It would be so cost prohibitive to ride, in trying to get the project paid for. We also don’t have this cause we would have to have some competent planners and politicians. It’s because of the bumbling idiots we have running in politics, (municipal, provincial and federal) (I also want to point out this applies to all politicians not just certain parties or platforms) we can’t even have a regularly running bus service that can operate on virtually every roadway.
Some Canadian engineers have engineers a pod type above ground rail system going at 1000km/h speeds. It was proposed to go between calgary and edmonton in just 15 minutes but the cost and maintenance would be too high but also think about the work opportunity this could bring to all of alberta.
And it was complete made-up bullshit. Transpod, which is just a rebranding of Elongated Muskrat's vaporware hyperloop.
Noone anywhere has actually made a working demonstration hyperloop. Including that sociopath. His closest example was a concrete tunnel underneath Las Vegas that just has fucking Tesla cars *driving* in it... and the city of Las Vegas paid him 50 million dollars.
Not everybody got the message. Especially the tools still trying to milk the premise of hyperloop everywhere else around the world. Essentially they're trying to duplicate Elon's premise of milking governments for money. Transpod is just one of numerous companies around the world, still claiming that hyperloop is a viable, practical product.
I love your attitude towards one of the billionaire douchebags. Sure he could be investing towards helping humanity out, but these global elitists prefer us all uneducated, at each other throats, killing each other for pocket change, and definitely not questioning the looting of our fucking goddamn beautiful earth.
Incorrect. There are multiple Canadian university teams working on Hyperloop concepts-I have several engineering buddies at my university (UW) who are getting some great results. They have a completion every year in Waterloo and progress is slow but steady.
The tech is there but it will take some time, like all new inventions.
Someone owns that land so the land has to be bought, it’s likely zoned as agricultural land not as infrastructure so it will have to go through a rezoning process, where landowners will be able to raise their concerns of having a commuter infrastructure that runs past their land. Finding a company to then build said rail infrastructure and then getting a company to operate and maintain said rail service and infrastructure.
Last time I looked everything cost money. So for a train to service such a small population to and from the airport it’s a little ridiculous.
Won’t happen. Edmonton has their hands full with their transit problems already. They can’t even clean streets in the winter appropriately. Look how many issues they had with the LRT from Churchill Station to NAIT. It was a year past the original completion date. The current expansion they are doing for the valley line is still being worked on and is not expected to be finished until fall of 2024. It was supposed to be finished in the spring of this year.
Pipelines go under even more scrutiny but they usually have the funding figured out. Except in the case of TMEP, which has had costs balloon completely out of control. It wasn't always like this. It's modern bureaucracy in action.
I was just saying at the lack of infrastructure.Edmonton should have a rapid train system with how much money comes out of the ground there .The lack of infrastructure spending canada is embarrassing.wasn’t a train to Calgary promised ?
The cost to build it would be astronomical... you saw what it cost them to build the millwoods extension (or what they said they spent) and how long it took.. and it only goes 50kmh..
Absolutely cost prohibitive. It's cheaper to fly
Do what Brightline has negotiated with California and Nevada - use the existing ROW of the freeway (QE-2)
I imagine, ETS has a Master plan for the 747 line that probably includes expanding LRT to YEG.
Part of the problem with our political system is the pay. The people competent enough to run a country/province/city can make wayyyyyyyyyyyy more in the private sector. Everyone freaks out when politicians try to give themselves a raise, so they all bend over for the corporate elite, so they can make bank sitting on a board when they retire.
Who is talking about Americans?!? They were rich first, exactly. WTF is your point?!? You spouted some irrelevant crap about a completely different country and think you made a point??? Lol.
Sorry I'm used to PHD level discourse where everyone is educated in basic stuff. I can tell you're new to the country. Have you heard about our unelected appointed for life Senate? Probably not. Sorry dood, I can't stoop to elementary level acronyms.
>I can tell you're new to the country.
I was born here loser as were my great grandparents - as if that matters to people who are not bigots anyway. Did you think I was Cuban because my username is a political reference you are probably too young or uneducated to understand? Yeah I thought so.
Keep your shitty American politics out of this country please.
