Bell: Smith UCP tells Gondek a Green Line boondoggle is a no-go

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He who pays the piper calls the tune.

The big bucks have to stop somewhere.

The clock has run out of time.

Enough is enough.

No more playing around.

Somebody has to stand up and be the grown-up here.

Someone has to get this Green Line on track and that can only happen with an injection of common sense and a super-size dose of reality.

Devin Dreeshen is riding herd on the Green Line LRT file for the UCP government of Premier Danielle Smith.

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He tells Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek what’s what with this troubled train line, this train wreck waiting to happen, a project he calls the Nenshi nightmare.

The Green Line was Nenshi’s baby and this Green Line plan is now supported by Gondek and nine other members of the least popular city council in Calgary’s history.

For the record, the former Calgary mayor sold the great dream of an LRT from the far north to the deep southeast of Calgary for practically no money at all.

A few billion. Seems like chump change when looking in the rear-view mirror.

It was big hat, no cattle from the beginning.

An exercise in wishful thinking, a feel-good gesture. In other words, B.S.

The province supports a Green Line but they have problems with this LRT scheme shrinking everywhere but on the bottom line where taxpayers pick up the tab.

The tunnelling of the LRT downtown, the risks of doing it, the costs of doing it. The fact the LRT isn’t even getting close to where the folks in the deep southeast live.

The unwillingness to even chinwag over alternatives.

Then there’s the question, dear readers. Would you trust city council with this LRT?

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Hands up. Thought so.

Let us not forget a third of the original dough for this Green Line came from the provincial government and another third came from city council scooping up 30 years of a provincial tax break intended for Calgarians.

The Alberta government and, more importantly, Alberta taxpayers have big-time skin in this deal.

In his letter to Gondek, Dreeshen, a dude not known to suffer fools gladly, says he got the update to the city’s Green Line plans in mid-August.

What Dreeshen and the Smith government saw was what we all saw.

The Green Line Stub, $6 billion-plus in taxpayer cash for an LRT line from Eau Claire in the downtown and ending before it even gets to Ogden or Quarry Park, let alone Shepard where it was supposed to go in the getting-ever-smaller first phase.

Yes, Calgary city hall manages to provide even less track for even more dough and blames it all on somebody else because that’s how they roll.

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They and previous city councils couldn’t possibly have screwed this up.

Dreeshen tells Gondek he has serious concerns. The man says he has an obligation to get the biggest bang for the taxpayer buck.

Right now, the Green Line is “fast becoming a multi-billion dollar boondoggle that will serve very few Calgarians” and this is “unacceptable.”

Then the killer line.

Put this up on the fridge, Mayor Gondek and the rest of those in the majority on Calgary city council.

“Our government is unable to support or provide funding for this revised Green Line Stage 1 scope as presented in the city’s most recent business case.”

Then Dreeshen takes a shot at Nenshi, now the Alberta NDP leader.

Dreeshen says the city council was put in an “untenable position” by Nenshi. He says Nenshi was an “utter failure” in overseeing the Green Line.

The gloves are off.

The transportation boss says the province will not be “throwing good money after bad.”

The Alberta government will send in an independent third party to come up with alternative plans for the line to “integrate the red and blue lines” along 7 Ave.

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It would head to a grand central station by the new arena and then go to at least Shepard and maybe even further south, all done with the current dollars on the table.

The deep thinkers will also look at a possible extension of an above-ground or elevated rail line from 7 Ave. to Eau Claire “in order to bring some cost certainty to that portion of the line should it be pursued.”

As for Eau Claire? The city and provincial government lawyers will have to look at the “legal exposure” if the LRT doesn’t go to Eau Claire under this phase of the Green Line plan.

Down at city hall, Tuesday afternoon, the Green Line folks tell a couple newshounds it is full-steam ahead even if they didn’t have the green light from the province.

Now the light is red. Stop.

Your move, city council.

rbell@postmedia.com

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