Edmonton looking at ways to help bus riders spend less time in traffic: city report

CBC

24-02-2025

The City of Edmonton is considering a host of measures to help make some bus routes more efficient, after new metrics showed riders on several top routes are spending too much time sitting in traffic while on board.
City administration is weighing measures that would allow buses to bypass problem intersections, including adding bus lanes, changing traffic signals and implementing parking restrictions.
"I see it; many of the buses right now are standing room only. We've hit record numbers of transit riders," Coun. Michael Janz told CBC News.
Provincial population estimates suggest nearly 1.2 million people lived in Edmonton in 2024. The city's population has risen by about 117,000 since 2022, data shows, putting more pressure on traffic and transit services as a result.
Ridership increased 15 per cent from 2023 to 2024. It's up 12 per cent from 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a report that will be submitted to the city's urban planning committee at an upcoming meeting.
"When you have a full bus of people standing there, sitting behind a few cars that may only have one or two people in them, that's not really fair to the folks on the bus. That's not really enticing to try and get more people out of cars onto the bus," Janz said.
A misconception he often hears is that measures like bus lanes slow traffic down, he said. But the goal is to make transit more efficient and desirable, so that there are fewer motor vehicles on the road.
Daniel Witte, chair of the Edmonton Transit Riders, a local advocacy group, described the program as "one of the most important" the city has taken on to speed up transit.
He's excited to see specific solutions for nine priority transit corridors that were identified as hotspots for bus delays.
"We really like these targeted measures because they're able to look very specifically at somewhere that may have otherwise been left behind, or forgotten about, and apply the measures that we really need," Witte said.
The city report says some bus corridors that overlap with major construction projects, like the Valley Line West LRT expansion, were excluded from the shortlist.
The city has a separate long-term strategy for similar traffic management measures along roads like Jasper Avenue, 97th Street, Whyte Avenue — among others. These were outlined in a memo to council in December and are part of the city's bus rapid transit system.