It's early in the morning in the dead of winter. The sun hasn't yet touched darkness overhead as you set off for work in downtown Edmonton. Your spouse drives to a point just off St. Albert Trail and pulls up to a sidewalk with dozens of other cars.
You hop out onto the curb at the "kiss and ride" and shuffle towards a pedestrian bridge that takes you over the trail. On the other side of the bridge, you emerge from a staircase onto a concrete platform just as your LRT train pulls up. You take your seat and bury your head in a newspaper as the train begins its 50-minute trip to downtown Edmonton.
It might sound farfetched now, but the consensus in St. Albert is that the city will one day have its own LRT line. That reality came even closer last week as council approved a $500,000 functional alignment study that will examine where in St. Albert an LRT line would run, how many stops, and how many bridges and tunnels it would have.
"At some point, St. Albert will have LRT," said economic development executive director Guy Boston, who worked at building LRT lines in Edmonton both with the city and in the private sector. "By doing the planning process and having that adopted, it allows us to consider that future as we make decisions."
Planning
It might take another 15 years for construction to even begin, but planning for rapid transit in St. Albert actually began more than 10 years ago. The man behind the push then and now is Coun. Len Bracko who, after seeing it defeated twice in a year, pushed the functional alignment study through council.
"I was looking long-term and not really knowing what to expect, but I started looking in the 2001 election at moving towards LRT, not really knowing what would happen," Bracko said.
In 2003, as the council of the day hammered out the alignment of what is now Ray Gibbon Drive, Bracko introduced a motion to include an LRT right of way within the road's corridor. Despite being told the chances of running track along the road was pretty slim, council unanimously approved it.
That 20-metre right of way will be used for the road's expansion, but it was the first time the city had taken measures to preserve a future path for a rapid transit system.
"We didn't know exactly where the LRT may run, so you want to plan for the future and cuts costs, so that left the option," Bracko said.
But developments in Edmonton are fuelling changes to the face of transit in St. Albert. On Dec. 5, Edmonton held the final open house for the study on its proposed northwest LRT line. The $1.5-billion project, not yet officially funded, would see 11 kilometres of track laid down from NAIT to St. Albert's border with Edmonton.
St. Albert is also playing a role in the development of the new line, applying for a regional partnership grant from the province to help fund it and participating in meetings.
"Not only (is St. Albert) a funding partner but they've been involved in the process as well," said Erum Afsar, the project manager for the northwest LRT.
The new line, if built, will feature the same style of LRT construction most commonly used throughout Edmonton, called "high-floor, urban style" LRT. High floor refers to the style of train and the higher, on-grade stations that are built for stops (as opposed to underground stations). Urban style means the stations are accessible to other transit, pedestrians and cyclists, have reduced property requirements and try to blend the infrastructure in with its surroundings.
"There's interesting challenges with that," said Afsar. "The goal of it was to make sure it fit into the community that surrounds it."
Where to put it
Bob McDonald, St. Albert's director of transit, said once the LRT reaches St. Albert's border at 153 Avenue and Campbell Road, St. Albert could start building, likely using the same style of LRT as Edmonton.
"If it came to St. Albert, we would expect the same thing. We would expect it would be running at grade, with crossing intersections with priority signals to make sure the train gets through first," McDonald said.
In both McDonald and Boston's mind, any future LRT would run along St. Albert Trail, approximately seven kilometres in length. Just where it would go, however, isn't known. These are questions the study will try to answer.
"(St. Albert) is urban, but not really heavily developed so on-grade running is the most reasonable alternative," McDonald said. "LRT keeps riders separated from traffic congestion with a reliable schedule and less disruption from things like weather or traffic. That's why it's attractive."
McDonald envisions a high-floor style where riders can step right from a platform into the train. He thinks there might be three or four stops, and that the city would run the same number of cars per train as Edmonton to avoid the hassle of adding or removing cars.
An LRT line will also eliminate the need for commuter buses to downtown Edmonton. As soon as Edmonton finishes building the northwest LRT line to Campbell Road, St. Albert Transit would stop bus service into Edmonton, except for trips to West Edmonton Mall, McDonald said.
"Those buses get caught up in traffic so they're not going any faster than the traffic and some days when it snows, we're paying people to drive buses and they're not going anywhere, so that's expensive," McDonald said.
But beyond those ideas, it's difficult to nail down specifics.
"I couldn't speculate on where it would run within the trail," McDonald said, referring to what side of the road a line would run, or if it might just plow right up the middle of the street. "What's particularly relevant in this kind of study is, do we need more land to make this work?"
McDonald says any LRT line in St. Albert will have at least one over- or underground structure – one to cross Anthony Henday Drive and another to cross the Sturgeon River.
Cost is a significant factor in LRT construction. Last year, while still working as St. Albert's general manager for planning and engineering, Boston used the figure of $100 million per kilometre as a rough estimate for construction of LRT. In some situations, $100 million didn't even get him a full kilometre.
"If you have a kilometre of bridge or kilometre of tunnel, it gets more expensive," Boston said. "But then you get down to where the maintenance facility is and that'll be $100 million in one spot."
By comparison, St. Albert's 2013 capital budget is $15 million total. Transit's total operating budget is $10 million for next year.
Bracko acknowledges the expense, but says the total impact to St. Albert might be negligible. Funding from the provincial GreenTRIP program and a federal program called P3 Canada could offset the lion's share of the total costs.
"So eight years from now, there is the potential. I think the money can be there," Bracko said, adding St. Albert's overall debt is also quite low.
But as much money as it might take, an LRT line will also take time. Boston ticked off the items leading up to construction – defining criteria, functional planning, public engagement, conceptual planning, preliminary design – all before the project is finalized.
"Once you get to the final design, that's probably seven per cent of your costs," Boston said.
Other questions
And before St. Albert can start any work, Edmonton has to approve, start and finish the northwest line. Approval could come early next year, Afsar said, but it isn't yet known when construction will start as Edmonton wants to finish the southeast and southwest lines before the northwest line.
There's also the matter of where the northwest line will end. There will be a structure of some sort at 153 Avenue and Campbell Road, but what it will be called is not yet decided. Edmonton calls it the Campbell Road park and ride. St. Albert calls it the south park and ride.
There has not yet been a final decision made on the facility, which would supplant Village Landing as St. Albert's main transit hub. The more-than $30-million project is located in the transportation utility corridor that is also occupied by the Henday. Edmonton is negotiating to lease it from the province. St. Albert would then sublease a portion from Edmonton for the park and ride.
The undertaking will be vast for St. Albert – not only will the facility have to be built and managed, but every single bus route in St. Albert will have to be redrawn to start or finish at the new stop.
"We'll have to do that in parallel with construction. We'll be changing almost all of them," said McDonald of St. Albert' bus routes.
McDonald wouldn't hazard a guess as to when St. Albert might start building an LRT line. But for Bracko, St. Albert is just a stop along the potential way. He's talked with leaders in Sturgeon County, Legal, Morinville and Villeneuve, even the County of Westlock. All, he says, are possibilities.
"It's exciting to look at the big picture and plan for the region," Bracko said. "Edmonton calls it the 'golden line to St. Albert' and I think it's big they would designate it as such.
