Giving Edmonton a Transit Makeover 

As an Edmontonian, I have never heard so many nice things said about our transit system.

"Sometime between now and the heat death of the universe..." Brilliant, I'm going to be making good use of that at work.

As an Edmontonion, I’m happy to see some more attention brought to our rail system. It’s far from perfect but we have a good base and I’m excited for the future.

When Reece pulls out the transit crayons you know it’s gonna be a banger

Edmonton excites me as its one of the few cities in canada (imo) thats actually trying to both implement more public transit and do something about the housing crisis, few cities seem to be willing to implement the drastic zoning reforms and invest in the necessary infrastructure for it

As someone who uses Edmonton transit almost every day, there are certainly days where i want to rip my hair out but we definitely have a good base to build off of. I hope one day this city can live up to its potential with transit, it would be amazing

I really love that Bonny Doon -> West Edmonton Mall line. Whyte Ave is a hugely popular area, and that line could probably make the Zoo actually reasonable to get to for people without access to a vehicle. This, the airport connection, and the southern Metro line extension are easily my favourite additions to the network

Extension to the YEG airport would be very useful for Edmonton and LeDuc. Reducing travel time and better transit options for airport (one of the largest employer) can significantly improve worker job quality, talent pool, and productivity.

Ideas has never been Edmonton's problem. Enacting on plans is the part we suck at. Especially in a timely manner...

Best update for the 747- have the first run of the day arrive BEFORE the first morning shift for staff instead of ten minutes after.

Edmonton really needs that Whyte Ave to WEM line built yesterday. So much east-west traffic with not-very-good bus routes that could be massively improved by a system with priority over vehicular traffic...

Some of the corridors you mentioned for rapid bus routes are actually already used for crosstown bus routes, like the 51 (Castle Downs to Westmount segment), 52 (Westmount to Wem segment), 55 (Wem to Meadows along Whitemud via Southgate), and 56 (Meadows to Mill Woods segment). These are great routes for getting across the city in my experience, but the problem my encounter with them is that they often have half hour frequencies outside of peak hours, and also stop everywhere along the route. I think these should be supplemented by frequent limited stop express services that would greatly reduce travel time, something like what the 43 and now R4 are to the 41 in Vancouver. I also think there’s room for another crosstown bus service along Ellerslie Road in the south, as there are a lot of communities from Windermere through Charlesworth along it, a travelling between them, requires taking buses across the Henday to transfer on 23 Ave NW, which just wastes a lot of time I never actually thought about running a Valley Line branch along Whyte Avenue that way. The Strathcona area today is annoying in that getting there from the LRT system is a bit time-consuming. In many cases, the best option isn’t even an ETS bus but rather Sherwood Park’s 404 (when it runs), or riding a bike. Overall, this is a great video and I could really see a lot of the changes positively impact how I get around the city. I’m going to share this with my councillor.

Great video. I do feel like Windermere and Terwillegar were ignored for the most part though. Those are probably the largest growing areas in the city and Ellerslie Road's poor planning is absolutely facing the consequences of that mass expansion right now.

Excellent Reece. I had a year working on the Edmonton system a decade ago and I really like the city.

There are a lot of similarities between Edmonton and the Tyne and Wear Metro in the UK. Both started in the 1970s using existing rail lines connected to a new central tunnel, with German-based rolling stock. Both later faced financial problems being able to extend the tunnel to useful destinations (west Newcastle - still not connected, and south Edmonton). And both later had planners who wanted to turn it into urban LRT, rather than see it as the subway it is (the 2002 Project Orpheus would have made much of the TW Metro street running, but was never implemented - while Edmonton got all the problematic street running when it finally extended south and especially on the NAIT extension). Having grown up in both Newcastle and Edmonton, I can say these are both amazing systems that did a lot for their communities - and yet still faced trouble getting approval/funding for badly needed extensions and improvements.

Unfortunately, there would be major pushback from Sherwood Park with respect to pushing an LRT out to it. I am aware of Sherwood Park residents that refer to the LRT as "mobile homeless shelter".

Sometime in the near future they’ll probably have to extend the Valley line west a bit further, as more neighborhoods expand west of Edmonton. There’s also gonna be a huge rec centre being built in Lewis Estate/ just past Lewis and into Secord.

LRT is basically poor man's metro, you can get 70% of goodies metro has while spending one-third.

Wow, I remember growing up in Edmonton (1975-2000) and St. Albert was basically a whole different city... now it's barely a suburb, and soon will be nothing more than a neighborhood inside Edmonton.

The VIA rail station out in the middle of nowhere would greatly benefit from a connection to mass transit.

