It was the third city in Canada to incorporate LRT into its transit system. This innovative program was designed jointly by the City of Edmonton and the DATS Advisory Council to provide Edmonton's disabled adults greater independence and freedom. On Dec. A milestone year for ETS!
April 22 marked the opening of the LRT system in conjunction with the Commonwealth Games, which were held in Edmonton. The Edmonton Radial Railway Society was formed. This not-for-profit group aims to restore and operate former Edmonton streetcars. This most-recent extension made the line a total of 9. As of Jan. This resulted from a brokerage system demonstration project operated in conjunction with the City of Edmonton, Transport Canada, and Grimble Consulting.
The LRT moves south! Builders needed to match grade with the Dudley B. With this new extension, the LRT system grew to Edmonton Transit purchased 43 New Flyer Industries low-floor buses. The buses were manufactured in Winnipeg, Man. The buses did not have stairs at the front or rear doors, which made boarding and exiting easier. Another 16 low-floor buses were added to ETS' service circulation. BusLink, an automated telephone service that provides route and schedule information, is offered to Mill Woods residents.
The remaining Edmonton neighbourhoods had access to BusLink by the summer of Similar promotions followed annually. The free-of-charge promotion's success resulted in plans for expansion in the years to come. Mobility Choices, a customer-oriented program, was introduced by ETS. This community award winning program details a variety of accessible travel options offered by ETS, and informs customers on how to use them.
Edmonton Transit's Horizon service plan was set in motion. The plan called for overall service restructuring, including a basic network of routes supplemented by flexible community routes. The project, based on local public input, was to be implemented in June of The public learns of upcoming changes to the transit system through a comprehensive public outreach program.
New features were added to BusLink. Transit users could now obtain low-floor bus, accessible service, and bike rack information from the convenient automated service. The history of the LRT system contains a number of significant milestones in both its construction and service to its customers. One of the major challenges for the system was to engineer and build 1. At the time of construction the Dudley B. Menzies Bridge contained the longest spans for a segmental post-tensioned bridge in North America.
Edmontonians and visitors have taken the LRT to most of Edmonton's major events in the past 20 years starting with the Commonwealth Games in LRT also serves daily activities such as work, school and shopping. Pattison Outdoor Group was awarded a year ETS advertising contract that included vehicles, benches, and shelters. The ETS website got a new look and feel in conjunction with the City of Edmonton's virtual redevelopment.
Edmonton hosted the World Championships in Athletics for 10 days in the summer, and ETS staff was busy providing transit service for international guests to the city. A new Donate-a-Ride website, www. New ETS transfers were introduced in February. The last 1. Menzies LRT and pedestrian bridge and tunneling the system into the south river bank.
Finally, in , council renewed its commitment to light rail as part of its transportation master plan. Today, the city has both the money and the technical plan to tunnel the south LRT the first metres out of the ground to a new University Health Sciences station and to purchase the land to extend to the Neil Crawford Centre.
Karen Leibovici wary of spending any money on the LRT. As Edmonton wrangles over whether to augment its light rail system, Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal are pushing ahead with expansion.
Calgary opened the first kilometre leg of its C-Train in and transformed it into the spine of its transit network. Today the C-Train zips down 33 kilometres of tracks and has a ridership of , people on weekdays.
Today The Journal begins a three-part series examining our light rail transit system, its costs and the expansion controversy. Light rail. In Canada, all six cities that boast a rail-based rapid transit system are either building new extensions or hoping to in the near future. Edmonton, at least for now, is among them. Interest in the technology appears even greater in the United States, where as of there were 25 light-rail agencies and 14 heavy rail systems.
Buy land for extension to Neil Crawford Centre. Start Finish Date undetermined. No identified funding. Price and date undetermined.
Started spring Finish December Start May Finish June Since , civic politicians have operated on the principle that the city should take on no new debt. It is on target to eliminate its debt by But with low interest rates and a booming economy, now is the time to revisit that policy, says Ward 6 Coun. Dave Thiele. Michael Phair said he believes once Edmonton gets its LRT above ground, it will be easier to show other levels of government they are serious about the plan.
Another option city officials are still researching would see the city sell the LRT system to a private firm, who would complete the project and lease it back to the city. But Rosychuk said the private partner option is less likely since the city can borrow at a lower interest rate than private companies can. Premier Ralph Klein suggested that the City of Edmonton borrow money for an LRT expansion, hinting that the province might inject some cash in better economic times.
Faced with a sour economy, provincial leaders told Klein they had no money. Calgary went ahead and borrowed. Larry Langley said. South-side citizens pushed to see the south LRT built as quickly as possible.
