The article mentions LRT and other projects that could go ahead because of this... Maybe that gets you your rapid transit to the airport.
I also wonder if this is why the province was brought in on the CoC/CSEC talk. We thought it was west end clean up by maybe it's this and that or neither.
Let's walk down the potential benefits for an international sporting event:
1. Exposure -- Commonwealth games are pretty third tier for this; can you tell me without looking who the last few hosts or the next host are? Maybe they're more of a thing in Australia (love their sports!) and the UK (love their monarchy!), but otherwise not going to generate that much attention.
2014 Glasgow, 2018 Gold Coast AU, 2022 Birmingham, 2026 state of Victoria AU
2. Sports infrastructure -- You need a stadium, but one that can hold a running track and that's the one in Edmonton; I'm sure it could use upgrades, but nothing for us in that (presumably Lindsay Park would be upgraded to host aquatic events?) No need for a big arena; there are indoor sports, like badminton and table tennis, but we don't need 20,000 seats to watch those. A lot of the sports infrastructure we would need would be pretty useless; netball, lawn bowls, field hockey -- not particularly popular and two of them aren't Olympic sports, so their sports legacy is mostly in training athletes for future Commonwealth games, which we don't care about, see point 1.
3. Other infrastructure -- what the province actually could use is an inexpensive medium-speed rail connection between Calgary and Edmonton; in theory the existing track would work (although in practice the railroads missed the day they taught sharing in kindergarten). But I feel like that would be a hard reach for 2030 if the plans were on the books, much less coming up with them from scratch. Otherwise, airport rail is vastly overrated. I suppose we could build a little social housing, but the province could put in a rent control law tomorrow for free and achieve a bigger effect for a few billion less.
The one and only city that I’ve ever known to host a commonwealth games was Edmonton, due to Commonwealth Stadium being named after the games, but if it wasn’t for the stadium I probably wouldn’t even have known that they were hosted in Edmonton.
