Calgary Alberta - When the province released its long-awaited study on how the Green Line LRT would get downtown, it presented the public, and city officials, with a single map.
 
On that map, the curving green bar standing in for the route is thicker than the downtown streets the project will loom above on elevated tracks.
 
The white dots representing train stations are larger than city blocks.
 
Rather than release the $2.5 million provincially commissioned report that explains in detail how the UCP government intends to reauthor the City of Calgary's biggest transit decision, Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen issued this map and a brief news release that boasted "Green Line back on track."
 
That release and map highlight that this revised plan extends down to Shepard, five stops farther southeast than the city's version, which included a tunnel downtown, for the same $6.2 billion.
 
But nothing in either the release nor the map spell out where the proposed elevated track will go.
 
Most of those facts were gleaned through interviews with the minister, the train would roll on a concrete trackway above the Beltline's northernmost 10th Avenue, and then along Second Street S.W. downtown at the level currently occupied by three Plus-15 overpasses, before terminating above the existing Red and Blue Lines on Seventh Avenue.
 
Mayor Jyoti Gondek says the city didn't get much information from its hot-and-cold project partner, either.
 
At a 07:00, Friday, working group session with Alberta Transportation and engineering firm AECOM, city officials and councillors were given a high-level briefing and a single-slide presentation, plus the promise of getting the full report later in the day and the expectation councillors would begin debating Dreeshen's take-it-or-leave-it proposal at Tuesday's meeting.
 
"We've been given no time to even look at what's been proposed, but the government has already put it out in the media," Gondek told CBC News.
 
Shortly after that private briefing and single-slide show to the city, a preview of the provincial news release showed up in a column by Postmedia's Rick Bell.
 
It's easy to understand why Dreeshen would want to protect the full, unredacted report that would include sensitive financial details and cost estimates, before construction companies bid on the project.
 
But when he throws shields up around the entire report it keeps the public in the dark about how a multi-storey elevated track on two streets would function in the core.
 
The only other elevated station in Calgary's current LRT network backs onto the freight rail tracks at Sunalta, 15 metres above street level but well set back from street life by a plaza that's more than twice as wide as either 10th Avenue or Second Street.
 
By contrast, the Green Line's proposed El-tracks downtown would go directly down the middle of the road, wedged right in between highrises and above pedestrians.
 
Mind the Map
 
The questions are many.
 
What will be the shadowing impact?
 
How are street parking and adjacent parkades affected?
 
What sort of stairwells, ramps, or outdoor escalators? will bring people down from the two proposed stations?
 
Impact on downtown traffic?
 
There will be no driving lanes affected in the Beltline on 10th, Dreeshen told CBC News in an interview, but "I think there is one lane on Second Street that will be affected."
 
The potential impact on businesses in the Beltline and downtown because of shadowing, parking loss, and the forced removal/relocation of Plus-15 overpasses would obviously be cause for concern.
 
The Victoria Park Business Improvement Area represents the stores and restaurants along 10th Avenue, but executive director David Low said AECOM and the province never consulted him on this redesign study.
 
He learned about the new alignment when everyone else did, and he hasn't seen the report either.
 
He recalls when the city studied elevated or at-grade options on 10th in 2017 before concluding a tunnel route was the superior (albeit pricier) option.
 
"There are so many intricacies around a 10th Avenue alignment," Low said.
 
"By not properly understanding what the impacts are, you could put businesses out of business. You could also successfully sterilize entire blocks of 10th Avenue."
 
Among the considerations, Low added, is that 10th Avenue is the chief Beltline street for emergency vehicles travelling east and west.
 
Those past studies of an on/above-street train also imagined turning the one-way traffic on 11th and 12th Avenues into two-way, he said.
 
However, there would be an elevated station in the Beltline, the city's scaled-back Green Line plans eliminated that stop, and judging by that large white dot's placement it could be right by Bottlescrew Bill's pub.
 
This new alignment offers a bevy of trade-offs, the bright and dark sides of building up instead of tunnelling down.
 
There's no Eau Claire station in the province's plan, despite the city buying and shuttering the Eau Claire Market for that purpose, as well as expropriating the River Run condos next door.
 
However, keen observers of the province's map will notice a little green arrow extending north from the Seventh Avenue large white dot, suggesting future phases could still barrel through more Plus-15 bridges and extend the route north, across the river and up the Centre Street N. planned route for the Green Line.
 
According to the province, Dreeshen's tunnel-free route would also serve 60 percent more riders than the shortened line the city proposed to stay within its budget.
 
Dreeshen said he wants southeast Calgarians to get excited about the extra stops his proposal offers, and that they should persuade councillors to green-light the plan.
 
But those suburban stops like Ogden and Quarry Park would be built exactly how the city had already designed them, so those residents already have a picture of what they'll get at the stations near their homes.
 
For now, residents must close their eyes and imagine what this LRT line would be like at their downtown destinations or connection point, how climbing up and down would work, how pleasant the streetscape is, how businesses adjust to the multiple changes.
 
According to AECOM, or at least the province's summary of a report it may eventually release to the public, with redactions, spending $1 billion more on the project's southeast end gets us more stations, but spending $1 billion less in the core gives us a changed streetscape and urban fabric along several major blocks.
 
If the province and city stuck with the plans Dreeshen disliked and later found $1 billion, it would be possible to extend the line and make up for the shortcomings that came with cost inflation.
 
But it doesn't work the other way.
 
If the city goes with Dreeshen's plan and this proposal is found to have its own inner-city shortcomings, the next $1 billion in LRT funding the city gets cannot be used to restore the tunnel that city transit planners had initially chosen over an elevated option.
 
In August, weeks before he pulled the rug out from under the city's Green Line designs, the transportation minister swiped at Naheed Nenshi, the mayor when route planning began last decade, as well as the UCP's new chief rival.
 
Dreeshen accused him of drawing up the budget with a "green crayon."
 
The minister's antidote amounts, so far, to a literal green line (and white dots) on a map.
 
The details will matter, and without them it's hard to judge anything.
 
Jason Markusoff.