Edmonton Public Transit

[canucklehead2]

Edmontons layout of streets made it virtually impossible for the LRT to be built anywhere but under Jasper Avenue. Because the blocks run longer North-South than East-West, any station on the surface would have most certainly disrupted traffic flow to a point where the downtown would be in complete chaos. The only other solution would have been to run the LRT down the CN ROW, but that would have moved the downtown line far from any of the actual buildings to which it is best served.

Now that we have the LRT tunnel though, we have paid off the biggest potential cost to running the LRT everywhere else in the city. We just need to get those surface extensions built so that the downtown tunnel can be used to an even greater degree than it is now.

The only potential handicap though is the fact that there are only around 70 000 workers in downtown Edmonton compared to 225 000 in downtown Calgary, so even if we build more extensions to connect downtown, the intensive use won't quite be the same. Having said that though, there are still 8000 or so MacEwan students, and 40 000+ staff and students at the U of A not to mention NAIT and its large population. Connecting these to the LRT will bring up the potential user base significantly.

We must also keep into perspective how unique Calgary is in terms of its high concentration of downtown office workers in Canada. After all it has the second highest ammount of office space in Canada, yet its population is 4th, so in that respect Cgy is an exception rather than the rule.