Just got back home from Norway and the public transit was sooo efficient, clean, safe, and dummy proof. The tram (light rail) takes you right from the Bergen airport all the way to city centre, or any stop in between. Makes landing at the airport and getting to the hotel bloody easy. The cars were coupled like he describes in this video too, which was nice. Accidentally walk into a full car? just stroll down into the next one that has space. It ran very frequently too, every 7 minutes. I hope our transit can begin to look more like theirs.

Please do more crayoning with Reece maybe with calgary or Montreal or Halifax

Edmonton has a lot of potential. It's unfortunate that the province has set all municipalities in the province on the road for budgetary shortfalls and failure. A healthy relationship between the two groups would be ideal, but the province is outright antagonistic and is practicing austerity when it isn't necessary. Edmonton, Calgary and every municipality needs funding which the province has almost completely withdrawn.

imo, the Edmonton LRT should turn more into a suburban rail than a metro. ofc, the central core *should* have metro-style service, but i think that treating the suburban sections like suburban rail rather than metro might be a good idea. i think you were kinda already suggesting it, but i would add a few things to make it more like suburban rail: -*express trains.* while the LRT *should* be upgraded to speeds of up to 100-110kmh, i think even then, with tons of stations, it might not even be enough. this is where express trains come in! for this style of EMU-metro type service, i would recommend "splitting" each line into sections: areas where inner locals run, and expresses run express, and areas where long distance express run, and locals turn back. at the local turnback stations, you should have timed, cross-platform transfers (we love those!) between local and express trains, similar to a 4-track Keio line station in Tokyo! There should also be at least 1 or 2 extra timed cross-platform stations along the "inner local" sections of the network, allowing fast and convenient trips between all areas of the network! And the truth is, adding the collective of a few dozen km *AT MOST* of track for these 4-track, Japanese style overtake stations, should not be expensive at all. These express trains should ofc have standing room, but I think on longer journeys, having 65%+ seated is a good idea. I was testing out this seating arrangement: transverse seats in rows of 3, plus bench seating on the other side. this basically gives you close to the amount of seats found with 3 by 2 seating, found on mainline trains (and ironically, a few metros), in the space of a narrow coach that can "only" fit 2-2 transverse seating. you also have space for one row between the seats, areas by the doors and space in between the seats, for standees! In theory, this is a good way to balance seating, but i am not quite sure the comfort levels of 3-row seating on these types of trains. anyways, suburban rail style express service would be a big W for the Edmonton LRT! even with express service, i think that all services, local *and* express, should run *no less* than every 12 mins, but ideally every 10 mins. frequency is always key on all services! -*more mainline rail type ROW:* i also think you were suggesting this, but while grade separation on the areas with more than 24tph (12 local and 12 express) should *defiantly* be done, i think that grade crossings are perfectly okay! as long as the gates are down for half the time they are up, its basically like having another road intersection. that said, these grade crossings *need* to be mainline rail style: no crossings in the medians of roads or any of that. *all* of those tram-style crossings should be replaced with full grade separation in those areas, on elevated viaducts. *but*, the crossings on the northern part of the capitol line are the perfect design for the other crossings: full train priority and no intersections directly after the crossing to cause congestion. also, you mentioned that tram-style operation in the boonies might be okay, but i would go further and treat it like a mainline train and do a Portland WES-style median running mainline tracks, with somewhat high speeds (around 65kmh). basically, i think Edmonton should think: "if this was a mainline suburban train, how would we design it?" and use those designs to work around the current LRT they have. -*incentive for standard mainline suburban and regional rail* i think that Edmonton should have a few regional rail lines, that extend the LRT-turned-suburban-rail into the deep suburbs even more! building mainline-style infra for the LRT system could be translated to a standard suburban/regional railway for Edmonton! I dont think that ETS even needs to run the service: VIA rail should run it! I think we should normalize intercity railroads operating SBahns and regional trains, which is, guess what.....WHAT THEY DO IN EUROPE! Amtrak already does this around Chicago and a few of their state corridor routes, so the idea isn't unheard of here in NA. I don't think it would hurt VIA rail to get into the regional/suburban/commuter markets in the big cities, similar to DB in Germany! (im going to geek out on rolling stock for a little bit, but for these type of operations, i would recommend CEM bilevels + modern electric locomotives for regional express services, and, specifically, the 3.2 meter wide nordic model of the stadler FLIRT, for the all-stop regional sprinters. i would also design a few loco+coach sets that can run on EMU schedules, that have 100% EMU performance, just to test out tech that makes loco+coaches as high performance as EMUs! ofc, these loco+coach sets would never replace EMUs, ideally they would run side-by-side! ) sorry for geeking out a bit there, lol. but in conclusion, i think treating the ETS light rail like proper suburban rail, and less like metro, is the right approach, and I think you were already kinda saying that!

