Valley Line LRT | TransEd/Marigold | City of Edmonton

CplKlinger said:
Just out of curiosity, how much will the VLW help change that, if at all?
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I don't think it will help us much. Often the places we want to go: Climbing Gym, Friends Houses, River Valley, Superstore, etc are not on a train line. Only draws for us on VLW are West Ed (which we go to maybe twice a year) and 124th (maybe every other month). We loved living carfree in Vancouver (best part of a horrible city) and being next to the LRT has let us remain a 1 car family (which is a huge savings!) but car is still king in Edmonton.
 
It’ll take 20 years for the LRTs to really get there. That’s why TOD is so key. When those hubs get built up around stations, the line is more valuable.

Many Edmontonians have their dentist, barber, friends, daycares, restaurants, etc all spread out across the city or at least a “quadrant”. Whereas in places like Vancouver, more of my friends there live “along the skytrain” and have many of their local service/retail/leisure locations at stops along the train (if not walkable in their community already).

Projects like west block help though, and obviously all the big employment hubs of malls, hospitals, and unis are the biggest generators.

Transit is also cost prohibitive though vs a car if you don’t use it frequently and already own/insure a vehicle. That’s my biggest barrier to using more. Makes way more sense to drive (even with paid parking often) or to bike.
 
Sidewalk construction on 107 Street:
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Despite all the construction pain, I'd argue that the Valley Line will probably be the prettiest light rail system out of any in the country by the end of all this. Stuff like this shows glimpses of what we're getting as a final product.

I don't think the Toronto light rail systems, ION or whatever passes for the Green Line in Calgary can compete with this.
 
Having lived in Metro Vancouver for 22 years, I have less rose coloured glasses of their transit system. There's a lot more of even City of Vancouver let alone Metro Vancouver that is not served by rapid transit than is served by rapid transit. UBC might be another 15 years away from Skytrain and we don't have high hopes for the SFU gondola. I emailed politicians 24 years ago about the need for lines to UBC, on Hastings, 41st Ave, Willingdon, Arbutus, and then reaching out to all the suburbs. Was told we didn't need redundant lines. Then an incident in 2014 where loose power rail was ripped off just before the afternoon rush hour and I can tell you exactly how ineffective a bus bridge service to replace full trains running every 2 minutes was and how badly we needed those redundant lines. It took me 6 hours to get home for what is normally a 75 minute trip. A few months later I ditched transit in favour of motorcycling.

Edmonton's on the right path.
 
thommyjo said:
ITransit is also cost prohibitive though vs a car if you don’t use it frequently and already own/insure a vehicle. That’s my biggest barrier to using more. Makes way more sense to drive (even with paid parking often) or to bike.
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This right here! ETS really needs to take a hard look at how to attract occasional users. I've preached on here before about the value of distance based fares but it is really frustrating how even when transit is an equally speedy option the cost for an individual trip is much higher than using the car you already own.
 
dkazzed said:
Having lived in Metro Vancouver for 22 years, I have less rose coloured glasses of their transit system. There's a lot more of even City of Vancouver let alone Metro Vancouver that is not served by rapid transit than is served by rapid transit. UBC might be another 15 years away from Skytrain and we don't have high hopes for the SFU gondola. I emailed politicians 24 years ago about the need for lines to UBC, on Hastings, 41st Ave, Willingdon, Arbutus, and then reaching out to all the suburbs. Was told we didn't need redundant lines. Then an incident in 2014 where loose power rail was ripped off just before the afternoon rush hour and I can tell you exactly how ineffective a bus bridge service to replace full trains running every 2 minutes was and how badly we needed those redundant lines. It took me 6 hours to get home for what is normally a 75 minute trip. A few months later I ditched transit in favour of motorcycling.

Edmonton's on the right path.
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Yes, years ago I went on a trip to Vancouver with a friend who wanted to stay close to UBC because he had friends there. It was very eye opening how challenging it was to go there and also go downtown. We are not perfect, but Edmonton's Universities are well located and have good LRT access already, which will be even better soon. Vancouver not so much.
 
The_Cat said:
Vancouver has the Waterfront and only one other major downtown stop (Burrard)
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I found this very surprising when I visited Van last spring. essentially just 1/3rd of downtown is actually served by the Skytrain. I used the Skytrain exactly twice, to get from the Airport to Downtown where my hotel was and back again. The rest of the time was spent on busses, which were quite good.

One great thing about Vancouver particularly as a visitor that is really nice is that you can just scan your credit card directly on the scanners to pay your fare, tap again when you get off. It's really convenient and I think could be used well in Edmonton to get people who might do the occasional trip by transit, such as somebody who goes to an Oilers game every other month, along with visitors.

From my limited time in Van it seems that the Skytrain is excellent for facilitating transit across the city, from far-flung locations, like Metrotown to Downtown Van for example, but is not super useful for the medium distance trips that something like the High-Floor LRT lines are good at.

So Van has from my experience has great transit for moving between far flung, major activity nodes (with the glaring exception of UBC) with the Skytrain, and great transit for short, local trips (busses), but struggles connecting small regional nodes and medium distances. I think Vancouver needs to bridge that gap in order to make its transit a bit more useful outside the main corridors.
 
erudyk_29 said:
One great thing about Vancouver particularly as a visitor that is really nice is that you can just scan your credit card directly on the scanners to pay your fare, tap again when you get off. It's really convenient and I think could be used well in Edmonton to get people who might do the occasional trip by transit, such as somebody who goes to an Oilers game every other month, along with visitors.
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Isn't this in the works here?
 
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