Transit kerfuffle
While I can grasp, mentally, that the southward expansion of Edmonton’s Light Rail Transit (LRT) system — to Southgate Shopping Centre in 2010, and to Century Park in 2011 (IIRC) — is a good thing in a long-term sense, I think it’s worth noting that the present-day adverse effects of the thing are…many and various, and annoying as all heck.
Oh, who am I kidding? The appropriate and most accurate term for describing the situation hails from the time of the Vietnam War; begins with “cluster,” and does NOT end with a word describing a type of air-delivered ordinance.
But I digress.
The thing is, it’s not just the currently-in-development LRT that is annoying. Granted, there are annoyances there: the South Campus station platform is currently being expanded to handle five-car trains, which means all foot traffic onto the platform has to enter it’s not-particularly-wide northern gates. Which, when “foot traffic” means “a few hundred university students unfamiliar with the city or, evidently, the idea of mass transit,” is painful enough. What makes it worse is that the terminal’s designers didn’t put in…I don’t know…a foot bridge or pedestrian underpass between the LRT station and the associated bus terminal. The end result of this oversight is that the aforementioned sea of human beings ends in having to stand IN THE BUS LANE between the LRT station and bus terminal, thus blocking the arrival of any number of buses for…well, that depends om whether a train is arriving.
Yes, that’s right, the pedestrian traffic must also cross the tracks on which the LRT runs. And unlike buses, trains have a de facto right of way and thus do not stop for crossing people. And so, when a train is going by, the teeming mass of people must meekly stand by — IN THE BUS LANE, remember — while the train arrives.
Traffic congestion, you say? Well, not in the same sense as a busy street at rush hour, but…I trust the good reader gets the point.
And because it’s not bad enough that the LRT station is badly designed, there is also the matter of the bus schedules, especially where departures from Southgate are concerned. You have to see it to believe it, but it seems to be the case that every useful northbound bus (the buses that would, say, go to the aforementioned LRT station, or to downtown Edmonton proper) departs WITHIN A SIXTY SECOND WINDOW. Every morning, I get to watch between six and eight buses, all but one of which would get me where I need to go (that is: work), leave the terminal as I am crossing the parking lot that stands between my house and the buses.
Granted, the being just a couple minutes too late is my own fault. Even so, why all the near-simultaneous departures? Wouldn’t it serve people better if there was some staggering in the departure times, especially on buses bound for the same destination?
Once the LRT gets to Southgate next April, these oddities will hopefully go away. I get the feeling, however, that such wishful thinking is largely unwarranted. At least the Southgate LRT station has footbridges, and doesn’t require would-be train passengers to cross 111th Street at ground level.
