thommyjo
Senior Member
From this video:
Valley Line LRT | TransEd/Marigold | City of Edmonton
- Thread starter Daveography
- Start date
Kosy123
Active Member
Yeah but that requires Lorne Gunter to have critical thinking skills and the ability to criticize his beloved federal conservatives.
The_Cat
Senior Member
Gunter’s comments never help.
The_Cat
Senior Member
I did see some work today with crews at the electrical entrances open on 83 Street.
Kaizen
Senior Member
I thought this was a pretty good piece, pretty much bang on.
Colby Cosh: Edmonton's transit showcase on civilizational decline
Crews continue to test Edmonton's Valley Line LRT at the Muttart LRT stop, Tuesday 23, 2022. PHOTO BY DAVID BLOOM/POSTMEDIA
Colby Cosh: Edmonton's transit showcase on civilizational decline
An unusable, years-behind-schedule train line provides the city a grotesque daily vision of state incapacity
Author of the article:Colby Cosh
Published Jul 05, 2023
Colby Cosh: Edmonton's transit showcase on civilizational decline
An unusable, years-behind-schedule train line provides the city a grotesque daily vision of state incapacity
nationalpost.com
Munanyo
Active Member
^That article pretty much sums up most peoples sentiment towards the Valley line. Absolute joke and debacle it has become.
BrettB
Active Member
I love his line "Schrödinger's train." Sounds like a much better name for the line
buildings
Active Member
not sure what the purpose of this article is other than "GRRRR ANGRY"". Also a bit over the top equating this to the decline of civilization. Guess Colby Cosh likes purple prose.
The_Cat
Senior Member
One thing I find is that Edmonton has to be its own advocate. How hard did the city have to fight for this funding? Second, how many corners did TransEd cut (e.g., concrete, cables)?
TravellingChris
Active Member
Edmonton is hardly alone. The ongoing disaster along Eglinton Avenue in Toronto is a case in point.
torontosun.com
And Ottawa has had many of the same issues with its deeply flawed LRT.
Maybe Canadian municipal transportation departments just can't do mass transit anymore?
GOLDSTEIN: Toronto’s white-elephant LRT a warning to cities across Canada
Toronto's disastrous public transit project known as the Eglinton Crosstown LRT stands as a warning to other cities across Canada.
torontosun.com
And Ottawa has had many of the same issues with its deeply flawed LRT.
Maybe Canadian municipal transportation departments just can't do mass transit anymore?
TravellingChris
Active Member
The reason I want to see this line redesigned is not just the safety factor, although the ongoing accidents help make my case. Having gates, bollards and signal priority (all of which the Capital Line has) will help make this line what it is supposed to be--a rapid transit service that convinces people to choose it over their cars because it guarantees travel times and gets preference over private vehicles at all intersections. An LRT that has to wait at multiple lights along its route is little better than a bus--and the people who are already riding buses along the LRT route aren't the intended audience for this line anyway. It's supposed to win over car drivers. Put in the bloody gates, reduce the potential car-train interaction as much as possible, give the LRT priority at every intersection and then we might win over the riders we need to make this massive investment a success.
I'm glad you made the point about the Henday. No, you're right that we haven't spent billions to redesign it. YET. But it's crystal clear the thing was massively flawed when it was built and we're paying the price daily. Look at the daily traffic backups in certain directions and at certain times of day, due to it being underdesigned and underbuilt. The bumper-to-bumper traffic crawls along at L.A. speeds on what is supposed to be a freeway to facilitate commutes.
fromyeg
Active Member
.
The problem isn’t that the Henday is under designed and under built.
The problem is that our City has expanded in such a way that the only viable method of travel for many, many people is to drive on the Henday. (This expansion has been facilitated by the existence of the Henday. This is an example of induced demand.)
The best way to improve traffic on the Henday is to provide options for travel other than driving on the Henday.
The problem isn’t that the Henday is under designed and under built.
The problem is that our City has expanded in such a way that the only viable method of travel for many, many people is to drive on the Henday. (This expansion has been facilitated by the existence of the Henday. This is an example of induced demand.)
The best way to improve traffic on the Henday is to provide options for travel other than driving on the Henday.
thommyjo
Senior Member
Agreed. The SW henday will only get worse, with a slight improvement after we spend hundreds of millions on the terwillegar interchange. But within 5 years it’ll be bad again. Couldn’t pay me enough to live in windemere again and to have to drive that route regularly. Living centrally and mostly biking is a game changer.
I agree @TravellingChris though, a proper train line would have been awesome. We just grew so fast and fell behind. Ideally, a tunneled and elevated option to west Edmonton mall and Bonnie doon would have been built decades back to add density to those areas before expanding to millwoods and Lewis farms. The lines are so long and the density so low that we just can’t afford to elevate.
Does anyone know if the valley line can eventually be run without stopping at lights? I think that’s a stupid decision and hopefully could be reversed in the future to essentially have intersections go green as the train comes.
EdwardEdm
Active Member
It theoretically does already. The majority of the intersections with the VLSE include signal preemption for the trains. There are a few locations where trains so not get signal preemption. There's a lot of location in the VLSE Agreement on the City's website.
Certainly, I have seen signal preemption employed on the Southside, in particular at 34 Ave.
TAS
Senior Member
Has the city ever done a campaign to better nudge people in this same direction? Would that be a worthwhile endeavour?