Edmonton Public Transit

[MalcolmTucker]

Staples on Wildrose infrastructure plan.

Staples: Wildrose plan to axe transit funding a disaster for cities




By David Staples, edmontonjournal.com
...the Wildrose position on mass transit is strangely out of touch with city voters, as well as unfair to them. If it were implemented, it would be a major blow to Calgary and Edmonton.
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GreenTrip is now building transit lines in Calgary and Edmonton, with $497 million going into the new NAIT LRT line.
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Premier Alison Redford has gone on the record repeatedly to voice her support for GreenTrip funding. Indeed, in her commitment to mass transit, Redford comes across as strong and as fierce as Smith does on any of her own staunch policy stances.


But Smith on transit? Way too old school.
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“It would be a monstrous inequity between urban and rural,” says Edmonton Coun. Don Iveson, head of the Capital Region Board’s transportation committee. “The province would no doubt continue to build highways in rural areas, but the LRT is the equivalent of a highway to Edmontonians and Calgarians as far as how many are able to get to work and get to school and get to markets on it.”
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Perhaps the Wildrose has calculated that it can win Alberta by isolating the Edmonton region and taking Calgary and rural Alberta, the old Klein coalition. But I can’t see how taking an axe to C-Train funding is going be a winner in Calgary. Voters there recently elected an avid pro-transit mayor in Naheed Nenshi.