EDMONTON – A proposal for regional public transit in the Edmonton area is leading to some debate.
The City of St. Albert is proposing the City of Edmonton take a preliminary look at merging systems.
St. Albert Transit (or StAT) officially began in the mid 1980s. It currently has about one million users a year, many of whom make trips to and from Edmonton.
StAT already runs a number of buses into Edmonton, but now there is talk of taking the system to the next level.
“Everything is so close,” said St. Albert transit passenger Curtis Firby.
“It should all be one I think.”
A motion was put forward at St. Albert City Council to consider the idea of collaborating with the City of Edmonton when it comes to transit, or even potentially creating one transit authority that would serve both municipalities.
“There are some advantages to customers to be able to have one entity – whether it be the fare strategy, whether it be park and ride, or whether it just be U-pass, which is already an example of working together,” said St. Albert Mayor Nolan Crouse.
While collaboration could present an opportunity to find efficiencies within the system, there are also some challenges.
“There is concern about losing autonomy, I think probably more so for St. Albert,” said Crouse.
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“It’s an interesting overture,” added Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson, “but at this point, we have some significant decisions to make with our own strategic review of transit.”
Transit has been discussed at the Capital Region Board in the past, but the debate hasn’t progressed too far.
For Iveson, it comes down to how costs and revenues would be shared.
“It’s a little difficult to look at taking a quarter-billion-dollar-a-year service on an operating basis and a multi-billion-dollar capital program – when you include LRT – and imagine how we’re going to slam that all together as a region,” he said.
The proposal is still in its very early stages. Crouse describes the current point as dipping a toe in the water.
“This has got a lot of politics involved, not just because there are two jurisdictions, but there’s a lot of money, the stakes are high,” he explained.
Regional transit services are not unheard-of. In metro Vancouver, Translink serves more than 20 communities.
With files from Vinesh Pratap, Global News
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