ETS
15 ETS buses were parked in front of a grocery chain's stores as a visible reminder and viable repository for donations to Edmonton's Food Bank. What started as a small ETS employee-led campaign and in its 29th year has grown to be one of the largest collectors of food donations and third-party fundraisers. ETS employees see the need everyday and the Stuff a Bus Campaign gives them another opportunity to help.
Edmonton councillors past and present have grandiose plans for Edmonton Transit but ridership has increasingly fallen short of generating the revenues needed to pay for those grandiose plans. The goal was to have Edmontonians take 50 per cent of all trips by transit or active transportation but ridership decrease to 12% according to the 2021 census. Because of the lack of fund$ ETS is about 260,000 annual service hours short of meeting the city’s transit service standards.
To keep the current levels the city would need $250 million for operating and capital budgets combined. To increase service hours to the city's service standards the city would need $874 million total in operating and capital budgets combined.
To raise that amount the city proposes an annual tax increase and fare increases.
No mention is made to putting a halt to further LRT expansion until current projects are complete and paid for.
It's not easy to be a contrarian and go against the main flow but the contrarian role is very important. Although there has been a great importance attached to and investment made in the transit system, the article below questions if it will ever have the positive impact and produce a positive ROI that it was touted to.
Design students from MacEwan University devoted a semester in research and development of solutions that would improve safety and enhance ETS transit users experience. Students drew upon both ETS staff and transit users experience to create practical and workable solutions, some What do you think about the Design students assignment? will be put into use soon.
Providing public transportation requires much planning and a big budget so its understandable that communities around Edmonton would want to work with ETS to create a regional bus network. Many issues need to be addressed and obstacles overcome before a regional bus network becomes a reality so discussions continue among all involved.