Valley Line LRT | TransEd/Marigold | City of Edmonton

IanO said:
It makes A LOT of sense to get it done before FIFA, but it would considerably move things up schedule-wise... like 20% if I recall and that's not easily overcome.
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You're not far off, it would be about 18% or so, schedule-wise, cost would not go up by that much, however, as there are some synergies that could cut some of the additional expenses.
I'd say costs would go up by 10~12%, back of the napkin calculations.
 
ChazYEG said:
VLW might still happen, Capital Line is an absolute no go.
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My guess is that's because it'd come at the cost of doing the phase 2 Metro Line extension within the decade, which is a non-starter for this council (understandably so, imo). I'd personally rather that the province gives the high speed rail team the support needed to go ahead soon, but we all know how likely that is.
 
The_Cat said:
Would the train cars be purchased in time?
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With the right cash injection, possibly. They'd need to be ordered by the end of this year, Q1-2023 tops.

@CplKlinger I'd love to see the HSR get traction, but I'll take finishing the VLW on time for FIFA 2026 with a huge smile in my face.
 
ChazYEG said:
Yes, I support this decision. The beneficial impacts for the whole city coming from the redevelopment of that area in Downtown will exceed the subsidies by a large margin, not just financially.


Not really. I don't even like Canadian/American football, if you ask me, and if you've read enough of this forum's threads you'll know that I own no property whatsoever in Edmonton.
It's simply a matter of perspective: while building the 40 avenue station is important, should not be completely scrapped and would benefit a good portion of the city, renovating the Stadium and the whole bid to host this 2026 World Cup will inject hundreds of millions, if not a couple of billion dollars in the city's economy, create jobs, enhance the city's visibility nationwide and worldwide and benefit the whole

And this line of thought goes all the way back to the VLW, in my opinion, as I am a strong supporter of the CoE/Province/Feds putting down some extra cash to speed it up so we can get it built out at least to the WEM before June 2026 (as well as some subsidy for the Prairie Sky Gondola, to make sure it comes to life and is ready when planned). These will no only be revenue and job generators but help showcase Edmonton abroad, and minimizing the impact of the FIFA's Men's World Cup on a city's image is borderline silly and shows either a lack of knowledge about this sport's popularity (which appears to be a trend in the always very closed-off North America, who seems to think that whatever is out there is not as popular or rich as what is popular in here) or lack of understanding about the positive economic impacts of low-cost/high-yield and ultra-high exposure events, which is what this one will be for Edmonton.
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The problem with the argument of dumping extra money into speeding up projects is that the money that you dump into the project would have been spent on other projects and benefitted more people - the opportunity cost. The infrastructure dollars will be spent either way. The other thing to note is that large events like these usually only benefit certain demographic groups. Poorer groups don't reap the same benefits as the middle and/or upper middle class; mega events generally take money away from marginalized groups. Host countries do a good job at marketing the economic benefits in the press as they should, but economists are pretty quick to point out the benefits aren't as big as one would believe and in many cases are net neutral.

It would be nice if WLRT happens sooner, but it would be at the detriment to some other project here or elsewhere.
 
ChazYEG said:
With the right cash injection, possibly. They'd need to be ordered by the end of this year, Q1-2023 tops.

@CplKlinger I'd love to see the HSR get traction, but I'll take finishing the VLW on time for FIFA 2026 with a huge smile in my face.
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Oh for sure, you and me both! I'm glad EllisDon is doing their best to get it started; I'm just saying that I don't want the LRT to be brought down to the airport as a short-term stopgap when HSR would be such a better solution in the longer term. Are you able to give an opinion as to how likely you think it is that EllisDon will be successful in this lobbying?
 
westcoastjos said:
Host countries do a good job at marketing the economic benefits in the press as they should, but economists are pretty quick to point out the benefits aren't as big as one would believe and in many cases are net neutral.
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It really depends on the event and the conditions.
A few cities can benefit widely from hosting such events, especially when, as you point out, we already have the infrastructure CAPEX committed anyways. The marginal addition to the costs of some of these projects could benefit the city as a whole, especially things like the VLW which, considering its route, will largely benefit poorer/underserved/overlooked communities, as much as more affluent ones.

As for the argument that mega-events take money from marginalized groups, that is largely true for developing countries, or those with a socio-economic structure much different from Canada's. Countries like Korea, Japan and Germany, the most recent developed nations to host the FIFA Men's World Cup, saw a much more even spillover of the financial benefits in the host cities, especially the smaller ones. FIFA's World Cup has a relatively low cost-to-revenue ratio, considering that the event itself only requires one venue.

If you want to touch the Olympic Games (both summer and winter Olympics), then it is a whole different beast, as it usually demands the build of much bigger, complex and expensive infrastructure, specific to the event, in a single city, usually at the cost of billions of dollars. Tickets are incredibly expensive and there are issues with reallocation (forced or not) of marginalized communities (not unlike the freeways, etc...), as well as an extremely elitist character to the whole event, that only gets more apparent in cities like Rio, Sochi or Beijing.
 
CplKlinger said:
Oh for sure, you and me both! I'm glad EllisDon is doing their best to get it started; I'm just saying that I don't want the LRT to be brought down to the airport as a short-term stopgap when HSR would be such a better solution in the longer term. Are you able to give an opinion as to how likely you think it is that EllisDon will be successful in this lobbying?
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My heart is divided on this one. As much as I'd like to, I cannot, for the life of me, shake away the fear that the HSR could deal a really hard blow on YEG and in our Downtown. I know there are arguments that it could actually mean the opposite, and help Edmonton become more dynamic and suck out a little bit from YYC and Calgary, but I'm a little bit skeptical of that.
 
ChazYEG said:
My heart is divided on this one. As much as I'd like to, I cannot, for the life of me, shake away the fear that the HSR could deal a really hard blow on YEG and in our Downtown. I know there are arguments that it could actually mean the opposite, and help Edmonton become more dynamic and suck out a little bit from YYC and Calgary, but I'm a little bit skeptical of that.
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It is hard to say if HSR would be beneficial for Edmonton and downtown or not, however LRT is real and is happening at this point, whereas HSR could be a long time in the future, if ever. I don't see Alberta having the population to support it at this point.
 
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