Metro Line LRT | ?m | ?s | City of Edmonton

Gonna say it now and I'll get hate for it, the view of the downtown skyline (and photos from the north) from this area are better than the ones from south of the river. I await the tomatoes.
 
I biked around the area again after not visiting for a long time and wow! Even though it's still going pretty slowly, they've like doubled the townhomes and the amount of roads. I can honestly see the neighborhood taking shape, and I love the park and pier overlooking the lake! 😁

As for the LRT, the coordination of the project and the buildout of Blatchford was not ideal sure, but this is getting so overblown imo. Many of the largest and greatest cities around the world build transit in conjunction with the construction of new neighborhoods, and if the transit is completed while the area is in its infancy then that's okay. Transit attracts people, and will only increase the exponential growth of an area like Blatchford. The remarks that will inevitably come about "the train to nowhere" and "the most useless LRT station" are a result of the ever-present mainstream ignorance about urban planning. Frankly, I wouldn't surprised if certain news outlets/personas have incentives to discredit public transit and its promotion of non auto-centric growth.
 
Platinum107 said:
I biked around the area again after not visiting for a long time and wow! Even though it's still going pretty slowly, they've like doubled the townhomes and the amount of roads. I can honestly see the neighborhood taking shape, and I love the park and pier overlooking the lake! 😁

As for the LRT, the coordination of the project and the buildout of Blatchford was not ideal sure, but this is getting so overblown imo. Many of the largest and greatest cities around the world build transit in conjunction with the construction of new neighborhoods, and if the transit is completed while the area is in its infancy then that's okay. Transit attracts people, and will only increase the exponential growth of an area like Blatchford. The remarks that will inevitably come about "the train to nowhere" and "the most useless LRT station" are a result of the ever-present mainstream ignorance about urban planning. Frankly, I wouldn't surprised if certain news outlets/personas have incentives to discredit public transit and its promotion of non auto-centric growth.
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Yeah, I think the bigger problem than the stations being built early is still transit safety. The types of people currently living in blatchford won’t take transit that’s not safe. We have to fix that most.
 
TravellingChris said:
The way things are going in this town, it'll be sitting idle for years.

Remember that Blatchford itself has largely failed to live up to the original vision--remember how it was supposed to be environmentally-friendly, self-contained with cutting-edge technology? There was also supposed to be this immense demand for housing in the city core and once the airport was shut, the redevelopment was going to absolutely take off. Instead the real growth has been outside the city core--particularly outside the Henday ring. At this rate it will be an eternity before Blatchford is built out sufficiently.

This is why I vehemently oppose efforts by city councils and municipal pencil-pushers who get all googly-eyed over "exciting opportunities" like TOD (which has been a miserable failure in Edmonton) and the redevelopment of lands like Blatchford which was supposed to bring densification, revitalization, a new sense of community blah blah blah to the central city. These projects have been nothing but an embarrassment to Edmonton.

Building a station that won't operate for years, and leaving it sit idle--while there are other areas of the city crying out for transit--is absolute idiocy.
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What an overly pessimistic and regressive view of this situation.

Blatchford is in its first few years of a 30 year buildout and, while it has had a slow start for various reasons (compared to the average private market cookie-cutter suburban neighborhood), it is being built nonetheless and is noticeably picking up pace.

You "vehemently oppose the efforts" of the people who support more TOD and exciting opportunities? That's not nice ☹️ Seriously though, over-optimism is important to address and critique when talking about a city's potential, sure, but I don't see how TOD has been a "miserable failure in Edmonton" at all. Edmonton is just beginning to change its ways after decades of being at the literal rock bottom of regressive auto-centric decision-making, and its unfortunate that its taken us this long to finally realize the terrible mistake we've made. But things are changing:

Century Park, the University area (Belgravia, Garneau, etc.), Stadium Yards, Clareview Town Centre, Holyrood Gardens, West Block -> all examples of TODs in their early construction or already well underway.
Ellerslie, Fort Road, Mill Woods Town Centre, Bonnie Doon Mall, WEM area/Elmwood site, even Griesbach -> all examples of TOD plans which are very likely to take off/be linked with transit in the next decade.

With groundbreaking policy changes like the City Plan, Zoning Bylaw Renewal, Mass Transit Plan, Edmonton is moving to the forefront of progressive, sustainable and logical urban planning in the North American context. Are we at a world standard? Hell no. Are we continuing to make mistakes and support/subsidize misguided auto-centric growth? Yes. But it took decades for us to reach the bottom, and its going to take us decades to climb out of the hole we dug for ourselves, but I have no doubt it will happen.