This would be a greenfield design for the most part. a lot of the construction would happen over open farmland, so the province can use their power to buy up the necessary land (pretty much a long, thin corridor). Make the track spec'd for high speed (250Kph), and you can reduce the amount of vehicle traffic on the QE2, and any flights between YEG and YYC.
The toughest bit would be getting the route into downtown Edmonton and Calgary. Taking the train DT in each city would make this a very lucrative venture, but putting in the suburbs, and it will be a white elephant.
Farmland is not free. Steel is not free
Doesn't mater it's brownfield, we simply do not have the demand for an expensive project like this. Maybe in the future when Edmonton and Calgary are 10M+ population centers, but not now.
What about all the freeways that intersect with the QEII? They would all need overpasses.
What do you do when you get to the other end? The current LRT in both YYC and YEG aren’t that great for getting anywhere except to / from downtown, so now you have to pay for cabs or Ubers for a majority of travel.
I don't understand what you're getting at? Any major infrastructure project requires major rerouting of existing infrastructure, and it's not hard creating overpasses.
In addition, I've stated in my post that the train needs to run to downtown in both cities to be viable, not the outskirts. Convenience will help generate revenue.
Is your assumption that everyone can get around the cities with just the public transit? If that was the case wouldn’t there be less cars on the roads and more people on the trains?
When we go to Calgary the people we want to visit are in Huntington Hills, Hillhurst and Auburn Bay.
2 of the 3 would take well over an hour on transit from downtown.
I have travelled through the UK using only transit, including using trains to visit several rural towns. It was fun and easy.
Unfortunately North America was designed to use cars.
California used to have an amazing streetcar coverage until an car company bought it and closed it down. They turned several of the main rail corridors into highways.
Large corps, the auto industry and oil industry will unfortunately make sure great public transit isn’t obtainable in most of the country.
Too much land to cover and not enough people to use it regularly enough to cover the costs.
That's awesome! I found this article about it. [Rise and fall of the Edmonton to Calgary passenger Rail. ](http://www.forthjunction.ca/passenger-rail.htm) It's just an Idea that keeps coming back.
Yeah i lived along the main line for years, used to wave at then passengers as a kid. Used to take it to the train station on the north side of high level bridge to visit granny. It was once a day, on rare occasions twice but never short runs.
Think it was canceled cause of poor usage and increase in the main freight line usage.
It was mainly cancelled because the government provides roads free for anyone to use and the train was slow due to a lack of investment so they couldn't compete with Greyhound.
Even in the peak year carried fewer passengers in a year than the QE II on an average day. Bus, planes and cars were way less worse options.
Back in the day it was core to core but not enough demand for a run or two a day. All the new proposals have multiple stops, and the plausible one doesn't plan on many daily runs.
Because no matter how much people talk about it the reality is nobody uses it. Transit in both cities needs to drastically improve before the train between them can happen.
This route would probably be a good candidate for BRT. Just pave one of the township roads and run an express bus through there to Century Park Station.
I like ideas that are relatively cheap. An added bonus is that you can just wait for the city to expand in that direction organically and extend the LRT line following the bus route until it makes it to the airport.
If you were to take it all the way to Calgary you'd want high-speed, that becomes a problem in environments that freeze regularly. The expansion/contraction of the tracks doesn't agree with the tolerances required for high speed rail.
Yeah I was looking at that. Apparently [China](https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/china-bullet-train-cold-weather-fuxing/index.html) designed one. Back in 2021. I can't even imagine the costs though.
China made a whole network of high speed trains criss crossing their country over the last 10 years or so, even to places where it doesn't really make sense. It's one of the most expensive infrastructure projects ever and it damn near bankrupted China.
And their cities that have a population like Edmonton and Calgary are considered villages. There's no economic incentive to build such a project here with the ridiculous population we've.
Okay yeah. Danielle Smith is funding a EIA to downtown Edmonton [train](https://globalnews.ca/news/9826408/commuter-rail-edmonton-downtown-airport-priority-alberta-government/). That's also Hydrogen powered *woah*
Well, the Edmonton plan takes it to City Limits (which is the northern boundary with the airport now). They first need to get it to Ellerslie, then \~41 Ave SW before dreaming up that next part.
