Councillor pitches gondola as potential alternative for Whyte Avenue LRT
Edmonton now has a city councillor pitching a gondola — but for Whyte Avenue, not the river valley.
Running a gondola instead of LRT to connect the new Bonnie Doon Mall LRT station with the University of Alberta campus and stops in between could be a much cheaper, faster and less invasive solution, said Coun. Tim Cartmell in an interview Monday.
It would be “complementary to the (traffic) system, not compromising it.”
City officials are in the middle of designing a new LRT line for the high-density corridor, arguing the buses are already full during peak hours.
This could create a key transit connection between the Valley Line — scheduled to open in December 2020 — and a major employment and education hub at the university campus.
But residents and commuters worry running low-floor LRT will take too many lanes of traffic or parking. It’s already a congested corridor.
At the same time, several residents are pitching various forms of a gondola.
Gary Poliquin and Amber Poliquin just won the Edmonton Project idea competition last week with their gondola idea — an estimated $25-million-to-$50-million project for an eight-car, 3.2-kilometre line from Old Strathcona to downtown.
Other residents have been arguing for a gondola parallel to the river, said Cartmell, and Edmonton’s citizen-led transit advisory board has a new report endorsing gondolas as a viable transit option coming to committee in late April.
“We think it could be a viable solution,” said advisory board chairman Izak Roux, “and it’s not that big a project it takes 20 years to wait for provincial or federal funding.”
Cartmell said he wants a solution that answers existing transit needs, not another novelty item.
But if a gondola down Whyte Avenue works well and attracts high ridership numbers, the city could create another spur line across the river. It would be less expensive than building a new bridge.
“It can be done at 10 per cent of the cost (of building LRT) and ski hills put these things in on the back of a mountain in a summer,” Cartmell said, adding the most sophisticated versions can move thousands of people an hour, which is getting close to the capacity of LRT.
Gondolas have been popular on ski hills for decades. Now urban gondolas are also gaining popularity in mountain towns around the world, but also in cities that face man-made constraints.
Portland has a similar system serving the waterfront. Other cities have ideas afloat — in New York City to connect Williamsburg to Lower Manhattan, in Chicago to support tourism along the riverfront and in Austin as a cheaper alternative to light rail.
Even Disney World has a new urban gondola system in development.
Organizers with The Edmonton Project — a group of private individuals looking a good ideas for Edmonton — said they signed up significant new talent to their board for a technical feasibility study on the Poliquins’ idea.
Terry Gray from Colliers Project Leaders; Amber Niemeier, director of advocacy with the YWCA; and Baerach Anderson from the law firm Prowse Chowne are all now involved. Plus, they’ve had two gondola companies contact them, with one Toronto-based expert now lined up to visit Edmonton on April 6.
“It’s like I’m taking a crash course on gondolas,” said organizer Jeffrey Hansen-Carlson, who was surprised when judges picked the most technical and capital-intensive project. But other cities have built these as private-public partnerships, he said.
A gondola on Whyte Avenue would be better than raised LRT, Hansen-Carlson said.
But not everyone is jumping on board.
Coun. Ben Henderson said his first question is whether a gondola has the capacity to replace LRT.
Portland-based transit consultant Jarrett Walker said anything elevated will likely run into local opposition, especially in a heritage area. European cities address congestion on these types of tightly constrained streets by running a tram in the street. It’s less complicated for trams to make multiple stops than gondolas.
A tram might take away a lane of traffic, but planners need to stop counting cars, trains and buses, he said. They need to make decisions simply on what moves the most people.