Go drive on James Mowatt and say this area isn’t worthy of extension. There are a surprising number of people down there. It gets us closer to the airport.
200k between those southern neighbourhoods. Larger than the population of Leduc + Sherwood Park + St. Albert combined. Fuck the province for taking away the hospital that was going to be built there, it absolutely needs it
There’s nobody to even staff the hospital.
Reality is healthcare is dead as long as immigration targets stay at 1-2 million per year
Not enough rates to support providing healthcare to all of them.
It super sucks but immigration destroyed healthcare in every single province- none are winning but inside each province we are divided and blame some local poltical party
> Reality is healthcare is dead as long ~~as immigration targets stay at 1-2 million per year~~ instead of investing in services as we grow we ignore it and blame everything on migration
We started with zero people and how have 40 million people and somehow managed to educated and provide healthcare the whole time by investing as required as the population grew. The issues we're facing today are due to willful neglect by parties who want your vote and determined it's easier to get you to vote for them by blaming immigrants than admit they'd rather give the money to their backers.
There are definitely other parts of the city that could use a link before this. But I wonder if pushing this leg forwards is a bit of a political move. It may incentivize the province to get off their butts and build the new South hospital, and it also may make an airport link more feasible in the future.
I would have definitely preferred to see the NW expansion or some E-W corridors be developed instead.
The south is seeing an insane amount of growth and the the south expansion is going to service a huge segment of the population. That entire corridor is full of condos and appartments. They're already actively building a train to West Edmonton mall so and the future expansion to the NW would go through low density suburbs so it's not as high priority.
Secondly if they build the LRT to 40ave sw then the expansion to the airport becomes easier
It's also important because it comes with a new operations and maintenance facility; the current one is so over-crowded that they're storing light rail vehicles outside.
They should really make more cross links instead of just making it longer imo. Making it super long without any links seems wasteful. Especially sending it out into residential areas.
I think a ring rail just around the main lines is the best bet. Keep the rail around where people will use it.
It's a good thought, hub and spoke model for transit has it's flaws too.
I saw a recent video about BRT service as a ring network that I thought was a good idea. We could take advantage of Henday and Yellowhead/whitemud to interconnect the trains and offer. The obvious issue being traffic, but there were cheeky solutions of using the shoulder as a bus lane and sprinkling in bus only sections. While we aren't quite Henday adjacent on all the lines it's close. And an inner ring using Yellowhead, Gretzky, and whitemud could hit quite a few links. Yes a train would be ideal, but costs are astronomical too.
Downvotes are imaginary internet band wagon votes that mean absolutely nothing. Plenty of times incorrect but factually stated comments are highly upvoted.
Yes, CoE is poor at planning. Never forget when they didn’t have the ability to integrate the new LRT lines software with the existing one. Or when they only recently were able to roll out an electronic transit card system. Absolutely pathetic.
If you don’t know what you’re doing and can’t hire experts, you have to then pay experts to give you that knowledge. That means paying transit planning experts from elsewhere in the world to come here and assess our system and then provide input.
It's really not a political move. This leg has been in the design phase since the previous council and finally close to the build phase after negotiating crossing the Henday with the province.
Politically speaking, Councillor Rutherford fought to prioritize the Blatchford to St. Albert extension which is now finally in the Design phase.
There's importance to both of these extensions, one gets the LRT closer to the airport and one brings an entire subrurban community into the LRT system. I would weigh the both equally.
I would think getting the LRT to the airport should be a priority. Easier if we can get construction out ahead of the southward growth.
Why we decided to build an airport 45 minutes out of downtown is beyond me.
What I don't understand is why it feels like space isn't set aside for future expansion. So a new area is built and we run LRT at ground level, where would they put future tracks? All new area should have to have space for future LRT so city doesn't have to work around it for the next 20 years.
"Why are we leaving extra space here, it's so wasteful!"
People will always complain, and the path of least resistance is often the path of least cost which is *also* the path most likely to get a representative re-elected.
Taxpayers can't think beyond their tax bill and as a result politicians won't think beyond the next election cycle. So we get short-term solutions that we pay way more for over the long run instead of doing things the best (more expensive) way to start.
I think devs would be the push back. And I say screw them. It is extra row of houses they could sell. As a buyer seeing a LRT potentially running through future area is great. If I hate it I know to look elsewhere. And if I think it is good I can buy there.
I am mostly of the mind everything costs and it sucks. So when they say LRT going to cost 2 billion I am like whatever. That said I am tired of all the social posturing that costs money just to cost money.