You making a dedicated video on Edmonton public transit has always been a dream of mine , thank you dude ❤️ Great video with a lot of great points but I wanted to point out a few things. 1. There’s already confirmed a south extension to the airport, I’d just like to not have to wait like 25 years until they get around to building it? Haha. 2. Your dream Edmonton rail network is HELLA expensive, don’t think it’ll be that feasible to build, even though it’d be lit. Otherwise we’d need to triple our population to get the tax revenue to build it. 3. The elevated track being terminated at Ellerslie should be a NATIONAL CRIME. How DARE they. I’m still mad that they think they have to do this to save some money. Some things are worth spending an extra 50-100 million on. There’s still time technically to adjust this back but I doubt they’d do anything so yeah, they’ll regret doing this. It’s going to be a Uof A /belgravia situation all over again. Unbelievably terrible traffic because the rail is crossing at grade across an extremely busy intersection. Here’s to hoping the provincial govt offers a bit of extra cash to get it elevated? Or better yet….have it dip underground and come out the other side of the street . Nobody in twin brooks wanted a station there and it’s too close to the century park one. Therefore they should scrap the twin brooks station, have it just go straight from century park to ellerslie, that’d save some money and make the train decently faster too.

Thanks for making this video Reece, nice to see Edmonton getting some love

Great video, Reece, with some smart advice for Edmonton. I hate it when city transit planners push slow tram services for mass transit, undermining modal shifts because of the poor travel times.

Wow thanks for liking Edmonton. I am surprised someone actually like this place.

Great video. Long overdue. The project missed that would probably do some of the greatest good is closing the downtown subway loop by adding proper stations at MacEwan University and Railtown thereby creating a proper albeit small central circulator. As for the Fort Saskatchewan rural line? It was a commuter rail stop on a line that used to run all the way to Vegreville. It was 73 miles from CN Station and took 90 minutes to complete with stops at Fort Sask, Chipman and Vegreville approximately every 30 minutes/30 miles apart except Fort Sask which is 16 miles from downtown. Trains ran every 30 minutes and it was a popular service for the region until CN dropped all passenger service and VIA failed to run with it. These types of commuter lines should run South as far as Wetaskiwin or Ponoka (75 and 100 km respectively from downtown) and as West as Evansburg/Entwistle at least in the long run. Getting commuters from Parkland, Sturgeon, Leduc and Strathcona County to the U of A or downtown seems like a real challenge now with its mixture of transit offerings that aren't reliable outside a few small windows of time...

the babying down light rail is TOO common, extremely annoying too.

I just moved to Edmonton two days ago !

So there is going to have to be some clarification of some important issues: 1) Refinery Row has to be separate from the City Of Edmonton and the City cannot dip its fingers into Refinery Row. This has been the biggest barrier to creating a regional governance system like a regional transit network. I strongly suspect that it is the province that steps in and provides a rail system between Edmonton's suburban cities and Edmonton itself. And if the province is going to do that, it will probably utilise the TUC that is Anthony Henday to facilitate that. 2) The station redesign at Stadium might make it look more dangerous when it comes to interaction between different forms of transportation, but to me the largest thing it seemed to be designed around was getting rid of the pedestrian underpass where a good number of assaults and murders were happening. Should the underpass have been replaced by an overpass? Maybe. But I think the criminal element was the biggest deciding factor. 3) The Urban LRT thing was Stephen Mandel's child. Basically a way of justifying the expansion of the LRT while avoiding the disturbance of residents in Parkview, Laurier Heights and Crestwood. It's why the Low Floor LRT was selected. I agree it is high time to move away from the concept or at least, maintain those elements for the Low Floor LRT and keep the original design considerations for the High Floor LRT. 4) Speaking of the Low Floor LRT, I think it is hopeless to rely on it for connecting high traffic areas. It's slow, but more navigable on Edmonton's surface streets. It should be the system to provide inner city circulation. I like the idea of building the Downtown circulator, and if it is built in conjunction with the Alberta rail network, can hop on the replacement of the High Level Bridge. My other weird idea is to have the High Floor LRT ring around the inner ring road (Whitemud, 170th Street, Yellowhead (or 137h Avenue), 50th street) so as to give WEM a High Floor LRT station, and provide more intense service. I have noticed the ridership on the Route 55 has been skyrocketing, ever since it simplified the old 33 route with its milk run in Brander Gardens removed. They've been constantly adding buses on Route 55, so it is something to consider in future plans.

Love these kinds of videos Reece!

