Our suburban dream comes to an end with rising oil prices.
“We are in for almost a complete remaking of our way of life,” notes Richard Florida, the University of Toronto professor and urban thinker. He believes denser living areas will offer an even higher quality of life and “a better future in the post-carbon world.” The transition will be difficult, but cities that prepare for the changes ahead will thrive.
Edmonton, however, has gone in the opposite direction, expanding into one of the most thinly populated cities in the world. At 900 people per square kilometre, we rank an abysmal 178th in population density, and form the core of the nation’s widest metropolitan area. We also drive more than people in any other Canadian city—a federal study found 75 per cent of Edmontonians travel exclusively by car.
But there’s hope. An Edmonton municipal policy document called City Vision ambitiously sets out priorities that will guide major planning decisions for the next 30 years. It calls for a denser, more walkable city, with an efficient transit system built around LRT. But we’ll have to get out from behind the eightball if we want to catch up with rapid growth. We are investing in LRT, but poor community consultation has lead to larger questions about big-picture land use planning issues throughout the city.
The NAIT, West, and Mill Woods LRT extensions aren’t currently being co-ordinated, says city planner Rhonda Toohey. Nor is there a plan in place for logistical expansion issues such as garages or track capacity in the downtown tunnel.
Appearing at City Hall in January were a disgruntled group from Kingsway Mall who felt they had not been given a reasonable amount of time over the holidays to deal with the proposed NAIT LRT line. They even had an active permit with the city to expand the mall on their property onto the very spot where the NAIT station had been proposed. The route has since been amended, but the miscommunication reveals a vision that has been lost in the mayor’s hasty press to pour concrete.
Council approved the first phase of the NAIT extension coming out from under the new EPCOR tower, but the route curves north from there, cutting through blocks of residential and commercial property. It’s an expensive proposition when cheaper, more effective routes exist. (And we don’t know where the line will run north of NAIT—but it doesn’t matter since that’s outside the scope of the project.)
Let me lay out some alternatives to current plans. From 97 Street and stopping at NAIT along Princess Elizabeth Ave, an alternative line could cross Kingsway Avenue west to 110 Street through Airway Park south of the municipal airport. Instead of bulldozing a dozen blocks of buildings on the recommended route, only a half-dozen houses stand in the way of this line on the corner south to St. Joseph’s School.
Once on 110 Street there would be zero property expropriation required along land all the way to Grandin. Not only would this route be superior from a cost perspective, but it also allows for better situated stations to serve NAIT, Kingsway, McDougall, and MacEwan College—who would likely support a station farther west than the one currently being proposed.
Mill Woods councillor Dave Thiele has wisely been talking about running LRT along the High Level Bridge for years. From there, the alternative line naturally goes southeast via stations at Garneau and Whyte Avenue, and through Strathcona Junction, where the high-speed rail should terminate with a new bus station. Along empty corridors from 68 Avenue west to 91 Street, it hits multiple transit-oriented development opportunities all the way to Lakewood and Mill Woods Town Centre via 28 Avenue.
The EPCOR tunnel could then form the beginning of a separate St. Albert line. Cutting and covering along 105 Avenue to preserve the area, it could hit MacEwan on the way to Oliver Square, and the VIA rail station along the empty 121 Street rail corridor north.
The only barriers to these alignments, other than bureaucratic thinking, are property rights. CP Rail owns the corridor around Strathcona Junction and the Alberta government owns the High Level Bridge, but with everyone at the table and federal dollars in the mix, there’s no reason we couldn’t negotiate a deal that would be beneficial to all parties.
This year, council should move to establish a plan to analyze potential routes like the ones I’ve laid out and push for predictable funding from provincial surpluses to finance them. With an LRT master plan in place by 2010 that synchronizes land-use and transit planning (and, of course, a healthy helping of funding from the federal and provincial governments), we can easily achieve our City Vision for 2040 and begin construction.
