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Michael Thompson, the city’s general manager of transportation, says the project team realized the proposed deep-bore tunnel meant inaccessible station designs, sometimes seven or more storeys beneath the ground, while increasing the risk of cost overruns.

“We didn’t think that met the vision that we had originally set up with Calgarians for a light, accessible transit system,” Thompson said in a recent interview. “To be seven storeys underground — that’s a deep subway system.

Photo by Leah Hennel / Calgary Herald

“There is a lot of risks being that deep as well, so if we’re not meeting the vision and we’ve got a lot of risks that we have to deal with, why would we push forward with that?”

While issues with the downtown leg could take six months to sort out, Thompson said the southern section is ready to go and should proceed as soon as possible since delaying it could cost $50 million.

“Eighty per cent of the project is ready to go and that’s everything south of the Elbow River,” he said. “We’ve bought the land, we’ve relocated two landfills, so we’ve been out there doing work (and) it makes sense to us right now that we would split it into two contracts.”

NEW CONTRACT STRATEGY

Under the new contracting strategy, construction firms will be able to bid separately on the first 16-kilometre stretch from 4th Street S.E. to 126th Avenue S.E. in Shepard, and the more technically challenging four-kilometre downtown leg from 16th Avenue N. to 4th Street S.E.

Splitting the contract has other benefits, as more local construction firms could bid for the southern portion of Stage 1, said Thompson.