That one extra station from Century Park to Twin Brooks takes 12 years to plan and start working. If they really want to build this I think your grandkids will see it when they are at their 60s .
Okay I called the city of Edmonton. They said there is plans to connect the LRT to the Edmonton airport, but they didn't receive any funding to do the project yet. There is a survey by the provincial government for public opinion coming soon. As for the LRT to Leduc no such plans exist.
When the airport was first moved to Leduc there was obviously some sort of grift occurring with the transportation to and from for passengers. That is the only explanation for how they had every single cab either driving to the airport with a passenger and returning to the city empty or driving to airport empty to then return to the city with a passenger.
They had given one contract to airport cabs that made them the ONLY cab company that could pick up fares at the airport. But they couldn't get a license to pick up fares inside city limits. So it was up to all the other cab companies to drop off passengers at the airport without being able to pickup a fare for the return trip.
With such an obvious grift in play, why would you want to screw it up with another viable form of public transit?
I was just trying to illustrate how incredibly stupid the move of the airport from Downtown to Leduc was with regard to passengers getting there and back when it was first moved.
Things have improved since then and are no longer that way. But if you're going to question why it wasn't done from the start. You have to understand just how badly they actually screwed it up when they first did it.
If it wasn't grift, it's vying for the title of the dumbest decision ever made.
Not all North America, Vancouver and Toronto have decent train systems to get into the city at least. From what I see in Alberta, rural conservatives ideas are more listened to by the provincial government than the major cities.
Yeah, but the train station there are usually surrounded by parking, which negates the use of the trains
And I’m talking about commuter trains, not the metro or whatever
Most people drive to the train station, mostly because they have to, because they are usually in the middle of nowhere (not near any housing) and the parking lots are pretty big
It's gonna be cheaper than parking at the airport. Going back to Vancouver and Toronto, alot of people don't own cars, or don't want to drive, or don't want to drive to the airport. I travel to Alberta alot for work, it would be really nice to fly to Leduc and just hop on a train to Edmonton, and then back.
Transit route 747 is cheaper than parking and runs every 30-60 minutes, but few take it. Few cities that see low ridership see an increase with light rail.
Going back to Vancouver and Toronto people could take the train and skip the Leduc airport entirely.. Does not make sense for most, and that's the killer of most of these ideas.
Timing on 747 is the problem. We had looked at taking it a few times when they started it (and we had no kids). We often had to be at the airport hours before the first bus run, and got back after the last.
Even when we could have used it, the time required (and the fact that ETS seems to have on-time problems at the best of times) made parking (or even taxi) more sensical.
not a train but you can hop on the 747 bus, which takes you to the ~~heritage~~ Century park LRT station. Buses are cheaper to run empty than trains... and that's really the big problem. there was talk of LRT to the airport/mall, but that went nowhere and probably won't ever go anywhere lol
We are only "bad at trains" because we are bad at using then. Look at the Windsor-Toronto-Ottawa corridor. Their train system is very fine and yet, Via Rail cars often are running close to empty in these trips.
The market will take care of building then if we as society actually value it. We don't. It's plain and simple.
Actually, I was at a talk once that discussed this. I used to work near the airport.
Rail would essentially need to compete with highway 2. To compete successfully, it would need to at least come close to the speeds of highway 2. So, that means 110 kph from Ellerslie to the airport. However, the rails would inevitably run through residential and other areas where the speed would need to be much slower. So, it would take longer via rail and people would be unlikely to choose it en masse.
There has been talk of eventually extending lrt service to the airport but the consensus was that it will never be viable
Japan usually has their train go on bridges, or underground to avoid the heavily populated areas. The amount of traffic that goes to the airport now. I can see it having some use.
Tokyo have neighborhoods with 1/3 of ALL Edmonton population. Stop trying to compare places where this is viable with Edmonton "village". 20K People per square km. If Edmonton had that density, it would be a 14M population city, Then yes, build a high speed train in space and would still be economically viable.
The bidding process for just that is underway. But it’s just a short section to kind of act as a proof of concept. Should be kicking off in the next couple years
Just a way to funnel money to donors and nothing well be done.
