Edmonton still on board with regional transit plan, city council agrees

Edmonton has committed to a regional public transit plan scheduled to start next spring.

Council voted 10-3 on Monday to support the first phase of the network linking seven municipalities with Edmonton across eleven routes.

The system will connect Edmonton, Fort Saskatchewan, Spruce Grove, St. Albert, Leduc, Beaumont, Stony Plain and Devon.

Phase one is estimated to cost the City of Edmonton at least $7.2 million a year but the Edmonton Metropolitan Transit Services Commission will present a specific budget in the fall.

Andrew Knack, Edmonton's council representative on the EMTSC, said the plan will offer transit alternatives to a region that's still car-dependent.

"Without regional transit, everyone is going to continue to drive and one of the biggest causes of climate change will be unaddressed," Knack said.

Erin Rutherford, councillor for Ward Anirniq, said despite lingering questions about each municipality's contribution, she supports the move toward a regional system and the first phase of the plan.

Though the cost will be up for debate in the fall, she noted.

"Depending on what that number comes back as and depending on what other competing priorities we have for operational dollars, I am not going to commit today to actually funding this at budget time," Rutherford said.

Some councillors opposed

Aaron Paquette, along with Michael Janz and Jo-Anne Wright, voted against the plan as proposed.

The Ward Dene councillor said regional cooperation will be important for the long term but the plan as presented has too many unanswered questions.

"We don't have ridership numbers as a projection," he said. "We have no idea who's going to use this with what frequency,"

Some areas of Edmonton are in desperate need of better service and should come before the city invests in a regional system, Paquette said.

"It's really hard for me to go back to my community right now and say, 'We are putting more money to regional transit than we're putting into local transit.'"

Knack said the plan includes enhancing service on some existing local routes provided by ETS.

"This actually adds service hours to Edmonton. To me that is clearly better service, right now," he said. "And it's going to help strengthen the region."

In a memorandum of understanding in 2019, 13 municipalities were included in the plan. Strathcona County was the biggest transit provider to back out.

Some councillors suggested Edmonton could direct some projected budget for the regional system to local routes.

Carrie Hotton-MacDonald, branch manager of Edmonton Transit Services, told council Monday that it would be possible to add weekend and off-peak service to existing routes or add bus service to neighborhoods currently in on-demand zones.

Job anxieties

Operators for the regional routes have not yet been decided.

Mayor Amarjeet Sohi, a former bus driver, said he believes in a regional system but has concerns about cost and the effects on staff.

Sohi said he's hearing concerns from transit operators on their future work if the commission contracts out some routes.

"There's a real worry that their jobs will be privatized," Sohi said. "Perceived or real, I don't know, but they feel anxious."

Hotton-MacDonald said staff are talking about job security.

"They are very, very, very worried about this," she said.

"The anxiety is not just about the potential for privatization, there's anxiety about the consideration of no longer being a direct City of Edmonton employee."