The problem people in Edmonton are having right now with is trusting that future LRT projects will be done on time and on budget. Metro Line had so many signaling issues, Valley Line was 3 years late in delivery, and most recently there is a cost overrun of $240 million in expanding the Capital Line southward. The city, Edmonton Transit, and the project managers need to keep these projects on track (pun not intended), otherwise the current generation of taxpayers will no longer support LRT and general transit expansion, and transit improvements will be stalled for decades.

As someone who takes Edmonton transit daily, my issue with it are consistency, especially with the buses, and safety. I know that’s not really your thing but i feel it’s important to point out, especially the consistency part. If my first bus is even two minutes late I usually miss my transfer and have to wait thirty minutes for the next one. This happens so much that I need to plan that possibility into my transit plans.

Not going underground at the hospital on 111 ave was idiotic planning & approval.

Thanks for the great video - really appreciate your insights and rationale for next steps in our transit system in Edmonton. It's a video I've shared and hope the city takes into consideration in future plans and that we truly be bold.

Is Calgary next for "Crayoning with Reece" or Montreal?

Speaking of Edmonton, I still wonder are there still plans for a dedicated high-speed line between Edmonton and Calgary? They could use 200 km/h Stadler KISS train sets for a one way trip of just under 90 minutes.

You would not believe how congested Century Park stairs and escalators get whenever a train comes to the station, I definitely would vouch for a general increase in capacity for stations to be able to handle more people faster

Thank you for covering Edmonton! I really appreciate it.

I'm a UAlberta Alum, and I lived there for a year in McKernan/Belgravia after graduation. I wish so fucking badly they'd kept that underground system below university drive, because trying to get out of belgravia at all between 3-6PM was a fucking nightmare. There's only two ways out of that neighbourhood: onto university drive, in which case you'll be waiting forever to turn left out of the neighbourhood at that time because of the traffic, or be waiting forever to turn right. It was also a pain to come home via any route, including groat road, which I often did at the time since I worked at the science centre. The only other way out was 76ave onto 111th street and... that wasn't any better. Why? because the train was above ground south of the university. If it had remained underground until the mckernan/belgravia stop, the already insane intersection of university drive and 111th street would move much faster, and only the 76ave one would be a pain. I also got stopped on the north side by the train line that ran to NAIT once... we were at that light for 15 fucking minutes. why not put that underground, seriously? There's already an underground station on the UAlberta campus and it works fine. That being said, I did take a lot of transit when I was in undergrad despite living close to campus, and I did have a fairly good time with it. The improvements you suggested here would have made a world of difference. I paid to park my car near my building for about one semester before I drove it home at christmas and left it there, but I wouldn't have even considered bringing it at all if even half of these rail connections had existed.

for the connection to sherwood park i feel like it would be nice if it went down 118 ave instead of along the yellowhead. 118 ave is prioritized for cars currently, but it runs parallel to the newly upgraded yellowhead, so there's really no need for that. 118 has a lot of destinations, as well as a lot of housing; so giving the area good transit access would be great. whereas the yellowhead is pretty out of the way.

I like the idea of putting transit on the highway to get across the city. One thing missing in this video is this: My problem with Transit has usually been that the first 25% of the trip takes 75% of the total trip time. We need more quick buses that go back and forth on the major streets and avenues instead of backtracking or meandering for hours through neighbourhoods. I live close (10 minute walk from Transit centre) and it takes me an hour to get to anywhere within 10km radius) My ideal transit would take me (example) WEST to X Street where I can transfer off to get taken SOUTH to Y Avenue, a 5 min walk away from my destination. What is embarassing is that most of the time, I can bike somewhere faster than taking transit and the cost of driving is far cheaper than a bus ride.

IVE BEEN PREACHING THE HIGHWAY BUS ROUTE IDEA FOR YEARS AHHHHH, thankyou random transit youtube man, I feel seen :D

What's the North American obsession with hooking up many independent cars into a train? It means paying for 4-6 additional drivers cabs (with all the equipment and electronics) that will never be used. As well as reducing passenger capacity

"Meanwhile, at some point between now and the heat death of the universe the capital line should be extended" This is honestly the funniest and best part of the video.