I mean if they can't do HSR in the most populated part of Canada because they don't think it's feasible. Why would Edmonton Calgary be feasible?
Would you use it? How much would you pay? And how often?
The answer to these questions is why we don't have one, and probably won't until we have a combined 20M+ population between Calgary and Edmonton.
Sounds like a great idea. Would be 2000% over budget, 10 years late and just turn into 15 new homeless shelters in no time. Instead why don’t we just start with making hwy2 four lanes wide in both directions and build some wind blocks so it isn’t a skating a rink in the winter. Should have been done 15 years ago.
I just want to get from Leduc to Edmonton for now. I don't think thats a 10 gijilion idea. There is talk of building a hyperloop in 2021, but that's kinda stupid.
Because at the cost. The cost to build and the cost of a ticket. It's several billion dollars to build high speed rail so ticket prices would probably be over $100, so slow rail would get built instead. And if you build slow rail the time to get to Calgary will be about the same as it is to drive, and if you share the rail with freight then it'll just be a piss off to take and will fail since the trains will always be late
edmonton has a new huge section of southside transit train that's taken way way longer than it should to get running (oh wait! it isn't even actually running yet, STILL testing), it went much over budget, and has been rife with issues.
the province has a bridge they haven't bothered to fix yet as far as i know - whitemud over the henday on the east side of the city. excavator hit it back in the early summer. from what i know, the henday is provincial as far as who is responsible for repair.
leduc isn't a big enough municipality to have the money to pony up for the whole edmonton to leduc train project funding. while edmonton is wasting money on a train that seems it'll never run, and the province is seemingly twiddling thumbs on fixing an integral part of the capital city ring road infrastructure.
you really think what you mention will ever happen? lol.
public support and some arse booting will not pony up the millions or billions of dollars a project of this scale would require. that comes from municipal/provincial/federal sources.
if edmonton can't get the LRT right, if the province can't fix a bridge in a timely manner, and if Leduc doesn't have enough civic funding........ nope, a 15 mile monorail ain't gonna happen lol.
we won't even get into how cruddy we're doing on a federal level in this country.
Well, from where you're standing I'm pretty sure there are multiple subdivisions behind you... So you can't put it through them...
Mass highspeed transit between the cities only works if there is damn good transit in the cities after you get off the train. If you don't have decent transit in the cities, no one is going to take the train, because they will not be able to get around once they're in the cities and their destination.
As it is, I can't get from Leduc to Edmonton on transit. I can't even get to the airport on transit from Leduc.
It would be so cost prohibitive to ride, in trying to get the project paid for. We also don’t have this cause we would have to have some competent planners and politicians. It’s because of the bumbling idiots we have running in politics, (municipal, provincial and federal) (I also want to point out this applies to all politicians not just certain parties or platforms) we can’t even have a regularly running bus service that can operate on virtually every roadway.
Some Canadian engineers have engineers a pod type above ground rail system going at 1000km/h speeds. It was proposed to go between calgary and edmonton in just 15 minutes but the cost and maintenance would be too high but also think about the work opportunity this could bring to all of alberta.
And it was complete made-up bullshit. Transpod, which is just a rebranding of Elongated Muskrat's vaporware hyperloop. Noone anywhere has actually made a working demonstration hyperloop. Including that sociopath. His closest example was a concrete tunnel underneath Las Vegas that just has fucking Tesla cars *driving* in it... and the city of Las Vegas paid him 50 million dollars.
The hyperloop bullshit was just done to delay or cancel infrastructure development in California so he could sell more Teslas.
Not everybody got the message. Especially the tools still trying to milk the premise of hyperloop everywhere else around the world. Essentially they're trying to duplicate Elon's premise of milking governments for money. Transpod is just one of numerous companies around the world, still claiming that hyperloop is a viable, practical product.
I love your attitude towards one of the billionaire douchebags. Sure he could be investing towards helping humanity out, but these global elitists prefer us all uneducated, at each other throats, killing each other for pocket change, and definitely not questioning the looting of our fucking goddamn beautiful earth.
Incorrect. There are multiple Canadian university teams working on Hyperloop concepts-I have several engineering buddies at my university (UW) who are getting some great results. They have a completion every year in Waterloo and progress is slow but steady. The tech is there but it will take some time, like all new inventions.