The debate also forced councillors to discuss many uncertainties about the future of light rail funding, including the prospect of borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars to build the entire eight-kilometre extension to Heritage Mall. Borrowing is one option, but councillors learned they will have to impose a dramatic nine per cent tax increase if they choose to build the southern extension on their own and borrow all the money at once.
Stephen Mandel said. I think we could far more effectively use the money on the north side to make a more integrated system. Municipalities expect their debt levels to rise after the province said Tuesday it will hack their transportation grants by 70 per cent over the next three years. Debt levels will increase for communities that have to get these things done.
We have to be more fiscally responsible. The Alberta government has reversed its recent cuts of fuel tax-sharing with Edmonton and Calgary. The province signed a commitment in with both major cities, giving them five cents of the nine-cent-per-litre provincial fuel tax collected within their boundaries.
The deal recognized that the tax is collected from drivers who use roads and bridges that were built and maintained by the city. It enabled the timely improvement of roads and LRT to match population and economic growth. And it averted over-reliance on property taxes.
Yesterday, just two days after the government announced a new annual budget, Transportation Minister Ed Stelmach reversed that cut, retroactively restoring the five-cent share until the budget year ends, March 31, Mayor Bill Smith heads to Calgary today, hoping to return with a long-term financial commitment from the province for new roads and transit. The province announced that, beginning April , it would slash the fuel tax revenue it gives to Edmonton and Calgary by more than 70 per cent.
Both cities use the money to help pay for road construction and public transit. The premier maintains the cities had a three-year deal. Edmonton and Calgary officials believe they signed an agreement that would last indefinitely until renegotiated. The money is dedicated to local road and transit improvements. They said the province had arbitrarily renegotiated the deal. Both mayors said the meeting, which lasted 90 minutes, got a bit testy but the city officials left happy.
Transportation ministry spokesman Ron Glen said the province realizes how important the fuel-tax revenue is to the cities. Byline: Tom Olsen, Journal Legislature Bureau Chief Transportation Minister Ed Stelmach is rallying western provinces to squeeze Ottawa for a greater cut of federal gasoline taxes, as part of a long-term plan to help cities solve transportation woes while sparing civic taxpayers. Stelmach is contacting transportation ministers in British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba to back a call to Ottawa to turn over to the provinces the 10 cents per litre it collects in gasoline tax.
Stelmach is now rallying the three other western provinces to press Ottawa to give up the tax and let the provinces collect it. The Alberta government would then be able to pass on more cash to Calgary and Edmonton, which now receive five cents a litre from the nine cents the province takes in from every litre of fuel sold in Alberta. The light-rail train system will be extended by metres to a new ground-level station across the street from the University of Alberta Hospital.
By then it will be 14 years since the city added its last stop along the LRT route and 28 years since the system opened, making Edmonton the first city in North America with fewer than one million people to boast a modern light-rail system. Public transit has become less popular with every new generation of Edmontonians. Your grandfather was much more likely to use public transit than your father, and he was much more likely to have used it than you.
As for your great-grandfather, if he lived in Edmonton, he was likely a veritable public transit junkie compared with you. While cars bogged down in the mud, streetcars rumbled on by on solid track. Motor vehicles took over, both cars and buses, part of a North America-wide trend. Buses were promoted as less expensive and more flexible than streetcars, which was true enough.
But people tended to be lukewarm, at best, towards riding the bus. Buses are smelly and provide a bumpy ride, says historian Peter Drost, a contributor to Transit Toronto magazine.
The overall ride is as good as the road is smooth, and if they run on diesel, the interior starts to reek like the fuel. Buses are also used on streets with regular traffic which, added to the regular stops, can slow the trip to a crawl.
By the early s, city planners saw the popularity of public transit was dropping rapidly. They concluded the trend was irreversible, and tried to tailor things to the car in the transportation master plan of This was all over Canada.
Under the master plan, River Valley Road would have been pumped up with extra lanes. Mill Creek and MacKinnon Ravine would have been paved over with freeways.
Opponents said the plan was like someone had dropped a plate of spaghetti on the table, because it had roads going all over the place. In the end, the plan was rejected. A new vision took over in the s, when Edmonton became the first North American city with a population under one million to develop a light-rail train system, the LRT. Instead, the city decided it would be cheaper to build its own bridge, and to build an underground station at the University of Alberta, which is what university officials had wanted in any case.
Construction starts in early February, with the project to be completed by March, Edmonton now lags behind other major Canadian cities when it comes to subway and train transit. Vancouver has 28 kilometres of light rail train track; Calgary, 33; Edmonton, just City Council Minutes Item E The document is located in the City Council Archives. Building LRT. These documents are located in the Transportation Committee Archives.
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