Do Winnipeg. And you better suggest rail!! 😉

I've been WAITING for this video to see what ideas you had for the system, and I'm glad to see that we are on the same page about a bunch of things. I do have a few ideas/concerns about some plans though. Overall, one of the current issues of the low floor (tram) system is that it does NOT have priority of the signal system when it runs concurrent with the road. IMO one of the first things that needs to change with the system is that it gets remedied first. Currently, in a high traffic scenario (rush hour) , the Metro Line in only a few minutes faster than being in a car. If the City wants to get more people on board, it really needs to give a time incentive to allow this to occur. Given the current issue re: crime and general safety, only being slightly faster than a "safe" car does not warrant many people taking this train currently. @9:26 That extension works great, but it should run on 153 Ave than take the route you chose. It's more linear, and it could help with costs since it could just be a straight connection between the two lines. @13:52 You mention going into Buena Vista Park. That idea is a brilliant one, but FYI a LOT of rich people live within that area (think almost all of the Oilers and even the owner of the team himself). The issue you could run into is simply NIMBYs with a ridiculous amount of pull of the local government, but it is a neat idea. A loop between Jasper Ave (Downtown) and Whyte Ave (think gentrified Kensington Market) is absolutely necessary, and the conversations I've had with City councillors have already hinted that both that would be built, alongside a high speed track (I'll get to that in a second). @11:33 YES! This is so desperately needed. With the current provincial government's decleration of a "Metrolinx" train operator with high speeds (I'll call it Albertalinx for now), I have an interesting idea: Turn Churchill into a MASSIVE hub for the municipal, provincial, and federal rail network. Currently the Churchill station has the Valley Line on the roadways, and underneath it the tunnels for the Capital and Metro Lines. If you could create another level underneath, with longer platforms for the Albertalinx tracks as well rerouting the VIA rail tracks (currently set up near the Yellowhead and CN rail lines, roughly near Blatchford), the amount of traffic and business that could bring the area would be SUBSTANTIAL. You can essentially create an European-style hub and have a truly enjoyable transfer w/o having to venture too far off if need be. Another proposal I bring is the moment you brought up at @13:30, where it comes into contact with the Windemere neighborhood. That area has been primed for some development, and even has great use of mixed development. If you were to create a single line using Ellerslie Road SW and going east to west from this, across the QEII, and connecting at the southern point of the Valley Line West, you can allow individuals to move from the SW to the SE w/o trekking all the way to Downtown. BTW your point about Fort Saskatchewan and St. Albert? Those were in the works but one of the cities didn't want the expansion (my memory says St. Albert, but I could be wrong) and there was a Edmonton Metropolitan Transit Services Commission that wanted to connect all of the cities at one point, but due to financing (an everpresent issue), Edmonton pulled out of the group and the entire commission was disbanded in 2023. Lots of words, but I am truly passionate about seeing my city become one of the best in the world! Love to see what you think!

I’m surprised you didn’t mention any sort of heavy rail network. The Edmonton metro region has many significant exurban communities such as Spruce Grove, St. Albert, Fort Saskatchewan, Sherwood Park, and Leduc. These should have fast and reliable regional rail connections into the centre of Edmonton where people can then transfer to other modes of transit. Love your video!

I'm so happy to see more Edmonton based content!

Calgary next! Everyone wants it

Edmonton is great if you own a house, if you're renting you're in for a rough time right now. Private equity and real estate groups have been snatching up any rentals they can and jacking up rent. Had 3 friends in the past year have a 22%,25% and 34% rent increase as there's no provincial cap as long as its at the end of your contract term length

Finally giving Edmonton some attention.

Edmonton needs better TOD. I'd say the same for most C-Train stations. They don't necessarily all have to be a Metrotown-sized second downtowns with 50+ story condos and giant malls. A city should only invest in new urban centers if it really needs it, like when the metro area reaches three million residents. Meanwhile, Edmonton doesn't half half the geographic restrictions of a city like Vancouver or Montreal. With how sprawling Edmonton is, most stations can be dense, low to medium rise mixed use urban villages that taper off into town homes and eventually single family housing, all connected with decent bus service and bike paths. Currently, the bus service is there, but there isn't enough bike infrastructure, and far too many stations connect to parking lots and strip malls. Every station should be a reason to build some kind of vibrant urban area in the suburbs, which cut down on sprawl while making the suburbs nicer. I really like Edmonton City Council's push for 15 minute cities, but the best way to do that is to focus it around transit and TOD.

As a student in Edmonton, I actually benefit greatly from this system. I can get almost anywhere I need in the city within an hour, southside in two, and I hope that can only improve.