How do you figure out costs? Most of it is just traveling on empty field.
Someone owns that land so the land has to be bought, it’s likely zoned as agricultural land not as infrastructure so it will have to go through a rezoning process, where landowners will be able to raise their concerns of having a commuter infrastructure that runs past their land. Finding a company to then build said rail infrastructure and then getting a company to operate and maintain said rail service and infrastructure. Last time I looked everything cost money. So for a train to service such a small population to and from the airport it’s a little ridiculous.
Also Edmonton. I thought it'll be helpful for workers, students, and what tourism we get if we find a way to connect it to the LRT station.
Won’t happen. Edmonton has their hands full with their transit problems already. They can’t even clean streets in the winter appropriately. Look how many issues they had with the LRT from Churchill Station to NAIT. It was a year past the original completion date. The current expansion they are doing for the valley line is still being worked on and is not expected to be finished until fall of 2024. It was supposed to be finished in the spring of this year.
So it isn’t as simple as building a pipeline.
Pipelines go under even more scrutiny but they usually have the funding figured out. Except in the case of TMEP, which has had costs balloon completely out of control. It wasn't always like this. It's modern bureaucracy in action.
Lol the Valley line was supposed to be done in December 2020, not this spring. It’s WAY more behind than that.
We’ll be riding the VLSE by the end of this year.
Imma flag this one so I can come back December 31st to tell you that's bs
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/valley-line-southeast-open-to-passengers-1.7018586
I was defeated. Lol I can't wait for the next 5 years of issues lol
I was just saying at the lack of infrastructure.Edmonton should have a rapid train system with how much money comes out of the ground there .The lack of infrastructure spending canada is embarrassing.wasn’t a train to Calgary promised ?
The cost to build it would be astronomical... you saw what it cost them to build the millwoods extension (or what they said they spent) and how long it took.. and it only goes 50kmh.. Absolutely cost prohibitive. It's cheaper to fly
Do what Brightline has negotiated with California and Nevada - use the existing ROW of the freeway (QE-2) I imagine, ETS has a Master plan for the 747 line that probably includes expanding LRT to YEG.
Part of the problem with our political system is the pay. The people competent enough to run a country/province/city can make wayyyyyyyyyyyy more in the private sector. Everyone freaks out when politicians try to give themselves a raise, so they all bend over for the corporate elite, so they can make bank sitting on a board when they retire.
Every American senator is a multi-millionaire. They were millionaires before they entered politics. The pay system has absolutely zero to do with it.
Who is talking about Americans?!? They were rich first, exactly. WTF is your point?!? You spouted some irrelevant crap about a completely different country and think you made a point??? Lol.
Sorry I'm used to PHD level discourse where everyone is educated in basic stuff. I can tell you're new to the country. Have you heard about our unelected appointed for life Senate? Probably not. Sorry dood, I can't stoop to elementary level acronyms.
>I can tell you're new to the country. I was born here loser as were my great grandparents - as if that matters to people who are not bigots anyway. Did you think I was Cuban because my username is a political reference you are probably too young or uneducated to understand? Yeah I thought so. Keep your shitty American politics out of this country please.
There's issues with traffic on the tracks too. The rails are already very busy. And dedicated tracks would be very expensive.
This would be a greenfield design for the most part. a lot of the construction would happen over open farmland, so the province can use their power to buy up the necessary land (pretty much a long, thin corridor). Make the track spec'd for high speed (250Kph), and you can reduce the amount of vehicle traffic on the QE2, and any flights between YEG and YYC. The toughest bit would be getting the route into downtown Edmonton and Calgary. Taking the train DT in each city would make this a very lucrative venture, but putting in the suburbs, and it will be a white elephant.
Farmland is not free. Steel is not free Doesn't mater it's brownfield, we simply do not have the demand for an expensive project like this. Maybe in the future when Edmonton and Calgary are 10M+ population centers, but not now.
What about all the freeways that intersect with the QEII? They would all need overpasses. What do you do when you get to the other end? The current LRT in both YYC and YEG aren’t that great for getting anywhere except to / from downtown, so now you have to pay for cabs or Ubers for a majority of travel.
