EdwardEdm said:
I've often wondered if an LRT trip from St. Albert might end up being longer than a bus trip. From St. Albert Center to Downtown or the University it is about 40 minutes by bus. I could see the LRT being about 30-40 minutes to Downtown so maybe the trip to the University ends up being longer? The thing with the Metro Line though is it kills 3 birds with one stone which cover all of St. Albert Transit's major destinations in Edmonton: NAIT, Downtown/ McEwan, and the U of A. That would only leave WEM with a St. Albert bus route.

Sure, but Berlin's population is more like 4 million vs. the Edmonton regions 1.6 million. and 30,000 square km vs Edmonton's 9400 square km. Edmonton's not S-Bahn sized by along shot.

Frankly, the east route (Sangudo subdivision) isn't much better. It's between industrial on one side and residential on the other. across the river is probably the best spot for a station, and at least there is residential development there. The western route, (Westlock sub) is really far out there.

Just because ROW and rails are there doesn't mean that there's any capacity to run a commuter service on those rails. The Sangudo sub is a non-starter as it is. While it only see I believe 2 trains (1 each direction) between Edmonton and Whitecourt and then random unit mineral trains, from the mainline to about the Henday, the sub is part of the loop track into the Edmonton Intermodal Terminal and see's frequent use. The Westlock sub is also 2 trains per day, but again they see some unit trains, this time grain, but occasional other trains. I suspect that double tracking of the corridors to St. Albert would be required. Then the question is how do you get across the CN mainline??? There's no way CN will be able to accommodate commuter trains, at times every 15 minutes, crossing over the 4 main tracks that are in place between the Bissell Yard and Walker. There's no space for the most part for another track. I really think the commuter track would need to be elevated.
On top of this, all of this just to run the commuter train to Blatchford?
So the St. Albert commuter has taken a bus to a commuter train station on the east or west ends of the city, rode a commuter train to Blatchford, and it now transferring to LRT. Yeah, that's not happening.

While this might not be the thread, as much as I love commuter trains, I don't see commuter trains happening around Edmonton anytime soon. All of our neighboring communities are too close in I feel for commuter trains, and don't have the population to support them.
That could change in the future along the HST corridor as a side benefit of it existing.
I think communities along the CN mainline would need to new tracks alongside the CN line. Edmonton is on a very busy section of the CN mainline. The mainlines from Vancouver and Prince Rupert come together just west of Jasper. The line from Grande Prairie joins at Swan Landing, Whitecourt, Fort McMurray, and Calgary at Edmonton, and then at Edmonton the Prairie North line splits off which takes some traffic away from the mainline. That puts Jasper to Edmonton as one of the busiest sections of the entire CN network. Any services to the east are further constrained by crossing the river. That is CN's choke point in Edmonton as it is, so there's pretty much 0 chance commuter trains are ever using that bridge, so a new bridge would be needed there.
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Valid feedback on the rail yard contention, I'm not really in a position to argue that. But if the busy rail yards in Vancouver can fit in a few west coast express trains, I'm sure something could be done if the will was there.

I think you touched on something important though, if LRT from the far end of St Albert doesn't offer better commute times than existing bus routes, could that money be better spent on road improvements that would reduce bus travel times instead?

How many minutes would be saved on a BRT route from St A to UofA and the other major destinations by spending a fraction of LRT money on grade separations on Groat?

137, 118 and 111 avs could probably all be done for less than half a billion. Seems like much better bang for the buck than LRT or commuter rail.
 
Edmcowboy11 said:
Except, I imagine a full five car train traveling from St Albert to the downtown core. That by itself is worth having a train as opposed to a whole bunch of brt buses
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It'll be a five car train with no passengers if it doesn't offer a speed advantage though.

Most commuters aren't train or transit idealists, they just want a fast affordable way to get where they need to go.

In almost every case, speed wins.

For far flung areas, BRT also has more flexibility. A UofA bus doesn't need to stop at NAIT, Macewan or DT first, it can go directly there. Massive time savings.
 
Well that comes down to how ETS decides to operate that line. Will it operate it like the capital line that can move fairly quick and is designed to move a ton of people fast. Or is it going to run the line similar to the Valley Line where it still moves fairly well but is designed to connect to a wide variety of communities and speed is moderately quick.
 
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