment after the province vetoed the city's preferred underground route in 2024 and later withdrew funding before returning with its own elevated proposal. Ground broke on the project last summer with a target for LRT operation by 2031.