Edmonton Journal

TRANSIT TO AIRPORT ESSENTIAL

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It’s one thing for Edmonton to call itself a big city. It’s quite another to act like one. And providing citizens and visitors convenient, safe and affordable public transit to and from the airport is acting like a big city. Think of major centres around the world and how easy they make it for travellers arriving at or heading to the local airport.

In London, one can take the Tube to Heathrow; In San Francisco, many air passengers take BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit); In Vancouver, there’s the SkyTrain and in Chicago, the “L” train gets you to the airport.

Edmonton’s Route 747 isn’t quite up to the same standard, mostly because it’s a bus and not a train. But until something better comes along, this modest $2-million-a-year express connector is still a must-have for a city whose airport sits 30 kilometres away from its downtown.

For many air travellers, it’s by far the most economical way to travel between the city and Edmonton Internatio­nal Airport. The same can be said for people who never leave the ground but work for the airport or its many shops, restaurant­s and other businesses.

When a sprawling new outlet mall opens in May, the need for cheap and reliable transporta­tion to the airport will only take off. That shopping magnet is expected to create at least 1,000 full-time and part-time jobs and attract shoppers from around the region. Not all of them own vehicles or can afford to take a shuttle or a cab regularly.

Edmonton’s community services committee made the right call Monday in passing a motion that would see Route 747 continue running until at least April. If approved by council as a whole, the city would allocate a one-time boost of $125,000 to maintain the bus’s frequency until then. Users would also have to pay a fare that would be doubled in price to $10 from $5. Even then, it would still be the most economical way to get to and from the airport.

The extra cost will be a hardship to some but it’s a more palatable solution than reducing service. Maintainin­g the frequency of service is critical to keeping the route viable and useful.

The stop-gap funding was necessitat­ed by the expiry last April of an annual $500,000 subsidy from the airport authority.

This makeshift measure and hard timeline gives urgency to talks with the airport authority, the City of Leduc, County of Leduc and Beaumont to keep it going in the long term, perhaps as part of the region’s first integrated transit system.

Now, that would really be acting like a big city.

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