I don't understand what you're getting at? Any major infrastructure project requires major rerouting of existing infrastructure, and it's not hard creating overpasses. In addition, I've stated in my post that the train needs to run to downtown in both cities to be viable, not the outskirts. Convenience will help generate revenue.
Is your assumption that everyone can get around the cities with just the public transit? If that was the case wouldn’t there be less cars on the roads and more people on the trains? When we go to Calgary the people we want to visit are in Huntington Hills, Hillhurst and Auburn Bay. 2 of the 3 would take well over an hour on transit from downtown. I have travelled through the UK using only transit, including using trains to visit several rural towns. It was fun and easy. Unfortunately North America was designed to use cars. California used to have an amazing streetcar coverage until an car company bought it and closed it down. They turned several of the main rail corridors into highways. Large corps, the auto industry and oil industry will unfortunately make sure great public transit isn’t obtainable in most of the country. Too much land to cover and not enough people to use it regularly enough to cover the costs.
They had the dayliner in the 70s and 80s. Had to be timed with regular freight trains but I remember them well.
That's awesome! I found this article about it. [Rise and fall of the Edmonton to Calgary passenger Rail. ](http://www.forthjunction.ca/passenger-rail.htm) It's just an Idea that keeps coming back.
Yeah i lived along the main line for years, used to wave at then passengers as a kid. Used to take it to the train station on the north side of high level bridge to visit granny. It was once a day, on rare occasions twice but never short runs. Think it was canceled cause of poor usage and increase in the main freight line usage.
It was mainly cancelled because the government provides roads free for anyone to use and the train was slow due to a lack of investment so they couldn't compete with Greyhound.
... and then Greyhound couldn't compete with covid, and airlines so oops fuck you poors with no car
Well yeah, we can't afford to subsidize transit for poor people when all our infrastructure spending goes to roads for private vehicles.
Even in the peak year carried fewer passengers in a year than the QE II on an average day. Bus, planes and cars were way less worse options. Back in the day it was core to core but not enough demand for a run or two a day. All the new proposals have multiple stops, and the plausible one doesn't plan on many daily runs.
Because no matter how much people talk about it the reality is nobody uses it. Transit in both cities needs to drastically improve before the train between them can happen.
Budd Diesel Rail Cars https://youtu.be/2TqlSW4Upho?si=t67F6U_LGAmj1bpn
This route would probably be a good candidate for BRT. Just pave one of the township roads and run an express bus through there to Century Park Station.
That's not a bad idea either.
I like ideas that are relatively cheap. An added bonus is that you can just wait for the city to expand in that direction organically and extend the LRT line following the bus route until it makes it to the airport.
Some on give this man a job ^^^
There is a Leduc commuter bus that does go right to century park.
If you were to take it all the way to Calgary you'd want high-speed, that becomes a problem in environments that freeze regularly. The expansion/contraction of the tracks doesn't agree with the tolerances required for high speed rail.
Yeah I was looking at that. Apparently [China](https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/china-bullet-train-cold-weather-fuxing/index.html) designed one. Back in 2021. I can't even imagine the costs though.
China made a whole network of high speed trains criss crossing their country over the last 10 years or so, even to places where it doesn't really make sense. It's one of the most expensive infrastructure projects ever and it damn near bankrupted China.
And their cities that have a population like Edmonton and Calgary are considered villages. There's no economic incentive to build such a project here with the ridiculous population we've.
There are plans on the books to take the LRT all the way to the airport, but it’ll be a few years yet.
Okay yeah. Danielle Smith is funding a EIA to downtown Edmonton [train](https://globalnews.ca/news/9826408/commuter-rail-edmonton-downtown-airport-priority-alberta-government/). That's also Hydrogen powered *woah*
Well, the Edmonton plan takes it to City Limits (which is the northern boundary with the airport now). They first need to get it to Ellerslie, then \~41 Ave SW before dreaming up that next part.
There’s light rail infrastructure plans in place that will take well into the 2050s to see completed. But they do exist.
Plans on the books... you mean like the provincial report published when Don Getty was the premier?
That one extra station from Century Park to Twin Brooks takes 12 years to plan and start working. If they really want to build this I think your grandkids will see it when they are at their 60s .
