I was encouraged to hear this week that St. Albert Mayor Nolan Crouse, the chair of a new sub-committee of the Capital Region Integrated Growth Management Planning Board tasked with creating a public transit plan for the capital region, that this could be the beginnings of a unified regional transit system.
As I’ve written in the past, I think a regional public transit service replacing the three current municipal transit services – Edmonton Transit Services, St. Albert Transit, and Strathcona County Transit – would be a great first step in fostering cooperation, eliminating expensive duplication in services, and could bode well for creating a more efficient transit service for the entire region. With Edmonton, St. Albert, and Strathcona County already proving that they can work together on important issues such as the Universal Bus Pass (U-Pass) for University of Alberta and Grant MacEwan College students, a future regional transit service doesn’t seem that unlikely.