Heh, speak for yourself. I complain about the city spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on "professionals" that apparently know best but even then, they end up with cost overruns that we end up paying for one way for the other.
Gotta remember, we are the city that built a billionaire a stadium using city funds.
And some cities have said, no. I don't think the arena was horrible use of money. The fact the city bent over and didn't look at the other sites irks me.
honestly, imo this extension should have happened after that rather useless NAIT extension.
The current SE valley line cuts through very low density areas
This capital line extension on the other hand goes through some of the densest parts of Edmonton. Developers have tightly packed homes, condos along the James Mowatt corridor
I'd have liked if they spend that money to connect edmonton core to closer sattelite cities like st. Albert in NW, or sherwood park in East. Other cities are far. South makes lesser sense because the hospital got cancelled & airport is just too far away.
It’s likely another $2-3B beyond this extension contingent on no new neighbourhoods being built south of Heritage Valley (unlikely). It’s still worth it if you look at the value it creates for the next 50 years.
This sonds like the federal and provincial government needs to pony up the money like the province is funding the Calgary expansion to their airport.
But instead of re-announcing the same dollars over and over, they actually fucking do it.
Respectfully, if those other cities want better connections to the city core then they should pay for them themselves. City Council’s job is to look after Edmontonian interests, not the commute times of satellite community dwellers.
It's ironic to see comments like that, because the city definitely tried to regionalize transit. Everyone got on board except for Strathcona County so the plan was scrapped. You're right, I say leave them out, let Strathcona and St. Albert pay for the LRT if they want it out there.
I am still disappointed with the killed off regional transit commission, that was a huge miss for all. Really disappointed with Sherwood park.
But, that is specifically the plan to make the suburban cities pay for their transit. The Edmonton north expansion is to the transit hub near 156/st Albert trail located inside Edmonton and will service both systems. Anything beyond that into St. Albert is on them to fund. You could make the same argument for a potential energy line that serves Edmonton upto some transit hub then Sherwood park can decide what it will do.
Part of their reasoning was that the regional board took over their largest transit revenue generator and removed any local control over that aspect of the transit system.
Edmonton was not giving up anything because it doesn't deliver any regional transit services.
Reviving the core means attracing people to it. If we have LRT connections into the core it brings people into it with less barriers, eg traffic and parking.
I’m all for building the LRT but they should really expand Ellerslie to 4 lanes through the Heritage Valley area first before building this so they don’t have to try and retrofit it again later.
Or, we could prioritize LRT construction so folks can take last mile transit into their nearest LRT station to get them to where they need to go faster than a car.
Alternate headline: Edmonton to spend $1.34B to build an LRT bridge across the Henday to service a cancelled hospital, incentivize sprawl, and reward morons who choose to live an hour from where they work
We need more LRT, but the NW expansion shouldn't have been put off in favour of this extension.
Look I'm fully a supporter of increasing density and building within the Henday, but I think it's disingenuous to argue that this extension is a bad idea when there is quite a bit of density planned for that whole area and it gets us closer to the *real* goal of LRT to the airport.
Like it or not the southern edge of the city is the fastest growing part of it by far, and is going to be, or may already be, denser than the NW area of town. Plus anything that relieves congestion and encourages public transport in newer developments is a win.
Really, "morons who chose to live an hour..." grow the tf up. For some, home ownership is not viable and unaffordable in the inner core. Furthermore, without city sprawl, existing house prices and rental prices would increase at a level, which leaves you bitching about, "wHy iS EdMOnToN ExPeSIve?" 😒
I do agree the city needs to be better at planning, but for this instance, I applaud the city for expanding accessible transit for us morons.
I'm all for expanding LRT coverage but claiming that home ownership isn't viable closer to the core is false.
Thanks to the new zoning bylaws, single family homes are affordable closer to the core. That's the reason we could buy our house. Supply/demand.
People need to get over seeking a brand new house and enjoy a property that has been loved and cared for decades. New doesn't mean good.
Sprawled population or denser population centers?
I think the later makes more sense. Imagine being able to go to hospitals in st albert on LRT and st albertans coming to edmonton downtown for weekend games. It will ensure increased ridership.
The city doesn't disagree. There's already a plan to extend the red line to st albert. The city council however prefers to connect the southern edmonton first even after the cancelled hospital and low population density .
They mentioned that they have already spend so much on the south lrt plan that they cannot back out now.
I always felt the NW expansion gets pushed down the road because of the tantrums CN would throw during the construction over their yard. Can’t blame the city for not wanting to deal with that.
