I made it out to the opening; saw the first train to 69th Ave, and all four fireworks. The speeches in Ernest Manning were decent; there were signs saying that the speeches had been moved in there, but I have no idea how they would have handled the crowd anywhere smaller than a high school gym. It must suck to be Redford and McIver and hear Nenshi get a louder ovation everytime they share a stage.
I took full advantage of the free ride, as did thousands of other people; I got off at every station (I've been to every station except Saddletowne now), although at Sirocco I just got my "passport" stamped and hopped back on the same train.
Lots of nice moments today:
- Nenshi's speech was really well received. The highlights were: noting that George (Badge #1) was the driver of the first trains down the South, Northeast and Northwest LRTs back in the 80s. Mentioning Route Ahead, and telling Redford it'll cost a lot of money (which it will!) The cheer that went up when he said it would be 12 minutes from 69th to downtown. On time, and within 3% of budget.
- Lots of activity at every station; apparently it was $50K, but you couldn't buy that amount of publicity with so many people riding the train and hanging out at the stations.
- The highlight stations are impressive; 69th is massive from ground level. Westbrook is a decent platform, although in person I'm a little surprised they went with split rather than a centre platform.
- Sunalta's building is massive, and I wonder if it could have been laid out so as to have a cafe or something like that in the middle. I know that kiosks didn't perform well in the past, but they could really only visited by commuters, since they were suspended in the middle of a roadway. A cafe-or-something in Sunalta could be at ground level in a reasonably dense neighbourhood; if the zombies don't get everybody, I think this will kick 10th Ave up to another level 10 years from now.
- The view from Shag Pt and Sunalta into downtown are great; the 202 is definitely the scenic route now. (Before, you could compare the view coming from SAIT versus the one down Memorial -- depends on how big the mountains are.)
- When I was getting on the train at Downtown West later in the day, I saw three hipster-types getting off the train. One of the guys was fiddling with his phone. Just before the doors closed, I heard him announce to his friends "Eleven minutes, fifty-three seconds". Truth in advertising!
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