Wednesday’s announcement that the City of Edmonton has landed on an alignment for the northwest LRT to St. Albert comes as welcome news that can only benefit both cities and the greater Capital region. While Edmonton has embraced a bold vision for LRT expansion and backed it up with hard dollars, the same cannot be said for other governments that are equally as important in laying actual tracks on the ground.
The proposed northwest LRT line would transform transportation patterns in St. Albert and Edmonton, generating 42,000 to 45,000 daily riders, according to estimates. The nine-kilometres of track would extend past NAIT and the City Centre Airport lands, north on 113A Street and west on 153 Avenue before terminating at St. Albert’s future park and ride station. This alignment should alleviate some of the most congested traffic logjams in northwest Edmonton and, when coupled with other lines, opens up travel options to NAIT, Grant MacEwan, the downtown and university — some of the most popular destinations for St. Albert commuters.
There is no timeframe attached to the $1.1-billion route, which still requires approval from Edmonton city council following a public hearing next month. Fortunately, Edmonton’s council has shown leadership and vision by investing dollars to transform a dated and limited LRT system into what will become a legitimate commuter option for a city struggling to maintain its costly road network. Some $3 billion has been approved for expansion to NAIT, the west end and Mill Woods.
St. Albert’s commitment to LRT expansion is, obviously, extremely marginal in comparison. LRT through St. Albert has been part of the city’s transportation plan for several years, however only recently has council taken up the cause. Even then the commitment barely qualifies as symbolic, with a new LRT tax levy that will yield just $94,000 this year.
There’s good reason for St. Albert’s LRT planning being in its infancy. LRT in this city hinges on the capital’s ability to bring it here, and for many years that seemed decades away given a reluctance during the 1990s — the “Dark Ages” — to allocate dollars for LRT. Edmonton has turned a corner and so must St. Albert. Our city’s population might not justify LRT today, but local leadership needs to display the same type of vision as Edmonton to start paving the way for the day when expansion makes sense.
St. Albert has found room in its capital plan for a $1-million LRT planning study, but it’s 10 years away and no dollars are attached for actual construction, a $750-million cost, according to some very rough estimates. Even bus rapid transit projects, which would likely precede a full LRT track on St. Albert Trail, rank so far down the priority list that zero of the estimated $12 million needed has been allocated. Clearly St. Albert cannot tackle anywhere close to these costs on its own, but the city has to show it’s a priority if it’s going to get other levels of government onside, a task that could prove a challenge.
The province was eager to shed its dirty oilsands image when it announced $2-billion for public transit projects through the Green TRIP program in 2008, yet going on two years later the criteria for that funding is still missing, leaving municipalities wondering when the dollars will fall into place. Meanwhile, the province has put the onus on cities for displaying a lack of vision and not submitting “real, good-type stuff” for transit plans. Without provincial dollars cities will be hard pressed to persuade Ottawa to come up with matching funding.
It’s completely understandable for the province to delay Green Trip dollars given the falloff in natural resource revenue, but by leaving the application requirements in limbo the government is creating a roadblock to municipal efforts to plan for the future. When it comes to innovation and vision, Ed Stelmach’s Tories could learn a thing or two from cities like Edmonton, which understand urban transportation.