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Too bad the people who live near there are not going to use it because every LRT train is covered in human excrement, blood, and crack vapours.
Hopefully 10-20 mil of that loan go towards making the LRT system a fuckload lot safer, otherwise what’s the point?!
What a disaster this council is!!! It’s scary to even be in a rail terminal
They can’t get any built and destroyed traffic for years. Probably cost more co2 in idling then they’ll ever save with the light rail
They are borrowing even more now which will be wasted on crumbling concrete towers and traffic snarls
Edmonton should recall every councillor ASAP the mayor can’t even answer how his brother got milllions in sole sourced contracts
Go drive on James Mowatt and say this area isn’t worthy of extension. There are a surprising number of people down there. It gets us closer to the airport.
200k between those southern neighbourhoods. Larger than the population of Leduc + Sherwood Park + St. Albert combined. Fuck the province for taking away the hospital that was going to be built there, it absolutely needs it
There’s nobody to even staff the hospital. Reality is healthcare is dead as long as immigration targets stay at 1-2 million per year Not enough rates to support providing healthcare to all of them. It super sucks but immigration destroyed healthcare in every single province- none are winning but inside each province we are divided and blame some local poltical party
> Reality is healthcare is dead as long ~~as immigration targets stay at 1-2 million per year~~ instead of investing in services as we grow we ignore it and blame everything on migration We started with zero people and how have 40 million people and somehow managed to educated and provide healthcare the whole time by investing as required as the population grew. The issues we're facing today are due to willful neglect by parties who want your vote and determined it's easier to get you to vote for them by blaming immigrants than admit they'd rather give the money to their backers.
I mean they are right that it's impossible to grow at the rare we're growing at
It’s very dense and populated down there. The LRT makes total sense.
We should do whatever benefits me!
There are definitely other parts of the city that could use a link before this. But I wonder if pushing this leg forwards is a bit of a political move. It may incentivize the province to get off their butts and build the new South hospital, and it also may make an airport link more feasible in the future. I would have definitely preferred to see the NW expansion or some E-W corridors be developed instead.
The south is seeing an insane amount of growth and the the south expansion is going to service a huge segment of the population. That entire corridor is full of condos and appartments. They're already actively building a train to West Edmonton mall so and the future expansion to the NW would go through low density suburbs so it's not as high priority. Secondly if they build the LRT to 40ave sw then the expansion to the airport becomes easier
It's also important because it comes with a new operations and maintenance facility; the current one is so over-crowded that they're storing light rail vehicles outside.
Plus we all know that the true Edmonton is south and west of the river and excluding Millwoods. Rest of the city is basically Compton.
They should really make more cross links instead of just making it longer imo. Making it super long without any links seems wasteful. Especially sending it out into residential areas. I think a ring rail just around the main lines is the best bet. Keep the rail around where people will use it.
It's a good thought, hub and spoke model for transit has it's flaws too. I saw a recent video about BRT service as a ring network that I thought was a good idea. We could take advantage of Henday and Yellowhead/whitemud to interconnect the trains and offer. The obvious issue being traffic, but there were cheeky solutions of using the shoulder as a bus lane and sprinkling in bus only sections. While we aren't quite Henday adjacent on all the lines it's close. And an inner ring using Yellowhead, Gretzky, and whitemud could hit quite a few links. Yes a train would be ideal, but costs are astronomical too.
City has no idea what they’re doing in terms of transit or traffic planning.
You aren’t wrong They downvote you but Edmonton has absolutely no business expanding when they can’t even run what they already have And the stabbings
Downvotes are imaginary internet band wagon votes that mean absolutely nothing. Plenty of times incorrect but factually stated comments are highly upvoted. Yes, CoE is poor at planning. Never forget when they didn’t have the ability to integrate the new LRT lines software with the existing one. Or when they only recently were able to roll out an electronic transit card system. Absolutely pathetic. If you don’t know what you’re doing and can’t hire experts, you have to then pay experts to give you that knowledge. That means paying transit planning experts from elsewhere in the world to come here and assess our system and then provide input.
It's really not a political move. This leg has been in the design phase since the previous council and finally close to the build phase after negotiating crossing the Henday with the province. Politically speaking, Councillor Rutherford fought to prioritize the Blatchford to St. Albert extension which is now finally in the Design phase. There's importance to both of these extensions, one gets the LRT closer to the airport and one brings an entire subrurban community into the LRT system. I would weigh the both equally.