Honestly I don't know how much transit planning can be separated from density planning. While the city's new zoning laws are loose, I actually don't think they're optimal. I speak from experience on the south side of Edmonton, so I will ignore the other areas, but I think that South Common (outdoor mall) really ought to be re-zoned/re-designed for mixed use high density. It has a lot of space, the roads actually act as relatively good bones there, it has good nearby access to both century park and mill woods. With Century Park having a higher population in its 15 minute walking radius than downtown Edmonton does, something similar could be done at Mill Woods station/mall and South Common, which is even bigger than the Century Park development. The city is quite spread out but has a decent level of density all over. Having these 3 nodes basically on an east-west line really provides the opportunity for good trolley bus service connecting these areas, and if you projected out the Century Park and adjacent population to these other areas as well, you'd be talking about a whopping 200k people along this corridor. Furthermore, combined with Alberta's potential for high speed rail, the right of way that goes right next to south common provides ready-made grade separation while also having space to have a station at south common. It's natural to at least have a station by whyte ave as well. The right of way and the space already exists! This would provide a third node of connectivity in the center as well, making south common a really valuable spot in terms of ability to grow the population. Such a corridor can act as a more southerly whyte ave/downtown area as well. While I know the city really likes to support the downtown, the actual population center of Edmonton is somewhere south and to the west of the university of alberta. If it weren't for historical reasons the natural downtown would likely be on Whyte Avenue. The University of Alberta should also be selling off its farm in the middle of the city

One small note on the rural LRT in St. Louis: a huge part of that is because a lot of the growth in the region has favored the Missouri side, largely for tax reasons, and the main urbanized area on the Illinois side (East St. Louis) got urban renewaled hard so there hasn't been as much suburban growth on that side. Growth on the Illinois side is just so much slower, and tends to favor growth outward from Edwardsville/Collinsville over East St. Louis

For the last going onto 3 months there are Peace Officers frequenting the LRT trains now. Love the app by ets it helps to check how long I will have to wait for the Bus or LRT. No stress,eave the driving to the drivers.

The biggest problem with Edmonton transit is safety

As someone who lives in Sherwood Park, I am glad you thought of us. We need more connectivity than busses.

Give Calgary a makeover too!

A couple comments: 1. The long term future for the valley line south is likely going to be turning south after the mill woods stop down 50st towards Beaumount (you've got it on 66st on your map). There's already zoning in place for a transit center on the south east corner of 50st and ellerslie road. No funding or design work done on that yet though. 2. The hospital in the south west is not currently under construction, it's been mothballed by our massively incompetent provincial government. Great video!

Edmonton needs to build it's downtown up way more before we focus on getting all of this connectivity to bring people in.

Hi just FYI, the Valley Line extension does not go down 66st, it will continue along 28th ave and then turn onto 50st to stop at Charlesworth

as a 20 y/o edmontonion (who cant drive cuz my anxiety is horrendous & im just bad lol) i hope the transit can be good, because finding work in my area is impossible so being able to travel across the city to wem quickly would be awesome for me and neat video!

Couple of things. 1. Your branch along 167 Ave should have a spur up to CFB Edmonton along 97 or 82 streets. Thousands of service members and civilian staff commute daily. 2. Spruce Grove and even Stony Plain need connections. They are rapidly becoming the new "forever home" market for families established in their careers looking to upsize the family home, for those in the Edmonton region. 3. Leduc honestly needs a full light rail connection, with a transition station at YEG airport for future high speed connections to Red Deer and Calgary. 4. There needs to be an extension out to Beaumont and another to Devon. These have been sleepy retirement communities for a while but as the aging community passes on, the availability of smaller starter homes at decent price points means many young families are moving to these two suburbs.

Man a line parallel to 97st would really be nice for us northerners (WE EXIST) 😂

Being in Edmonton for 10 years. still surprised that the main traffic attraction such as Airport and West Edmonton Mall are not connected by the train still surprised me. Glad to see the city is putting more effort in to transit development within the recent year though.

Do Halifax. Traffic on the peninsula is becoming impossible for those that live elsewhere, and EVERYTHING (hospitals, universities, government services) is on the Peninsula. Meanwhile our population is exploding as people flee the rural areas.

Great ideas. TY!

No matter how advanced and utopian ETS gets, I'll always reach for the keys to a private car. (as do most operators, which is why every transit garage has huge parkades, and very few of them use the service they drive for.) Here's why: I can: Go anywhere I want at any time of day or night. I can choose any mix of destinations I want, or change them on a whim. Several times a trip if I really want! I can do this without relying on a schedule made to fit the middle of the needs curve but not my particular situation. I can take as many or as few people as I want along. And none of them will consume substances in front of me. I can pick my music or ride in silence. I do not have to step over bodily fluids,or smell them, or see them being produced. Post-pandemic, I also get to commute while not getting sick. And avoid getting others sick. I do not have to wait for fifteen minutes in the rain while someone uses the bus shelter as a home. I do not have to endure violence, threats, and all kinds of bad mojo. I think that anyone who wants to take any of that away while promising that transit will be good some day if we just all believe is my enemy. It's especially worrisome when council wants 50 percent of trips Edmontonians make to be Transit, but they have no answers about how to make that happen except making car ownership hard. It's highly inappropriate for the managerial class to take away or punitively attack individual freedom of mobility. And if you believe that that is the right thing to do, then you might be an enemy too 😊 I also want to add, that everything proposed here just feels like an expansion of a Rapid Crime Delivery System.