The overly-pessimistic and change--avoidant tendencies engrained in rhetoric about new ideas certainly doesn't help, though, and may make the process occur slower than it could and should.
 
thommyjo said:
Yeah, I think the bigger problem than the stations being built early is still transit safety. The types of people currently living in blatchford won’t take transit that’s not safe. We have to fix that most.
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Fair point, and in my view it's a problem that limits transit's potential to attract people all over Edmonton and other large cities across Canada. And in my opinion that issue is going to require a nation-wide coordinated approach to address, not a city-by-city mosaic of policy and attention.
 
Platinum107 said:
Fair point, and in my view it's a problem that limits transit's potential to attract people all over Edmonton and other large cities across Canada. And in my opinion that issue is going to require a nation-wide coordinated approach to address, not a city-by-city mosaic of policy and attention.
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Yeah, it's going to take a combination of improved housing affordability, more effective addictions-treatment policies, bail reform and probably even tougher laws and sentences for violent crime and major vandalism (that last point is very controversial, I know). While Edmonton's done all it can for affordability, addictions treatment is mostly in the hands of the provincial government, and just about everything related to the justice system is federal jurisdiction.
 
Platinum107 said:
Fair point, and in my view it's a problem that limits transit's potential to attract people all over Edmonton and other large cities across Canada. And in my opinion that issue is going to require a nation-wide coordinated approach to address, not a city-by-city mosaic of policy and attention.
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Platinum107 said:
What an overly pessimistic and regressive view of this situation.

Blatchford is in its first few years of a 30 year buildout and, while it has had a slow start for various reasons (compared to the average private market cookie-cutter suburban neighborhood), it is being built nonetheless and is noticeably picking up pace.

You "vehemently oppose the efforts" of the people who support more TOD and exciting opportunities? That's not nice ☹️ Seriously though, over-optimism is important to address and critique when talking about a city's potential, sure, but I don't see how TOD has been a "miserable failure in Edmonton" at all. Edmonton is just beginning to change its ways after decades of being at the literal rock bottom of regressive auto-centric decision-making, and its unfortunate that its taken us this long to finally realize the terrible mistake we've made. But things are changing:

Century Park, the University area (Belgravia, Garneau, etc.), Stadium Yards, Clareview Town Centre, Holyrood Gardens, West Block -> all examples of TODs in their early construction or already well underway.
Ellerslie, Fort Road, Mill Woods Town Centre, Bonnie Doon Mall, WEM area/Elmwood site, even Griesbach -> all examples of TOD plans which are very likely to take off/be linked with transit in the next decade.

With groundbreaking policy changes like the City Plan, Zoning Bylaw Renewal, Mass Transit Plan, Edmonton is moving to the forefront of progressive, sustainable and logical urban planning in the North American context. Are we at a world standard? Hell no. Are we continuing to make mistakes and support/subsidize misguided auto-centric growth? Yes. But it took decades for us to reach the bottom, and its going to take us decades to climb out of the hole we dug for ourselves, but I have no doubt it will happen.

The overly-pessimistic and change--avoidant tendencies engrained in rhetoric about new ideas certainly doesn't help, though, and may make the process occur slower than it could and should.
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These are two of most well thought out comments I've come across here in the past few months. We need more systems thinking to create a better place for everyone to live.
 
Tropical said:
These are two of most well thought out comments I've come across here in the past few months. We need more systems thinking to create a better place for everyone to live.
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Hey I appreciate that, thank you! For context, I'm studying Urban Planning at the U of A so a lot of my rational comes from what I learn in class + my own personal research. I believe that systems thinking is really at the core of understanding cities from a planning perspective. Everything has a reason for being the way it is yknow.

It's been cool to visit Skyrise again after being inactive for a while! Nice to meet all the new people here.
 
TOD has not been a failure in Edmonton, in fact I think it has been a resounding success thus far. The only Canadian cities the beat out Edmonton in this metric are Toronto and Vancouver, both much larger centres with much larger established transit rider-base, honestly not even Montreal has an much even though it's denser in the first place. Century Park and the Stadium District are the best examples but we are seeing a number of other centres emerge and those two that were previously mentioned are growing as well including Blatchford. Garneau is another example of increased density around transit nodes, (though it was already somewhat dense so maybe it's more Development Oriented Transit rather than the other way around, though the density is now increasing even more now that the LRT is here). Holyrood is also getting new high-rises and that area with Holyrood, Bonnie Doon and Strathearn is on track to become a highly successful transit region. There are also a number of proposals that are coming through along the rest of the Southeast VL, like Mill Woods. I'm sure we'll start to see a bunch more development along the VL West as well. TOD is better than average already among Canadian cities and is only getting better.
 