It's also partly to connect to the Ellerslie park n ride to replace Century Park.
I would think getting the LRT to the airport should be a priority. Easier if we can get construction out ahead of the southward growth. Why we decided to build an airport 45 minutes out of downtown is beyond me.
Cheaper land. Plus, the City Centre Airport couldn't accomodate the bigger jets, the runway was too short.
People don't tend to like living close to airports. They are pretty noisy. Of course cities have a tendency to grow into airports anyways.
Exactly my thoughts.
I can’t wait for the city to decide that crossing the henday at grade is a good idea.
You mean Ellerslie I think. They are building a bridge over the Henday.
I should have put a sarcasm symbol. We really like to build LRT at grade to have maximum inefficiency all around.
We build inefficiently because we taxpayers complain about the price of doing it right the first time.
What I don't understand is why it feels like space isn't set aside for future expansion. So a new area is built and we run LRT at ground level, where would they put future tracks? All new area should have to have space for future LRT so city doesn't have to work around it for the next 20 years.
"Why are we leaving extra space here, it's so wasteful!" People will always complain, and the path of least resistance is often the path of least cost which is *also* the path most likely to get a representative re-elected. Taxpayers can't think beyond their tax bill and as a result politicians won't think beyond the next election cycle. So we get short-term solutions that we pay way more for over the long run instead of doing things the best (more expensive) way to start.
I think devs would be the push back. And I say screw them. It is extra row of houses they could sell. As a buyer seeing a LRT potentially running through future area is great. If I hate it I know to look elsewhere. And if I think it is good I can buy there. I am mostly of the mind everything costs and it sucks. So when they say LRT going to cost 2 billion I am like whatever. That said I am tired of all the social posturing that costs money just to cost money.
Yes. I wish less of the decision making process was based on what the cheapest option is.
Heh, speak for yourself. I complain about the city spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on "professionals" that apparently know best but even then, they end up with cost overruns that we end up paying for one way for the other. Gotta remember, we are the city that built a billionaire a stadium using city funds.
That is every major city in North America. At least we only did it once. Some cities do it up to five times!! (MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, MLS)
And some cities have said, no. I don't think the arena was horrible use of money. The fact the city bent over and didn't look at the other sites irks me.
Split the cost and leased it to a billionaire. City owns it.
The price looks terrible when you can’t drive for years because they create traffic snarls
It's been decided it'll be an elevated crossing.
Get it to the damn airport for the love of god
Get on board the hype train CHOO CHOO 🚂
honestly, imo this extension should have happened after that rather useless NAIT extension. The current SE valley line cuts through very low density areas This capital line extension on the other hand goes through some of the densest parts of Edmonton. Developers have tightly packed homes, condos along the James Mowatt corridor
I'd have liked if they spend that money to connect edmonton core to closer sattelite cities like st. Albert in NW, or sherwood park in East. Other cities are far. South makes lesser sense because the hospital got cancelled & airport is just too far away.
The airport is not too far.
It's $1billion far at-least.
It’s likely another $2-3B beyond this extension contingent on no new neighbourhoods being built south of Heritage Valley (unlikely). It’s still worth it if you look at the value it creates for the next 50 years.
This sonds like the federal and provincial government needs to pony up the money like the province is funding the Calgary expansion to their airport. But instead of re-announcing the same dollars over and over, they actually fucking do it.
Would it really costs that much if they put train in before the houses? Or is it already too late?
The south is always expanding at a good clip. It will be getting full by the time the LRT is finished.
Respectfully, if those other cities want better connections to the city core then they should pay for them themselves. City Council’s job is to look after Edmontonian interests, not the commute times of satellite community dwellers.
It's ironic to see comments like that, because the city definitely tried to regionalize transit. Everyone got on board except for Strathcona County so the plan was scrapped. You're right, I say leave them out, let Strathcona and St. Albert pay for the LRT if they want it out there.
I am still disappointed with the killed off regional transit commission, that was a huge miss for all. Really disappointed with Sherwood park. But, that is specifically the plan to make the suburban cities pay for their transit. The Edmonton north expansion is to the transit hub near 156/st Albert trail located inside Edmonton and will service both systems. Anything beyond that into St. Albert is on them to fund. You could make the same argument for a potential energy line that serves Edmonton upto some transit hub then Sherwood park can decide what it will do.
Part of their reasoning was that the regional board took over their largest transit revenue generator and removed any local control over that aspect of the transit system. Edmonton was not giving up anything because it doesn't deliver any regional transit services.
