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Today served by the relatively limited-service Edmonton LRT, which dates back to 1978 and is currently undergoing a series of expansion projects, Edmonton's light rail legacy goes back to the city's origins, not unlike that of Calgary's to the south. Equally shortlived, the history of the Edmonton Radial Railway (ERR), which ran from 1908 to 1951, effectively set the local gold standard for public transit, its reach and public utility having not been matched in the more than six decades since its demise. In this edition of Once Upon a Tram, the long-reaching legacy of one of Canada's shortest-lived radial rail systems will be explored in depth, as we look at the Edmonton Radial Railway as a blueprint upon which the future of the Alberta capital's transit legacy now depends.
Begun in 1908, just four years after Edmonton was formally declared a city, the Edmonton Radial Railway had first been proposed in 1893 though its actual planning and construction were delayed by more than a decade as the small Prairie town continued to grow. In that same year, the Government of Alberta passed the Radial Tramway Act, which permitted the City of Edmonton to provide tram service to communities within an 80-mile radius of City Hall.
A success from the start, the ERR became known as the "Pride of Edmonton," well worth every penny of the $224,000 it cost to construct. Running its first streetcars up and down Jasper Ave, the ERR proved to be a popular service. City Hall's foresight in purchasing the neighbouring Strathcona Radial Tramway Company, tracks, trams, and all, for $135,000, proved to be a smart move considering the years of rapid expansion that would follow the service's public debut on November 9, 1908.
Following amalgamation in 1912, which saw the City of Edmonton absorb the former municipality of Strathcona, just across the North Saskatchewan River to the south, the expansion of the ERR hastened. The creation of the city's first streetcar suburbs, along with a general rapid rise in population from 8,000 in 1904 to 54,000 in 1914, necessitated the system's subsequent speedy build out.
With six distinct routes criss-crossing the city over a total length of 77 kilometres at its peak in 1930, the ERR effectively reached every corner of the city and much of its suburbs, able to carry passengers from 127th Avenue NW to 76th Avenue NW, from 124th Street SW to 50th Street NW, and everywhere in between.
During the interwar period, the ERR reached its zenith and enjoyed a short-lived period of relative calm and self-assurance prior to the entry of the diesel coach and trolleybus. Beginning in the 1930s and into the 1940s, these began to replace the trams one line at the time, until they had all but disappeared from Edmonton city streets by the end of the 1940s.
In 1932, bus service took over the 102nd Avenue route, followed by another streetcar service withdrawal in 1939 from the Low Level Bridge, then followed once more by another removal in 1940 from the Bonnie Doon route.
While the outbreak of war in 1939 worked to slow the pace of streetcar retirement, the half decade which came after the war's end in 1945 saw its demise unfold one route at time, until the occasion of the ERR's final run on September 1, 1951. Attended by a crowd of roughly 1,000 curious onlookers, Edmonton Radial Railway Car No. 1, once known as the "Pride of Edmonton," performed one last trip down Jasper Avenue, terminating at the Strathcona Garage and a grand reception. After just 43 years of service, the Edmonton Radial Railway was no more, and Edmonton's streetcar era came to a swift and decisive close.
Following the demise of the streetcar, the City of Edmonton entered the postwar years with a transportation scheme in keeping with the times that put a significant emphasis on the proliferation of the automobile. Car ownership levels by this time were high enough to warrant a shift away from public transit as a primary means of transportation. While diesel buses and trolleybuses continued to run, more often than not along former streetcar routes, the public appetite for a return to light rail would not return for many, many years.
In 1978, more than a quarter century after the demise of the Edmonton Radial Railway, the Edmonton Transit System (ETS) debuted its modern LRT service with the original 6.9-kilometre Capital Line opened in time for the 1978 Commonwealth Games. Over the next decade the ETS completed a series of extensions, pushing service further and further out from downtown into the suburbs. The north-south Capital Line grew along with demand as Edmonton's suburbs continued to grow. In 2015, the Metro Line began service, connecting the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) to downtown. Currently running a total length of 24 kilometres, the two-line, 18-station Edmonton LRT network is set to expand further, with the addition of the under-construction Valley Line and additional expansion projects on both the Capital Line and Metro Line now in the process of moving forward.
Set to add an additional 27 kilometres of light rail to the existing network, the finished product has the potential to more than double the network as it stands today, bringing the new total track length up to 51 kilometres. The highly tentative figure is still well short of the 77-kilometre streetcar network that was once capable of ferrying passengers to and from every corner of the city. Today conceived more or less as a commuter service, the Edmonton LRT operates much less as a neighbourhood-to-neighbourhood community-building service than did its predecessor, as the Edmonton Radial Railway was part of the impetus for many of the inner city neighbourhoods and commercial districts that give the city its urban character today. While only time can tell how the current and future expansion efforts will work to transform the city, the latest developments can be viewed as a step in the right direction, the reintroduction of light rail transit to Edmonton city streets part of the city's ongoing metropolitan transformation.
SkyriseCities will return soon with a new edition of Once Upon a Tram, which will take an in-depth look at the transit legacy of a city near you. In the meantime, feel free to join the conversation in the comments section below. Got an idea for this series? Let us know!
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