Bombardier unveils light rail vehicle for Valley Line
The train should soon be in the station.
Beginning in July, Bombardier expects to ship the first new Valley Line light rail vehicles and begin static testing (when the rail car is on the track, but doesn’t move).
By September, it will begin dynamic testing on the rail car (meaning it will move) on a 1.7-kilometre stretch along the route from downtown to Mill Woods.
“The next time I return to Edmonton is planned for the summer, and that time I will also bring something better — the actual, fully operational first new south Valley Line LRT vehicle,” Benoît Brossoit, president of Bombardier Transportation’s Americas region, said Friday.
Brossoit was speaking at a public showing of a mock-up of the new low-floor light rail vehicles destined for the Valley Line, on display at Bonnie Doon Shopping Centre that’s on the future LRT route.
The plan calls for passengers to start boarding trains on the Valley Line on Dec. 15, 2020.
Each train is expected to have as many as seven cars and can accommodate 348 passengers, seated and standing. They boast wide floors and doors, and a low floor for easy access by people in wheelchairs.
Manufacturing of the trains has begun at Bombardier’s Kingston factory in Ontario, Brossoit said.
“We are on time and on budget,” Brossoit said.
Mayor Don Iveson said Friday this kind of public transportation will transform communities.
“It changes the way you interact with your city, changes the way you interact with your neighbours, it creates opportunities for redevelopment large and small,” he said.
People sometimes scratch their heads and ask why the city is spending so much money on this, Iveson said.
“Why are we disrupting people so much with this construction, why are we building it this way — why aren’t we building it a different way,” he said.
After considering all of those “difficult questions” over the past 10 years, Iveson said, the city is persisting with LRT because traffic congestion is going to get worse unless people are given alternatives.
“And, LRT remains the best alternative,” he said.