Night owl bus service starts Sunday
Shift workers, bar patrons get service to 3 a.m.
Edmonton will join the big leagues when it rolls out late night transit service Sunday, says Coun. Andrew Knack.
“It’s about time a city of our size has service like this,” he said, making the announcement at a downtown pub Monday. The new service will see four existing routes keep running until 3 a.m. and a new route that mirrors the LRT line from downtown to Clareview. The routes are 4, 1, 8 and 9 connecting to Northgate, Clareview, Abbottsfield, Capilano, Mill Woods, Century Park and West Edmonton Mall.
“When you get to a certain size, you really start to expect a certain level of service,” said Knack, who started lobbying for the service again a year ago after spending a night with police officers on Jasper and Whyte avenues.
Heading to his car at 2:30 a.m. he was struck by the number of people who just assumed buses were still running.
“There were groups stopped at every single bus stop waiting for buses that were never going to pick them up,” he said.
Starting Sunday, the buses will run every half-hour from 1 a.m. to 3 a.m., seven days a week.
The service should help shift workers as well as bar patrons, said Angela Turner of Responsible Hospitality Edmonton.
She participated in a pilot project for 15 weeks in 2012 where one route ran two nights a week from Whyte Avenue to Southgate Mall. It wasn’t the party bus people worried it would be, she said. They had staff on every bus. Out of the 2,000 people who took the bus, one vomited, one started smoking and a group of young people serenaded everyone to a rendition of “The Wheels on the Bus.”
When late night service starts Sunday, bus drivers will drop passengers off anywhere along the route, as long as it’s safe, and buses will be timed to ensure people are not waiting on the street long between transfers.
The new service will cost $1.3 million annually. Transit officials are expecting it to carry 4,500 passengers a week.
Al Gothjelpsen, co-owner of The Pint on 109th Street, said he regularly hears patrons asking how to get home. Many, especially those from out of town, are shocked to learn fighting for a cab is their only option.
“People come here, have a great time, then they leave and that’s when the suffering begins,” he said. “We’ve been fighting for this for a decade. This is huge.”
Maps and more details are available at takeETS.com/ owl.
The city is also starting peak hour service in several neighbourhoods next week including Windermere, The Orchards, Tamarack and Griesbach. A new route will also run to the new Edmonton Remand Centre on the city’s north end.