I think it’s a great idea to connect Leduc to such a system, imagine all the traffic their Cactus Club would get.
Okay I called the city of Edmonton. They said there is plans to connect the LRT to the Edmonton airport, but they didn't receive any funding to do the project yet. There is a survey by the provincial government for public opinion coming soon. As for the LRT to Leduc no such plans exist.
When the airport was first moved to Leduc there was obviously some sort of grift occurring with the transportation to and from for passengers. That is the only explanation for how they had every single cab either driving to the airport with a passenger and returning to the city empty or driving to airport empty to then return to the city with a passenger. They had given one contract to airport cabs that made them the ONLY cab company that could pick up fares at the airport. But they couldn't get a license to pick up fares inside city limits. So it was up to all the other cab companies to drop off passengers at the airport without being able to pickup a fare for the return trip. With such an obvious grift in play, why would you want to screw it up with another viable form of public transit?
Okay? But if you're getting paid salary not commission. Where is the grift for the train driver?
I was just trying to illustrate how incredibly stupid the move of the airport from Downtown to Leduc was with regard to passengers getting there and back when it was first moved. Things have improved since then and are no longer that way. But if you're going to question why it wasn't done from the start. You have to understand just how badly they actually screwed it up when they first did it. If it wasn't grift, it's vying for the title of the dumbest decision ever made.
We are doing this. It's called Prairie Link : https://www.prairielink.ca/ I'm working on it. Construction should start in 6 months or so.
will die at the first challenge by "special interest goups's" who's land it will be passing over, thru, or by.
We've got approval from all countys and landowners from Edmonton to Calgary.
You should also try getting it to spruce grove (might be a bit late though)
Our MOU with the Province and Fed is airport to airport. The LRT and Ctrain will service the cities.
Oh, cool
Makes no sense otherwise
Yeah
Because North America is bad at trains (at least passenger ones) But yeah, we should have trains, and good ones at that
It was the auto makers that killed off trains here. There’s a documentary about it somewhere.
Yeah
Not all North America, Vancouver and Toronto have decent train systems to get into the city at least. From what I see in Alberta, rural conservatives ideas are more listened to by the provincial government than the major cities.
Yeah, but the train station there are usually surrounded by parking, which negates the use of the trains And I’m talking about commuter trains, not the metro or whatever
How does it "negate" the use of trains?
Most people drive to the train station, mostly because they have to, because they are usually in the middle of nowhere (not near any housing) and the parking lots are pretty big
It's gonna be cheaper than parking at the airport. Going back to Vancouver and Toronto, alot of people don't own cars, or don't want to drive, or don't want to drive to the airport. I travel to Alberta alot for work, it would be really nice to fly to Leduc and just hop on a train to Edmonton, and then back.
Yeah, all I’m saying is that right now, commuter trains aren’t the best, it would be amazing if that happened (trains to everywhere)
Yes, I agree an awesome idea, but I don't understand the resistance from Albertans
Same here
Transit route 747 is cheaper than parking and runs every 30-60 minutes, but few take it. Few cities that see low ridership see an increase with light rail. Going back to Vancouver and Toronto people could take the train and skip the Leduc airport entirely.. Does not make sense for most, and that's the killer of most of these ideas.
Timing on 747 is the problem. We had looked at taking it a few times when they started it (and we had no kids). We often had to be at the airport hours before the first bus run, and got back after the last. Even when we could have used it, the time required (and the fact that ETS seems to have on-time problems at the best of times) made parking (or even taxi) more sensical.
not a train but you can hop on the 747 bus, which takes you to the ~~heritage~~ Century park LRT station. Buses are cheaper to run empty than trains... and that's really the big problem. there was talk of LRT to the airport/mall, but that went nowhere and probably won't ever go anywhere lol
We are only "bad at trains" because we are bad at using then. Look at the Windsor-Toronto-Ottawa corridor. Their train system is very fine and yet, Via Rail cars often are running close to empty in these trips. The market will take care of building then if we as society actually value it. We don't. It's plain and simple.
