Page 4 - Edmonton’s Valley Line Southeast LRT

Millbourne Woodvale Stop + LRV on tracks
LRV moving through intersection
66 St and 34 Ave
4 5
Gentile explains that the Valley Line LRT is built on
an entirely new principle—an urban-style LRT. This
means it has more frequent stops and smaller-scale
stops. “The trains run basically at community (traffic)
speeds and orient towards moving people from stop
to stop within the network, not outside the network.”
Given this philosophy, Edmonton will use the
transportation network as a way of building up
and densifying the city to prepare Edmonton for
an eventual population of 2 million people. “It goes
hand-in-hand with a changing view of what the
city was going to be and how it would function
and that's the critical importance of the line,”
says Gentile. “These criteria put greater value on
community environments than had been used
before.”
Chris Gentile (Valley Line Technical Manager, LRT Projects, Integrated Infrastructure Services) & Quinn Nicholson
(Discipline Lead for Communications and Public Relations)
The LRT line is being built in multiple stages, with
this Southeast stage being built first due to the fact
that the Valley Line will need its own maintenance
facility, says Quinn Nicholson, Discipline Lead for
Communications and Public Relations. “This stage
will have 11 street-level stops, a new bridge spanning
the North Saskatchewan River, and an interchange
linking to the Capital Line and Metro Line.”
An LRT is kind of a Goldilocks happy medium
scenario in terms of building cost and ridership,
says Nicholson. “Cities get the slightly lower
capital cost compared to an underground metro,
but you get a higher frequency of usage and lower
maintenance and operations costs than you would
with bus rapid transit.”