As a Calgarian, I’m obliged to ask for a Crayoning with Reece video on Calgary next (my Calgarian pride refuses to let us get beaten by Edmonton), we’ve got the second highest ridership of any LRT system in the Americas (with three times the ridership of Edmonton), and I want to see what you’d go with for expansions (beyond current plans, I’d personally go for a line going roughly between Canada Olympic Park and Chestermere, a circle line roughly following Crowchild/Glenmore/The Trans-Can around the central suburbs, extending the proposed Airport line to cover the transit desert north of Nose Hill, and generally improving bus service)

I’ve just noticed, Vancouver’s New Flyer Xcelsior buses look so much better than any other North American city’s bus of the same model because of how Translink has styled the window frames. They no longer have the visible rounded edge window frames. Instead they are European style seamless windows making the same Xcelsior buses look that much more futuristic. Just take a comparison between the New Flyer XDE60 buses Seattle ordered in 2019 and the ones Vancouver ordered in 2019, shown in this video as the RapidBus. Besides the paint scheme being different, Vancouver’s just looks so much sleeker due to the seamless windows while Seattle’s just looks like a remodel of the D60LF New Flyer diesel from the early 2000s.

Love these. I'd love to see you do something similar with "Fake London" seeing as we're one of the fastest growing cities in Canada. It'd be nice to have an experts overview to show some city councilors who seem to hum and haw whether transit is actually beneficial or not.

If you want to improve a transit system, take a look at Halifax, Nova Scotia

Thanks!

Damn, MetroLink catching strays lol

We can’t even get transit that doesn’t have methheads trying to fight you

Great video Reece! Thanks for shining a light on our city! It would be amazing if we ended up with something anywhere close to this. 😅

As an Edmontonian with a lot of experience and opinions on our transit, I completely agree with almost every word of this video!

Calling LRT a “slippery transit technology” is one of the best things I’ve heard. It perfectly describes this trying to be one size fits all mode. Speaking to you from one of the cities that has most adopted this slippery tech, Los Angeles

Very informative video, it makes me appreciate of our transit more

Having spent a lot of time on the Metro line recently, they really need to improve frequency for trains and buses in the morning. Having a bus every 20 minutes and train every 12 minutes is not good enough for people that actually need to take the bus to work.

Superb info and opinions Reese! I am about to visit family in Edmonton and St. Albert - St. Albert - a residential bedroom community next to Edmonton - only has buses. I wonder if the affluence means many people drive. My family is in St. Albert and when I visit no one is ever on the buses! My niece said with weather and average household income most young people have a car as well. AB is conservative and I find fewer people interested in green/alternative transit. Insightful video! Thank you!! 🙂

Edmonton loves dramatic bridges killed me 💀

As someone who lived in Montreal for a few years, and is now living in Edmonton since 2007, I can vouch for the advantage of underground systems versus above ground like Edmonton. It also slows down vehicle traffic, and is prone to further slow downs thanks to idiot drivers who do not know how to be safe around tracks. I was an ETS driver for 6 years and got to drive the LRT for a couple of minutes in the train yard, it was an interesting experience. I also worked for CN as a conductor (before the mass layoffs due to oil prices in 2015), and I am shocked to hear they are going to put the LRT down there. Hopefully that elevated bridge is going to be built smart. There are a lot of derailments that CN doesn't tell anyone about because it's just in the yard, or out of sight. Now the whole city is going to get a bird's eye view of those messes.

I would argue that we need to extend the valley line west all the way to Spruce Grove as well. Ofc all these exterior connections would require ETS to accept that non residents need access...

Love the video, but city council and the construction companies aren’t cooperating to this idea

Sorry, the orange "new low-floor cooridor" was rejected in earlier planning and that's how we got the green line to the north.

