Dutch students pitch solution for Calgary train tracks

It's no secret that Calgary is divided by its railroad tracks.

Now, a group of Dutch students who sat down for five months and analyzed Calgary have devised a radical, long-term solution that's positively utopian.

The answer, according to a professor and a Dutch student who appeared Thursday on The Homestretch, is to move the tracks to the east side of the city and re-route them around it.

It's all part of a program put together by Safer Calgarya coalition of concerned citizens and groups interested in decreasing the potential for preventable harm and death in Calgary which has teamed up with a classroom of Dutch urban planning students for six years now.

They discuss innovative solutions to Calgary's urban dilemmas, as a means of stirring up the debate, said Safer Calgary's executive director, Greg Hart.

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"They are always encouraged to take really radical approaches, so they can expand the imaginations of people working here," said Hart."And I would say this project qualifies as being a pretty radical approach."

The approach was devised by the class working 40 hours a week, for nearly five months, trying to solve a problem that has vexed Calgarians for a long, long time.

"If you see these train tracks, from a historical perspective, it's quite logical that they're there because they're oneof the reasons why Calgaryexists in the end," said Paul van de Coevering, the Dutch professor who supervised the project.

"But nowadays," he added, "is it still logical to have thesetrains with all the dangerous goods running through these centres (of cities)? That's oneof the challenges the students took up. I think it's possible to remove it."

Neighbourhood analysis

The students started by analyzing Ramsay and Inglewood, and their fraught relationship with the freight trains that transport material through their neighbourhoods.

"Thenwe looked further, to Calgary, andwe thought those train tracks are the big barrier in the city," said student planner JuulDoggen. "Let's try to remove it and see what happens if we do. And what cost it will be and how long it will take to do it?"

Doggen answered her own questions.

"It would take 35 years to remove it," shesaid,"and to rebuild on the east side of the city, going around instead of through. And it will cost about $1 billion."

Doggen acknowledged there was no easy, fast or cheap solution.

"That's why it takes 35 years," she said. "Because you can't quit the trains. They have to keep running through. SoIt's like a big puzzle, of building, and removing to get all the tracks out of the city."

'A linear park connecting 21 neighbourhoods'

What would the students replace the tracks and rail yards with?

"We plan to make it into a linear park that would connect 21 neighbourhoodsin Calgarytogether by a park with a bicycle path instead of the train tracks," Doggen said.

"It would become a connector, instead of dividing neighbourhoodsin the city."

The linear park would be 59-kilometres long.

One of the prototypes of such a notion, albeit on a smaller scale, is the High Line in New York's Chelsea neighbourhood of West Manhattan.

Judging by the property boom that the High Line has inspired since it opened a decade ago, Hartsays there's an argument to be made that such a development could conceivably pay for itself.

"By liberating all this land, you actually liberate an enormous amount of value," he said. "If you look at the intensity of development around the High Line, land values and everything else, this is without question it's a net positive in terms of the economics around this, without question."

As far as various stakeholders go, the students did discuss the idea with residents of Ramsay and Inglewood.

"They were really excited," Doggen said. "As soon as you mention train tracks out, people are excited and they think, 'Yeah! This should happen! Becausewe want toget rid of it!'"

So far, Canadian Pacific has offered no response although, according to Doggen, the railway company just received the plans Wednesday.

"I'm really looking forward to seeing what they think about it," she said.

Hart added that if the project were to proceed at an accelerated pace, it could be completed within 25 years. Doggensaid some neighbourhoods would begin benefiting withina decade.

It may or may not happen, but for Hart and Safer Calgary, it's all about starting a conversation.

"This is really something that spurs the discussion in Calgaryregarding these train tracks," he said, "and this is what's really necessary, I think."

Calgary: The Road AheadisCBCCalgary's special focus on our city as we build the city we want the city we need. It's the place for possibilities. A marketplace of ideas. So. Have an idea? Email usat:calgarytheroadahead@cbc.ca

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