erudyk_29 said:
TOD has not been a failure in Edmonton, in fact I think it has been a resounding success thus far. The only Canadian cities the beat out Edmonton in this metric are Toronto and Vancouver, both much larger centres with much larger established transit rider-base, honestly not even Montreal has an much even though it's denser in the first place. Century Park and the Stadium District are the best examples but we are seeing a number of other centres emerge and those two that were previously mentioned are growing as well including Blatchford. Garneau is another example of increased density around transit nodes, (though it was already somewhat dense so maybe it's more Development Oriented Transit rather than the other way around, though the density is now increasing even more now that the LRT is here). Holyrood is also getting new high-rises and that area with Holyrood, Bonnie Doon and Strathearn is on track to become a highly successful transit region. There are also a number of proposals that are coming through along the rest of the Southeast VL, like Mill Woods. I'm sure we'll start to see a bunch more development along the VL West as well. TOD is better than average already among Canadian cities and is only getting better.
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I agree! I think the whole “forget it, TOD in Edmonton has failed” thing is just another case of Edmonton-bubble-expectation-let-down syndrome. Is there a North American metro close in population that has more successful TOD than us?
 
erudyk_29 said:
TOD has not been a failure in Edmonton, in fact I think it has been a resounding success thus far. The only Canadian cities the beat out Edmonton in this metric are Toronto and Vancouver, both much larger centres with much larger established transit rider-base, honestly not even Montreal has an much even though it's denser in the first place. Century Park and the Stadium District are the best examples but we are seeing a number of other centres emerge and those two that were previously mentioned are growing as well including Blatchford. Garneau is another example of increased density around transit nodes, (though it was already somewhat dense so maybe it's more Development Oriented Transit rather than the other way around, though the density is now increasing even more now that the LRT is here). Holyrood is also getting new high-rises and that area with Holyrood, Bonnie Doon and Strathearn is on track to become a highly successful transit region. There are also a number of proposals that are coming through along the rest of the Southeast VL, like Mill Woods. I'm sure we'll start to see a bunch more development along the VL West as well. TOD is better than average already among Canadian cities and is only getting better.
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Agreed.

Also, it's worth noting that on top of the fact that these things usually take time, even when you already have a large population base, high demand and much more of a transit culture (ie. Toronto and Vancouver), we're kinda of fighting against a very suburban culture, in a much smaller city that has only breached the 1M population (for the city proper) maybe 2 years ago. We're also spread a little it too thin, in terms of the number of TODs we have (and I think THIS might've been our biggest mistake), with a lot of competing places for not enough demand, over the time they've been around, or proposed.

As the city grows, attracts more immigrants and gains critical mass, I honestly believe we'll see these TODs gain momentum and fill up. We might never have a Metrotown kind of vibe, with dozens of high-rises in a TOD node, like Vancouver, but we'll end up with several substantially dense, mostly made out of mid-rise buildings (which can actually be much more interesting). I don't know how many of you have been there recently, but considering the amount of space left there, we can add another 4 or 5 buildings like the Louvre at Century Park, and it would probably make it one of the best places in Edmonton, easily.
 
Where would be the best places for TOD on the Metro LRT line, current and expansion?
Blatchford - obviously!
There may be TOD proposals for Kingsway Ave/106 St, 113a St/127 Ave or 129 Ave, 132 Ave/113a St, 137 Ave/113a St, Castledowns/153 Ave, 127 St/153 Ave and Campbell Road (153 Ave expansion west of 142 St could be in the cards).
 
Gronk! said:
Where would be the best places for TOD on the Metro LRT line, current and expansion?
Blatchford - obviously!
There may be TOD proposals for Kingsway Ave/106 St, 113a St/127 Ave or 129 Ave, 132 Ave/113a St, 137 Ave/113a St, Castledowns/153 Ave, 127 St/153 Ave and Campbell Road (153 Ave expansion west of 142 St could be in the cards).
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Honestly, right now, I'd only do Kingsway as a proper TOD. Increase lightly the density around the other stations north of the Yellowed, yes, but as I said on my previous post, I think we're already spread a little bit too thin, in terms of TOD, in Edmonton and, if we're going to propose new ones, I would like to see places like WEM, Kingsway and Southgate get these, before anything else.

In the case of the Metro Line, in particular, I think a Kingsway one, alongside Blatchford, would help draw more development north of DT and tie in these two areas together a bit more.
 
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