Valley Line LRT | TransEd/Marigold | City of Edmonton

@thommyjo

You explained why ridership did not increase with the NAIT line and that makes good sense. But why then did the city expect it would increase by 2.5 million trips - did they not expect the same thing that you just explained. These projects are being pitched and decided upon based in part on ridership but the city did not seem to take into account what you explained as to why we shouldn't have expected ridership to go up.

Any thoughts on my other question regarding the BRT cost from the city for west valley line? Or any insights from anyone on that?

Why was the cost of BRT going to be so much higher in Edmonton versus other municipalities that have built BRTs?

I mean $1.7B for 14km of BRT? I looked at costs of several other cities including Calgary and none come close to what our administration reported it would cost here.
 
Last edited:
Edmonchuk said:
People who say we should slow down LRT - isn't it the reason why Edmonton has build only ONE LRT LINE since 1978?? It's been 44 years, how much more do we need to slow down? This rhetoric just makes me mad.
Click to expand...
Sometimes I swear, when Edmonton went through that 15-20 year period around 1990-2010 where relatively nothing substantial was built here, it's made a lot of folks weirded out by constant growth/construction/change. Remnants of still trying to shake the small/medium town mindset as a city matures into being a big city. It's the same stuff I hear with the new towers going up--"Who is even living in those places? Do we need all these new towers?"
 
One thing though I do question when it comes to the numbers provided by Administration. I have seen instances where it appears admin may find numbers that will support their vision and/or numbers that will be against an opposing vision.

Good example of this is the debate about elevating the track above Whyte ave at Bonnie Doon. Admin already had their desired concept and an above grade would not fit in to their vision. Therefore when they made their study about cost, their report to council stated that elevating would be far too restrictive. In turn council chose to stay at grade. I'm not saying all the decisions by admin are bad, but sometimes one has to step back and look if admin is really doing whats best or are the finding the numbers that will support their point of view.
 
I think much of the NAIT line (to this point) is to public venues (MacEwan/Rogers Place, RAH/Kingsway Mall, NAIT), which probably may have residents living along or near the Capital Line taking the train to NAIT. There is probably little, if any, time savings if someone living in North/NW Edmonton to take the Metro Line. I'm thinking when the LRT is extended to residential neighbourhoods, we'll see an increase in demand again.
 
From Reddit:
hrjvok1okuj51.png
 
Are there are any plans to rename some of the LRT stations? I find it a bit silly having 2 stations named "MacEwan".
If anyone wants my humble opinion, "102 Street" should be renamed to "City Centre", while "Coliseum" should be renamed to "Northlands" and "MacEwan" should be renamed to "Rogers Place" or "ICE District".
 
kcantor said:
we have been in vancouver since tuesday and the amount of construction going on is still crazy for both private and public sector projects including the broadway subway.

we have also yet to experience a single road or lane closure. broadway has excavations in two lanes as deep as 20’ for subway construction and still maintains two lanes of traffic each way and keeps the sidewalks open.

how many years have we lived without one of only three east/west connectors downtown while concurrently restricting the other two along with many of north/south connectors?

at the end of the day it simply comes down to priorities and will (or lack thereof).
Click to expand...
I noticed the same when I was there in early September. It was actually much easier to get around downtown there than here, with no significant detour/blockages.
 
Gronk! said:
Are there are any plans to rename some of the LRT stations? I find it a bit silly having 2 stations named "MacEwan".
If anyone wants my humble opinion, "102 Street" should be renamed to "City Centre", while "Coliseum" should be renamed to "Northlands" and "MacEwan" should be renamed to "Rogers Place" or "ICE District".
Click to expand...
One reason for the MacEwan name is I think ETS doesn't want too many people to realize there is an LRT station right next to Rogers Place, because it can't handle event crowds.
 
TAS said:
A few things i found very interesting about the article you linked to:

1. As you noted, that cost of BRT vs. LRT is very surprising. Calgary was originally planning their 46 km Green Line to be a BRT first at a cost of $1.5 billion versus $5B for just a section of LRT they are doing now. And our line is 14km and it was going to cost $1.7Billion vs $2.2B for LRT? That's a mighty expensive BRT line our city planners we're estimating and more than 3x the cost of the Calgary project per km.

2. I hope we meet out projected ridership of 40,100 trips per day on day one of the line opening (that's 14.6 million trips per year), but I'm kinda thinking that number is bogus - especially given the fact that instead of adding 2.5 million trips per year when the $665M line to NAIT opened, we actually lost 3 million trips per year system wide (a swing of 5.5 millon to the negative). That's a significant misprojection - and that was pre pandemic. And that must have hurt revenues to some degree and currently we have a bus network with new deficiencies compared to previously.

3. At the end of that article, it was surprising to read one of council's pro lrt voices, Andrew Knack, was actually open to the idea of 'slowing down' the west LRT project given some council members were concerned about the price tag.
From the article you posted:

"If cost is the issue, Knack said he’d rather slow down and see what emerging technologies like trackless trains can offer. Slowing down is fine.

“The wrong approach is to do a half measure,” he said.
Click to expand...

I strongly suspect that the West LRT will be slowed down to the point of stopping work on it for now to re-evaluate. As you said, even Andrew Knack is now hesitating. I think Covid changed everything.
 
Tommy2342 said:
I strongly suspect that the West LRT will be slowed down to the point of stopping work on it for now to re-evaluate. As you said, even Andrew Knack is now hesitating. I think Covid changed everything.
Click to expand...
I think it depends on the outcome of the election AND what the cost would be to stop work on it. Judging by schedule 27, it wouldn't be cheap to cancel or stop work on.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top