13 area mayors sign on to regional transit authority
13 mayors sign on, with working group now finalizing governance structure
An effort to create a regional transit authority took a big step forward Thursday as all 13 mayors in the Edmonton Metropolitan Region signed on.
The effort started years ago as an Edmonton- St. Albert project, but on Thursday every municipality in the region got involved in the second stage. The working group is now finalizing the governance structure, funding, picking routes and setting up a legal framework for co-operation.
“It’s past the exploratory stage,” said Edmonton mayor Don Iveson, celebrating an effort he started working on as a councillor with then St. Albert mayor Nolan Crouse. “We’re not talking another 30 years of discussion on this. It’s conceivable we could get this done in this (four-year political) term.”
The transit authority will likely start by consolidating inter-municipal bus routes, but could go much further and have one bus system for the entire region.
Transit riders can see buses from St. Albert, Sherwood Park and Edmonton all running half-empty on Edmonton’s streets. The new system would likely have the same number of buses, but running in ways that serve all riders better, Iveson said. The region has nine transit systems now.
The working group got a $3.7 million provincial grant to cover the costs of developing the transit authority. That means the only cost to each municipality at this point is staff time.
Wes Brodhead, a St. Albert city councillor and acting chairman of the regional transit services working group, said the cities involved agreed to keep the double-majority voting system the regional governance board already uses.
That means a decision needs two-thirds of the municipal representatives on-side, and those votes need to represent two-thirds of transit users and investment in the system.
“Edmonton, being the largest provider of transit services in the region, was of course going to have a large say,” Brodhead said. “But that doesn’t mean that the smaller providers won’t have a say. They will as well.”
It’s past the exploratory stage. We’re not talking another 30 years of discussion on this.