The Missing Transit in This Fast-Growing Canadian Province

A downtown to downtown HSR line between Edmonton and Calgary with stops at the airport and Red Deer is the exact type of thing VIA should have been ordered to build 20 years ago, the fact it didn't and now the HSR line between the two cities is being done by a new provincial entity should be considered an unparalleled failure in Canadian transit policy.

In Calgary, we should have spent the last 40 years OBSESSED with expanding our LRT system because of its success! But there’s no reason why we can’t start now!

As a Calgarian, I couldn't agree more that there's so much potential for good rail connectivity! The current idea of some intermediate connection between the Green and Blue lines is definitely not the way to go. Some kind of master planned railway station at YYC just like you mentioned would be an absolute dream.

Denver built a light rail to its quite remote airport, 37 km from its central Union Station. It's a matter of will.

As a Melburnian, I felt that, ahahaha. I hate driving to the airport, and I want a train link so badly, especially after I experienced Sydney's airport train link for the first time.

"X thing in Canada needs rail" can be said about sooooooo many situations. If Canada wants go low carbon, rail is super efficient. For some reason though... "rail" is for getting commuters from the suburbs to the downtown core - and only in major cities. Considering how Canada used to be absolutely covered in rail, the fact that cargo and inter-city rail are just not taken seriously is kind of disappointing.

This is such low hanging fruit, it could be done tomorrow! Calgary already has great transit (I'm 100% serious, especially considering on a per capita basis), but there's almost nothing holding us back: ROW is already secure, terrain is easy to work with, and there's huge latent demand.   Please keep talking about Calgary. The more these ideas circulate, the better chance we have of seeing it realised!

It wasn't that long ago that cab companies had exclusive contracts on service to YYC. For instance, until 2021 Associated Cabs was the only company able to have cars waiting at the terminal to pick up passengers (you have the choice of three different providers now, but the airport fees mean departing from the airport is much more expensive). The same company tried very hard to get the one express bus killed, and fought very hard against the legalization of ride-sharing.

I'm an air traffic controller at YVR, and I live downtown. The SkyTrain is a fucking saviour for me. I still enjoy driving, but commuter traffic is not driving

As someone who lives in the Edmonton area but is a dual citizen of Finland, I would love to see high speed rail from Edmonton to Calgary and LRT service to the suburb communities around Edmonton. Finland has excellent rail connection. I can get to most places in the country in less than 9 hours from Helsinki airport, with options for sleeper trains as well. An airport train for Edmonton would be a dream as I hate having to pay to park my car at the airport for several days or over a week. In places like Vancouver or Helsinki, you can get from downtown to the airport easily and quickly. Having these connections will make people drive less and use public transit more.

As someone who lived in New Delhi during the Delhi Metro expansion project, Opening of the Airport express line connecting New Delhi station (NDLS) and IGI Airport had created a huge buzz in the city. That cut down travel times like never before. Do you know? You can even check-in your baggage at the New Delhi Metro Station and go baggage free to on the Airport line.

It’s a truly glorious time to be an Edmontonian urbanist. Both RM Transit and Oh The Urbanity! posted videos about transit in Edmonton and Calgary one after another. On top of that theValley Line West in Edmonton is making good progress! Despite it being an odd design being both cross city rail and relatively low speed low floor rail, I’m very excited!

OMG! He's throwing transit shade to Melbourne!?! As if being the transit nerd wasn't enough!!! 😉

I love living in Calgary, but it's hard to be an urbanist here, and it's unforgivable that there's no train to the airport considering how many passengers it serves.

And the only thing I do not hear mentioning, is the type of airport station like Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, where there's NO airport shuttle to the city (yet, one is discussing about it), but a plain simple ordinairy RAILWAY station, where there are 4 Intercities per hour to Amsterdam Central, 4 Intercities going to Amsterdm Zuid (South), and in between 4 local trains to either station in Amsterdam, not to mention a High Speed Train to Rotterdam (4x per hour, maybe less now), and local and Intercity trains to The Hague! And a reasonable bus station, with buses going to the surroundings of Schiphol, including Amsterdam! Like I said, no airport shuttle station, just an ordinairy NS Railway station like any other big city station in the Netherllands.

Interesting topic. Near and dear to my heart as a Calgarian transit lover and non-car-owner. I have always struggled to decide how high a priority I think an airport-rail link should be. Calgary has so many transit shortcomings, and they can't all be dealt with at once. I think I'd prefer Calgary (and Edmonton) to focus more on massively improving frequency on the transit that already exists than on expanding the system. But that being said, capital funding seems a lot easier to access than operational funding.

calgary is having a public hearing on eliminating single-family zoning on april 22…. can we just borrow you for a day please???

I mentioned this in the comments once before. Alberta is planning a regional rail service akin to Metrolinx. The first step is creating regional connectors from their airports to downtown, plus that airport to Banff train, like you mentioned. Extending the Capital Line may be an okay solution for people living on the south side of Edmonton, but the Capital Line is slow. What I'm really hoping is for the area between the Anthony Henday ring road and Whyte Avenue can be redeveloped. I've been in contact with some of the people working on this, to share ideas. Not only does this airport link get people to and from the airport, but it has the potential to create an alignment that high speed and regional service uses as well. However, if they extend the tunnel they'll need to get downtown, to Yellowhead trail, they could connect most of the metro region towns with little more than existing alignments. A HUGE factor in this is that Alberta is expected to add an additional 2 million residents in the next 20 years, mostly in the metro regions. So now is the opportunity that Alberta can remake its image. A big issue I see is the lack of a comprehensive real estate strategy around stations. I do see "ToD", but I think it has become too much of a catch phrase, which typically includes high rises directly adjacent to the station, then sprawl, just a few hundred meters away. Rather, I'd like to see whole new street layouts that radiate out from stations, to maximize the walksheds around stations. Anyway, I've been in contact with a few of the planners from both the province and city, so you may be interested in some of the insights for your HSR video.

I visited Edmonton for the first time last year, and I couldn’t believe how far their airport was from downtown. They definitely need a rail link! I used the express bus which drops you at the closest rail stop (Century Park at the time) to transfer onto a train that goes downtown. It took forever, and it was kind of expensive for the quality/frequency of the service. But with the airport being so far from the city, it made the cost of a taxi/uber unjustifiable. Also took a bus from downtown to the West Edmonton Mall which was… interesting. At least that has a new rail service coming online very soon. Seems like they’re making progress overall, but an airport link seems like a no-brainer.

Here in The Netherlands we have Amsterdam Schiphol Airport (Wich is actually situated in the municipality of Haarlemmermeer) wich is well served with multiple trainroutes and intercity busses (BRT). It would be even better if the Amsterdam metroline 52, known as the North-Southline, would be extended to the airport. But ofcourse the funding is what keeps the decisionmakers from taking action. Instead, they are widening highways... sigh.