Edmonton was apparently the first Canadian city to have public transit on rails. Unfortunately, the city had no motivation to create a network of lines so they left it forever with the one established line that connects the university campuses with the city centre and the stadiums. Good if you are a student or attend a sports event but pretty useless otherwise. The most recent change involved extending that line by two stops to the south. Then Edmonton started planning more lines a while ago because they were wanting to apply to host the Expo 2017. The convenience of their residents obviously was not strong enough of an argument, but the invasion by tourist for an exposition did the trick. The dream shattered two days ago - the federal government is unwilling to contribute $700 to 800 million to Edmonton's bid, so there will be no bid. Two things bother me here.
1. A bloke from the Taxpayers Association said he was glad that somebody showed fiscal responsibility. What? Did he just refer to the same government that decided early this year to spend $16 Billion on military air crafts, the government that gives the by far biggest chunk of its foreign aid to the second most corrupt country in the world, Afghanistan, and the government that considers every year refugee claims from US citizens, costing taxpayers millions of dollars, even though none of the claims ever gets approved since the US is a democracy? That's not sanity. Spending the money instead on renewable energy, fighting poverty and well, maybe even on an Expo would show sanity.
2. I'm worried the two suggested LRT lines will not be built, not at all, or at least not until 2017. I'm pretty sure the money from the feds was meant to be used on that project as well. So will Edmonton not have ever fast and reliable public transit? What a misery.
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