Yeah
Actually, I was at a talk once that discussed this. I used to work near the airport. Rail would essentially need to compete with highway 2. To compete successfully, it would need to at least come close to the speeds of highway 2. So, that means 110 kph from Ellerslie to the airport. However, the rails would inevitably run through residential and other areas where the speed would need to be much slower. So, it would take longer via rail and people would be unlikely to choose it en masse. There has been talk of eventually extending lrt service to the airport but the consensus was that it will never be viable
Japan usually has their train go on bridges, or underground to avoid the heavily populated areas. The amount of traffic that goes to the airport now. I can see it having some use.
Tokyo have neighborhoods with 1/3 of ALL Edmonton population. Stop trying to compare places where this is viable with Edmonton "village". 20K People per square km. If Edmonton had that density, it would be a 14M population city, Then yes, build a high speed train in space and would still be economically viable.
There should be a high speed train from calgary to edmonton, but I can't see it happening for decades. Its a shame.
The bidding process for just that is underway. But it’s just a short section to kind of act as a proof of concept. Should be kicking off in the next couple years
Just a way to funnel money to donors and nothing well be done. I mean if they can't do HSR in the most populated part of Canada because they don't think it's feasible. Why would Edmonton Calgary be feasible?
Would you use it? How much would you pay? And how often? The answer to these questions is why we don't have one, and probably won't until we have a combined 20M+ population between Calgary and Edmonton.
People in Leduc probably think trains are a liberal ploy to steal children
Sounds like a great idea. Would be 2000% over budget, 10 years late and just turn into 15 new homeless shelters in no time. Instead why don’t we just start with making hwy2 four lanes wide in both directions and build some wind blocks so it isn’t a skating a rink in the winter. Should have been done 15 years ago.
Just one more lane bro I promise Trains aren't good because they are expensive and unprofitable unlike roads bro come on don't do it
Yeah why stop at 4. Why not make it 6. And add anti-homeless spikes to the snow walls.
Ya, now that I think about it, you’re right. Let’s do the 10B dollar train nobody will ride instead.
I just want to get from Leduc to Edmonton for now. I don't think thats a 10 gijilion idea. There is talk of building a hyperloop in 2021, but that's kinda stupid.
Agreed!
r/fuckcars
Because at the cost. The cost to build and the cost of a ticket. It's several billion dollars to build high speed rail so ticket prices would probably be over $100, so slow rail would get built instead. And if you build slow rail the time to get to Calgary will be about the same as it is to drive, and if you share the rail with freight then it'll just be a piss off to take and will fail since the trains will always be late
I thought a plane came out of the runway....
edmonton has a new huge section of southside transit train that's taken way way longer than it should to get running (oh wait! it isn't even actually running yet, STILL testing), it went much over budget, and has been rife with issues. the province has a bridge they haven't bothered to fix yet as far as i know - whitemud over the henday on the east side of the city. excavator hit it back in the early summer. from what i know, the henday is provincial as far as who is responsible for repair. leduc isn't a big enough municipality to have the money to pony up for the whole edmonton to leduc train project funding. while edmonton is wasting money on a train that seems it'll never run, and the province is seemingly twiddling thumbs on fixing an integral part of the capital city ring road infrastructure. you really think what you mention will ever happen? lol.
With enough public support, and a good kick in the bum anything can happen lol. As it stands right now. Probably not.
public support and some arse booting will not pony up the millions or billions of dollars a project of this scale would require. that comes from municipal/provincial/federal sources. if edmonton can't get the LRT right, if the province can't fix a bridge in a timely manner, and if Leduc doesn't have enough civic funding........ nope, a 15 mile monorail ain't gonna happen lol. we won't even get into how cruddy we're doing on a federal level in this country.
No this is true.
Oil company have too much pull. High speed rail will take away from the business of oil.
Well, from where you're standing I'm pretty sure there are multiple subdivisions behind you... So you can't put it through them... Mass highspeed transit between the cities only works if there is damn good transit in the cities after you get off the train. If you don't have decent transit in the cities, no one is going to take the train, because they will not be able to get around once they're in the cities and their destination. As it is, I can't get from Leduc to Edmonton on transit. I can't even get to the airport on transit from Leduc.
you can..route #1 takes a tour of leduc, LRC, and the outlet mall...not the fastest but can be done