Just starting the vid, the valley line was brutal. I have high hopes, but little confidence for the future.... now that I learned how to drive, it's crazy. 15min drive or 1h45 by bus. 20min drive or 2h by bus with 5 transfers.... it's crazy

Every world class city has a rail connection to the airport to and from downtown.

ooooh as an entirely transit dependent Edmontonian that just got back from Europe, this video is a dream drop. Edmonton is actually looking at getting new trains. Consultation surveys about seating arrangements went out recently. I love the idea of the connected trains, and one of the biggest local buzzwords with transit right now is absolutely security, so that could be a great argument for them to the non transit users. I grew up in Sherwood Park, and while they do currently have double-decker buses for transport into the city. However, on evenings and weekends, they have frequency of one bus an hour. Yes, one an HOUR, that only goes downtown. This means that transit becomes so impractical compared to a car that a 25 minute car trip becomes easily over 1.5 hours, which you then need to time with the one bus an hour. We also ABSOLUTELY need rail to the airport. And the 747 bus needs better service. Finally, rapid bus transit needs to become a priority in this city - but it's so hard to convince people to remove a lane for cars (or parking) for mass transit. The Old Strathcona Public Realm Strategy is working on implementing dedicated bus lanes along Whyte, which will some day hopefully become trams! Also, I'm not entirely sure how the city is feeling about buying new bus technology at the moment after getting burned so badly with the Proterra bankruptcy. Videos like this make me sad about the state of transit as a daily rider, but also are good reminders that change could happen and could happen relatively quickly. Thanks for the cool video!

Great video :) I had to abandon public transit for driving in Edmonton because of bus/train network insufficiency which sucked, because it truly has so much potential. We definitely suffer a death by a million cuts when we do go to build. I had to stop doing transit insight surveys a few years ago because I was getting so frustrated with their choices. They opted for street level rather than (predominantly) raised or in-ground because of costs. The signals and bus stop changes on north Metro have been an absolute nightmare for cars, pedestrians, and buses because of poor system integration... it's better and trains now almost go fast (and the arms go down when the train is leaving the station, not leaving 2 stations prior). I can verify the tram envy. Met one of the planners, and the downtown core section is based on the transit in Madrid and Copenhagen. I pointed out that other cities are abandoning trams with more similar climates to ours (Stockholm, and to some extent Helsinki and Oslo) and those cities were relying on underground trains as they don't need to survive the weather. There was supposed to be a line that goes back across high level bridge (with the volunteer run vintage streetcar) but the bridge isn't in good enough repair for that so it was abandoned in favour of an exploration into adding hundreds of tonnes of dirt and trees on top for a walking park...that the bridge can't support (project not happening either). They also opted to not have warning bells, lights or arms along the southern Valley line extension. The lack of physical barriers coupled with it consistently crossing traffic (and people illegally turning LEFT on red, and right on red when marked prohibited) has been a pain. I also feel for people who are HoH or visually impaired as they do not have well marked crossings on the southern end of the valley line. Signaling downtown in the underground is a nightmare and we heard whispers of tunnel capacity when metro opened and capital was axed in frequency (went from 5 minutes to 7 minutes going north from Churchill during peak). On elevated train removals from plans, the Valley like was supposed to be raised at Bonnie Doon Mall but was built level (with several road crossings) and is the source of the majority of train-car accidents. We need Castledowns and Airport connectivity before St Albert/Sherwood Park/Leduc/Fort Sask. Unless we go for a full regional transit system (doing this with arc sort of), the other cities will not pay for extensions into their cities. Leduc has a shuttle to Century Park as it is now. We have a flying junction for buses from South Campus to Fox Road currently. Ellerslie and Castledowns are both massive areas with dense housing and trash access to the trains (and mediocre bus networks right now). We have a growing electric fleet, but I don't know anyone who misses the trolly busses from the late 90s, though I'm sure tech has improved since then. Bonnie Doon to the above ground Health Sciences was supposed to be part of a loop, back over the High Level Bridge, see above). The city has a lot of push back over any development in the river valley, and I honestly don't think I'll live to see another bridge cross the river at Buena Vista, given an ecological reserve and fairly popular bike trails in the area. Strongly agree with the bus lanes on the highways (especially the Henday). Stadium is so much safer the way it is now, even though the level access is a very annoying walk from bus stops compared to going down stairs and up stairs quickly. The elevator rarely worked (or was hotboxed) and the escalator was down for over 2 years following a flood. It is so much more accessible now. I'm not the biggest fan of the planning in the city, but we have so much potential it just hurts more when they make mediocre choices.

The edmonton lrt wouldve been such a great transit system if it wasnt a house for homeless people

Agreed we desperately need a rail connection to Ft. Saskatchewan. Put a Park N Ride on the Edmonton side of the river that Ft Saskatchewan Transot can run a service too... A YEG Connection is long overdue as well.

I hope Edmonton puts transit to good use.

Do a video like this but for Winnipeg. Winnipeg is seriously a backwards city, transit-wise, and I would love to see how you would plan and design a effective and functional transit system for them!

@RMtransit what are your thoughts on highway electric busses which would stop at its checkpoints for 2 minutes at a time (even when no passengers) automatically recharging the battery. Thus no overall 20-25 minute charging required every 4 hours.

As most cities are currently planning for rail connections to their airports! How far behind are we?