Sarah French worries that the northern leg of Edmonton’s light rail line will disrupt her Central McDougall neighbourhood. She’s concerned that affordable, low-rise apartment buildings will be replaced by expensive condos. She frets that the LRT will create a void in the area that will attract crime. Even the city’s information sessions have been a disappointment to her.
But that doesn’t mean she frowns on the expansion. “I’m not impressed with the process,” she says, “[but] I can see the importance of public transit.”
And there are alternatives to the way the city currently builds LRT. Better long-term planning, underground trains, building on existing roads: these are all options that advocates and planners have advanced as answers to difficult LRT expansions within established neighbourhoods.
The Transit Riders’ Union of Edmonton (TRUE), the citizen organization known for challenging councillors to take public transit, has pushed the city for long-range high-speed transit planning. City administrators are receptive to the idea, and city transportation manager Bob Boutilier has talked about buying or reserving land for the LRT as a high priority.
That’s music to Brad Smid’s ears. The senior transportation planner says building LRT on established rights-of-way would be an ideal situation. “The toughest issues,” he says, “are related to property acquisition. It’s a huge cost and it takes a lot of time.”
Smid’s budget for the early stages of the North LRT is $10 million. That figure includes the cost of preliminary engineering, but a large portion of it goes towards public consultation. It’s hard to say how much the city would save if the line were less controversial, but the city would definitely save money on property acquisition by planning further into the future.
The city currently has plans for a south line into Millwoods, a line to West Edmonton Mall and Lewis Estates, and an LRT ring road that would connect outer communities without going through downtown. These lines are still in the conceptual stage, and firmer plans will result from the transportation master plan discussions in the fall.
Wayne Mandryk, the city’s manager of transportation projects, points out that the city does have established rights-of-way on the South LRT line in Belgravia and past Heritage Mall. The city also established a right-of-way though the Station Lands in northeast downtown for the North LRT. But he couldn’t identify any firm commitments beyond already confirmed LRT lines.
Brendan Van Alstine, a TRUE member, is glad the city is starting to think about more than one line at a time. While he welcomes the shift in attitude he’s seen at City Hall since the last election, he doesn’t see that new attitude translating into action. “In terms of actually putting those changes in place,” he says, “we are still putting that off.”
Besides, at this stage, the North LRT is too far in the planning process for those changes to make a difference.
At a May 13 public meeting, members of the Central McDougall community league advocated a subway-style underground train though their neighbourhood. If they chose that option, the neighbourhood would not be disturbed, homes saved and future infill projects assured, they argued.
Smid facilitated that meeting but was unconvinced by the community league’s argument. He’s working on landscaping and design with the help of the Edmonton Design Committee, which should resolve any concerns the community league has.
When asked if tunneling underground could save money on expropriation of properties, he shook his head. Tunneling under the community would add $400 million to the $800 million project, increasing the costs by 50 per cent. Surface LRT still offers the best bang for taxpayers’ bucks, he says.
There is another alternative that wasn’t discussed at the public meeting: Mandryk suggests that the city could hypothetically build the LRT on an existing road and divert traffic onto other roads. “If traffic is congested,” he says, “commuters will be enticed to get on high-speed transit.”
The prospect of increased traffic on existing roads makes this a controversial suggestion, and Central McDougall residents might not like that option any more than the current proposal. After all, as French argues, the current LRT network isn’t big enough to offer a real alternative to driving. And the move could also mean more shortcutting through her neighourhood.
But Mandryk counters those concerns by noting that road closure is an option currently being discussed by every city undertaking LRT expansion: Calgary, for instance, shut down 7th Avenue downtown when they built the C Train. And while critics say that decision led to congestion problems and the death of their downtown, it was a much cheaper option—and the expense of building Edmonton’s underground route in the downtown is often cited as the reason our LRT network stalled for 30 years.
Ward 4 city councillor Ben Henderson supports the idea of closing roads for the LRT, as it would save money on property acquisition and avoid demolishing homes. He believes clogged roads would get more people riding public transit.
“It’s the kind of thing I think we should be exploring,” he says. “One of the things that really frustrates me, and one of the major expenses, is rebuilding our roads while we are building transit. The whole point is to get people to use transit instead of the roads.”
Henderson is particularly anxious about the North LRT because of the money and time the city has already invested in developing a land use strategy for the north end of downtown. The plan involved extensive public consultations on increased building heights and population density. The project was a success, he says, and it would be a shame to ruin that with a transportation plan that doesn’t take the existing neighbourhood plans into consideration. “We shouldn’t put in the LRT and then go ‘oops’ afterward,” he says. “We should do this with our eyes wide open. We need to understand all the implications, not just the transportation ones.”
As for Central McDougall resident Sarah French, she’s still worried, and will watch the evolving North LRT debate closely.
