Valley Line LRT traffic woes left to next council
Study of potential pinch points is ‘happening right now,’ Iveson says
It will be up to the next city council to rethink construction priorities and prepare for traffic woes when the Valley Line LRT opens in three short years.
Edmonton council members grilled administration for hours Tuesday over new data that predicts traffic backups at various points along the line.
But in the end, councillors simply received the report for information, content city officials will present a list of new priorities — road widening and intersection changes — to deal with any spillover congestion on other routes during the 2018 capital budget discussions.
“Precisely this kind of analysis is happening right now,” said Mayor Don Iveson, pointing to possible new left-turn or right-turn bays for 75 Street, other upgrades to that part of the inner ring road, and the grade separation Edmonton wants for the CN Rail crossings at 75 Street and 50 Street.
Impacts around other lines — like the 107 Avenue upgrades needed to handle spillover around the west LRT leg — will also be in the coming 10-year infrastructure priority list, said Adam Laughlin, the city’s head of infrastructure.
Edmonton’s Valley Line LRT between Mill Woods and downtown is scheduled to open in December 2020.
Councillors had only a high-level assessment of projected traffic impacts when they voted on the route and design. The fine detail was part of confidential contract negotiations with LRT bidders. The more detailed assessment — predicted queue lengths and wait times in metres and seconds — was released last week after an information request from the Edmonton Journal.
The Journal applied for the data early this summer.
After city lawyers cleared it for release, the Journal was told it could only have the data after it was given to council and staff put it on the agenda for Tuesday.
The public airing did give council a chance to re-evaluate certain pinch points. Ward 8 Coun. Ben Henderson said he now worries Strathearn residents living north of the LRT might get “boxed in” during the afternoon rush hour.
“It looks to me to be a bigger problem than I anticipated,” he said, asking staff to reassess if more traffic signals are needed on 85 Street, the only other neighbourhood exit.
Coun. Mike Nickel asked officials again about short-cutting issues and concerns that neighbourhoods near each station will get overwhelmed by parking. He was told those issue would be addressed when they arise.
Ward 5 Coun. Micheal Oshry said he’s concerned about how the city and train-operator TransEd will balance their interests as they run the line.
TransEd is committed to designing intersections that can meet Edmonton’s predicted traffic congestion targets. But when the train is running, the city is responsible for traffic congestion and signals. TransEd is responsible for running the train from Mill Woods to downtown in 29 minutes.
“There’s going to be some give and take there,” Oshry said, still hoping for a better explanation on how that balancing act will be handled.
LOOKING TO FUTURE TRACKS
Others looked ahead to the next lines. The city is finalizing a design for the west leg, still studying whether tracks should be raised above 149 Street and 178 Street in addition to 170 Street.
Coun. Micheal Walters argued the proposed south extension needs to be re-evaluated, too, with the tracks raised over 9 Avenue and 12 Avenue on 111 Street, in addition to going under 23 Avenue.
Iveson argued council has to keep some of these impacts in perspective. “The train is being blamed here for the performance of the intersections in 2044.”
That’s wrong, he said. Every major intersection in Edmonton may struggle with congestion in 2044 — the final date of Edmonton’s modelling — but that’s because the city is adding so many more people.
In the big picture, the train is part of the solution, said Iveson. “The train allows tens of thousands of people ... to travel by train,” he said. “You can widen roads up to a certain point, but you need something transformational.”
A new city council is to be elected Oct. 16.