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An easily accessible Park’n’Ride in the South Side will be a boon for Capital Line ridership. The ridership on the line actually peaked in 2014, and although that was before the oil glut recession, it was also the last year that Century Park station had free parking, and it was always full. There is currently no station with tons of free parking on the south leg, which always made it less enticing for me to take the LRT during off-peak hours, when the long waits for bus connections become a concern.
Yes, but do we really want the level of security and screening on transit that airports have? Also, for long distance trips there is not a lot of good alternatives to flying, whereas transit already has to compete against often more convenient or faster alternatives. So it has to try deliver as good as an experience as possible.
The only point I was trying to make was that there are many elements to post Covid recovery that are common to all transit modes yet we have to much of a focus on crime on public transit that has not changed much. In fact in recent times it is getting better. Please no more dissertations on why the modes are different.
Just thought some would find this interesting: We recently scanned/uploaded a high floor LRT design guide from the early 1980s. Unlike the current design guide, this early one has a ton of narrative about what LRT is/can be, why certain decisions were made in Edmonton, etc. Super interesting glimpse into how the fathers of our LRT system imagined it growing from there.Myself and another volunteer with the Edmonton Radial Railway Society Archive scanned a bunch of LRT-related documents in our collection, and I thought you might find them interesting. There are three sections:
-The main folder primarily has reports and plans, operations manuals, and some magazine articles from when the line opened.
-The sub-folder "Bob Clark Documents" has material donated by Robert Clark and his estate. Robert was an ERRS member and ETS staff who was instrumental in setting up Edmonton's LRT system. As such, these documents are primarily from the mid-70s, and include documents related to key decision points about station and system design, meeting minutes and memos from the team of city staff planning the system, and even a draft council report (complete with markup and some commentary) requesting approval for procuring the U2s. One of my favourite finds in this group of documents was a memo where the operations section of ETS expressed concern that the design of the north-east line was too subway-esque, and would decrease support of *true* lrt designs like what they wanted introduced in the future (a fear that ended up coming true as we see with pushback to the Valley Line's design), and that it would also increase the risk of the federal transportation authority practicing oversight on the system (since it oversees railways, but not street railways/tramways, so that distinction matters a lot).
-The third folder has photos that Robert took of system construction, LRV delivery, early service, etc.
If you do discuss/share the documents or photos anywhere, please just give credit to Robert Clark and the ERRS Archive where applicable. I hope you find some of this stuff interesting.
Edmonton LRT, 1960s-1990s - Google Drive
drive.google.com
drive.google.com
Just thought some would find this interesting: We recently scanned/uploaded a high floor LRT design guide from the early 1980s. Unlike the current design guide, this early one has a ton of narrative about what LRT is/can be, why certain decisions were made in Edmonton, etc. Super interesting glimpse into how the fathers of our LRT system imagined it growing from there.
LRT Design Guidelines Early 1980s.pdf
For all the complaints now, the late 1980's and early 1990's were bleak for many years in terms of building and expansion. After that we have had to do a lot of catch up.This is cool.
It also makes me sad that we went so long without expanding the LRT system.
