Building A Smarter Way Out Of Congestion
I’m grateful for the chance to provide some context and information about the impacts the Valley Line LRT will have on traffic in southeast Edmonton, and to share what City Council is thinking about LRT planning in light of the many challenges we’ve had with trains at intersections.
We hear loud and clear the concerns about traffic congestion around LRT, particularly in light of the problems around Kingsway Ave and the South LRT. In fact, there are important learnings from those problems that informed Council’s planning decisions for the Valley Line.
But first, I should clarify that statistics reported by some media last week emphasized the worst case wait times a generation from now in 2044. The main driver for these longer wait times will primarily be the growth of traffic volumes over that same, and not the LRT itself. This same growing traffic pressure will apply to most intersections across the city, with or without a train present. The whole reason we’re building the LRT is to give more people an alternative to driving, so that there’s less traffic overall for everyone else who must drive.
There will undoubtedly be impacts to traffic from running the train on the surface versus putting it under or above ground. Council always understood this. That’s why we made decisions to separate the tracks from roads at certain places like Jasper Avenue, Argyll Road, 75 street and the Whitemud.
We recently looked closely at whether to spend an additional $200 million around Bonnie Doon to lift the train over traffic and, after looking at detailed modelling, decided it wasn’t worth the enormous amount of money to reduce waits by just 30 seconds. $200 million can buy a lot of improvements to more problematic intersections elsewhere. At the same time, we’ve asked City engineers to analyze where we might separate the train from certain pinch points going West, and whether there are retrofits we could do near Kingsway. Council is guided in all things by the need to prioritize public dollars wisely – and putting the line underground, like a subway, would cost us 10 times as much. That’s a bill we simply cannot afford.
Instead, Council feels the best approach is to separate where the data is telling us we need to. For example, we’ll go over 170th for the West LRT and we are currently analyzing separating the train from traffic at 178th and 149th as well as looking for other pinch points.
The other approach we took was running a low-floor ‘tram-style’ or ‘urban-style’ train, one that won’t pre-empt traffic signals at all intersections the way current LRT does. The Kingsway and University Avenue traffic snarls many people reference won’t occur on the Valley Line because the train is designed to synchronize with traffic signals. Further, the City will retain control over the timing of train and traffic signals and can make adjustments to improve the flow of intersections like Whyte Avenue as needed.
In a city that continues to grow as quickly as Edmonton, congestion is a problem that isn’t going away – with or without the LRT. It’s inevitable. But we must ask what is the best strategic, data-driven response to this congestion? As quickly as we can build or widen our roads, they will only fill up with more cars. Building more LRT, together with and improving our bus network, are the most significant changes we can make to deal with rising congestion. One full Valley Line train can carry up to 700 people, which takes the equivalent of about 600 cars off the road. While not everyone will choose to commute via LRT, the more people we can enable to do so, the less overall congestion we’ll deal with.
This is an important balance that we must keep in mind as we continue to connect all four corners of our city with more effective, efficient transportation options.
This is something generations of Edmontonians have to live with. If you can’t afford to build it properly then use buses. You are wasting money.
What public land is being purchased for park and rides along the west corridor?
Agreed. Yet we take away a lane from a major arterial, Jasper Ave. and by fall you will see worse congestion there and down 102 Ave. without LRT. We utilize transit to create transit oriented development. Yet 104 Ave was allowed to be developed as low density commercial not mix use or high density. But we desperately want to split lots in older neighbourhoods. New LRT lines are disruptive and will cause delays but that is unavoidable and can be mitigated. Looking forward to hear about these measures.
I must say, having driven along the Skytrain route in Vancouver as well as the University to Southgate route in Edmonton that I must disagree with the decision not to raise the LRT over the road. I believe that it is wishful & shortsighted thinking on the part of City Council to think that the wait times will be minimal. I don’t trust your “data” because you screwed up so badly around 51 Ave, the University/Edmonton Clinic turn onto 114 Street and at NAIT/Kingsway.
Also, if you want people to use the LRT from the suburbs, you need to have tons of free, accessible, close parking (like a Parkade) at stations like Century Park, Belvedere, Clareview and whatever the new end points will be. As a commuter, I want the fastest, easiest and warmest way to work. Walking to a bus stop (with all of my stuff), to take a bus to the LRT, to get on a train (especially one that will stop with traffic), and then walking from the LRT to either work or another bus, IS NOT HAPPENING! Not in June or September and definitely not in January!! And if I have to pay a huge fee to park and ride, I might as well drive downtown in my nice and toasty car with my Timmies in the cupbolder and all of my work and gym gear in the trunk, and pay for parking there.
Just some thoughts.
Urban integration not grade separation. As a Grovenor resident, I feel threatened every time someone mentions separation at 149 st. LRT can be a huge force for improving communities, but large structures that cut off pedestrian access to the river valley feel like another iteration of the sixties fixation with bulldozing communities to build freeways.
Any traffic model that spits out numbers in the range of 18 to 20 minutes for a single intersection is so obviously garbage that it cannot be used for decision making. Thes kind of wait numbers simply don’t exist in the real world, so we know from these extremes that every piece of the model is inadequately responding to shifts in demand.
Don’t use meaningless forecasts as an excuse to destroy communities.
I understand about 200$ million being useful elsewhere but the communities along Valley Line are just as valid as communities with higher traffic intersections to have minimal disruption. Not everything should be about the pricetag. Expend and build properly. I am not excited for the LRT reaching my community due to the inability of the City to lift it above the existing infrastructure.
I agree. And I also hope that the termination point of all these lines doesn’t extend any further than your plans project. The LRT is to improve urban traffic and people flow. Extending the lines way out to St. Albert or Sherwood Park, or Leduc, or Ft. Sask will only encourage more sprawl and more traffic.
**I agree with Mr. Iverson that is on his comments.
Mayor, thanks for posting this information. It’s very valuable context for the LRT discussion.
Citation for the 10x subway cost please.
Thank you Mayor Iveson for this discussion topic. Thank you to the councillors as well. I believe you are doing everything in your power for the city’s best interests, without a doubt. Please consider how strongly the bus impacts usage of public transit. Montreal has some great bus routes that are a ticking clockwork, while suburban routes are a milk run, but they are on time 99%of the time. Not like most of the routes here that switch bus numbers, they come early and you miss the bus, they come late and you miss your next bus, or they don’t come at all and you stand outside melting (or freezing) trying not to erupt in rage. That’s why I can’t use them. If they were reliable, not necessarily more frequent but just simply reliable, I could trust them to get me to work, school or to a train downtown on time for anything. Having the perfect tool for job is useless if you can get to it.
Thank you Mayor Iveson for this discussion topic. Thank you to the councillors as well. I believe you are doing everything in your power for the city’s best interests, without a doubt. Please consider how strongly the bus impacts usage of public transit. Montreal has some great bus routes that are a ticking clockwork, while suburban routes are a milk run, but they are on time 99%of the time. Not like most of the routes here that switch bus numbers, they come early and you miss the bus, they come late and you miss your next bus, or they don’t come at all and you stand outside melting (or freezing) trying not to erupt in rage. That’s why I can’t use them. If they were reliable, not necessarily more frequent but just simply reliable, I could trust them to get me to work, school or to a train downtown on time for anything. Having the perfect tool for a job is useless if you can’t get to it.
First of all your data is poor and incorrect on most occasions. Council decide as a to tease us with the overpass at Bonnie Doon when there was no intent of this even happening, very disappointing. The 30 seconds that this would save is going to be like 5 to 10 minutes like at Nait line.
With transit bleeding 300 plus million a year the need for higher fares must come now.