In this new era of increasingly scarce energy, environmentalism is as much a function of economics as morality. The future is increasingly uncertain for cities that fail to provide alternatives to the personal automobile.

But look around the world, and you’ll realize that it’s not enough simply to have a mass transit system; how it’s built and where are equally important.

Take Las Vegas, for instance. Their monorail line is inconvenient, expensive, and probably wouldn’t exist without government support. It’s mired with debt, offers no links to their airport, downtown, or residential areas, has dismally low ridership—and as a result, it faces an uncertain future.

At the other end of the spectrum, Denver’s LRT project added 19 miles of light rail ahead of schedule and under budget, which led to a 12-year, $6.2 billion plan to add six more lines. Portland’s LRT and streetcar systems are excellent as well. Then again, both cities have metro populations exceeding two million people.

It might be more useful to look at the public transit systems in Oslo, Helsinki, and Stockholm, cities that are similar in size and climate to Edmonton. Twenty years ago, public transit ridership was dropping throughout Scandinavia, but now those cities enjoy farebox recovery rates of 50 to 80 per cent—more than double what ETS earns from its riders. Beyond higher fuel costs and subsidies, Norway, Finland, and Sweden got there by co-ordinating regional, urban, and suburban services, reinforced by rigourous land-use controls. Deliberate policies made public transit work in those cities, and we need to do the same. Let’s not be too proud to model our system after cities that got it right—that invested in attractive facilities and vehicles, adopted technical innovations, contracted out services while keeping stringent service standards, and funded intensive public involvement and marketing efforts. Their experience shows that transportation corridors are natural focal points for cities and can be catalysts for higher quality of life.

Edmonton city councillor Don Iveson thinks the debate over west LRT is actually about the kind of system we’re building. “The 87 Avenue and Fox Drive alignments represent a traditional, commuter approach with stations further apart,” he says. Not a bad thing if you’re going downtown from the Fringe grounds, but what about the communities along the way? 

We need a new plan that combines aggressive public transportation with progressive land-use policies. Then we can begin a comprehensive and holistic public consultation process to mitigate the impacts.

Let’s give residents a firm one-year timeline to respond to various route options in their areas so that we can avoid endless debate on details down the road. If residents feel like they’re part of the process, they’ll be more likely to support these projects instead of resisting them because they were brought in at the eleventh hour.

Some of my fellow planning geeks call that dithering, but I think it’s diligent.

Knowing where we will build our LRT corridors and the communities around them, and placing those plans in the context of how the whole system will operate in 30 years is of paramount importance. If we can integrate city planning of apartment buildings and other high-density developments along multiple LRT routes throughout Edmonton, an environmentally sustainable future is possible in the capital region.

On the other hand, if we continue our habit of rushing our long-overdue LRT projects, not only will we be wasting our investment, but we’ll have squandered our future economic success as well.