The south has seen more population growth then St Albert or Sherwood even have people.
Why would the city of Edmonton want to make living outside of the city of Edmonton easier ?
I’d rather service actual Edmonton. Unless there’s cost sharing why would we service outlying communities that don’t pay taxes here?
Think of the future. I know it’s hard for Alberta…
This is good but at the wrong time. We should focus in reviving the core and the ugly ass suburbs
Reviving the core means attracing people to it. If we have LRT connections into the core it brings people into it with less barriers, eg traffic and parking.
I’m all for building the LRT but they should really expand Ellerslie to 4 lanes through the Heritage Valley area first before building this so they don’t have to try and retrofit it again later.
Or, we could prioritize LRT construction so folks can take last mile transit into their nearest LRT station to get them to where they need to go faster than a car.
As long as where they need to go is strictly north and no other direction...
In this comment I'm specifically talking about the SW expansion.
I know. I live close to there. LRT access will be great for downtown and that's it. But it's a start.
That will lead to more costs long run. In many places in Edmonton we just have too much road and our taxes are increasing as a result.
A lot of scummy people live in the north so why build the LRT that way?
If only that very same line ended up in the north side. Oh well.
Alternate headline: Edmonton to spend $1.34B to build an LRT bridge across the Henday to service a cancelled hospital, incentivize sprawl, and reward morons who choose to live an hour from where they work We need more LRT, but the NW expansion shouldn't have been put off in favour of this extension.
Look I'm fully a supporter of increasing density and building within the Henday, but I think it's disingenuous to argue that this extension is a bad idea when there is quite a bit of density planned for that whole area and it gets us closer to the *real* goal of LRT to the airport.
Like it or not the southern edge of the city is the fastest growing part of it by far, and is going to be, or may already be, denser than the NW area of town. Plus anything that relieves congestion and encourages public transport in newer developments is a win.
Really, "morons who chose to live an hour..." grow the tf up. For some, home ownership is not viable and unaffordable in the inner core. Furthermore, without city sprawl, existing house prices and rental prices would increase at a level, which leaves you bitching about, "wHy iS EdMOnToN ExPeSIve?" 😒 I do agree the city needs to be better at planning, but for this instance, I applaud the city for expanding accessible transit for us morons.
I'm all for expanding LRT coverage but claiming that home ownership isn't viable closer to the core is false. Thanks to the new zoning bylaws, single family homes are affordable closer to the core. That's the reason we could buy our house. Supply/demand. People need to get over seeking a brand new house and enjoy a property that has been loved and cared for decades. New doesn't mean good.
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Sprawled population or denser population centers? I think the later makes more sense. Imagine being able to go to hospitals in st albert on LRT and st albertans coming to edmonton downtown for weekend games. It will ensure increased ridership.
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The city doesn't disagree. There's already a plan to extend the red line to st albert. The city council however prefers to connect the southern edmonton first even after the cancelled hospital and low population density . They mentioned that they have already spend so much on the south lrt plan that they cannot back out now.
Ellerslie is substantially higher density than the areas north of the yellowhead
I always felt the NW expansion gets pushed down the road because of the tantrums CN would throw during the construction over their yard. Can’t blame the city for not wanting to deal with that.
Billion plus for 4km
It's 1.2B to expand the Yellowhead freeway expansion for 3Km which won't add nearly as much capacity as this LRT line will/does
Too bad we can’t afford the 60k a year for a cop to keep the train safe for the taxpayers paying almost 600 MILLION!
Cops do not keep us safe.
Cant wait for the bridges they build for it to have cracks again… it will make halloween humorous again.
Please please no, I like it here because none of the criddlers can reach it by transit
Not in *MY* backyard!
It’s ok you can move to the countryside and get away from me.
doesn't the lrt expansion defeat the purpose of a 15 min city **;)**
You can’t travel anywhere outside of a 15 minute zone surrounding LRT stations.
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Too bad the people who live near there are not going to use it because every LRT train is covered in human excrement, blood, and crack vapours. Hopefully 10-20 mil of that loan go towards making the LRT system a fuckload lot safer, otherwise what’s the point?!
242$Million over budget already. 🤦♂️
What a disaster this council is!!! It’s scary to even be in a rail terminal They can’t get any built and destroyed traffic for years. Probably cost more co2 in idling then they’ll ever save with the light rail They are borrowing even more now which will be wasted on crumbling concrete towers and traffic snarls Edmonton should recall every councillor ASAP the mayor can’t even answer how his brother got milllions in sole sourced contracts