Street Design for Accommodating Mass Transit

The way the street and sidewalks are designed, from where the building, or its lot, end across to the lot on the opposite side of the street, the space in-between is known as a right-of-way.

A right-of-way can include vehicle lanes, parking lanes, bus lanes, bike lanes, sidewalks, boulevards (centre medians with plantings), sidewalk plantings, bike parking and more.

Designing a street means thinking about these elements and deciding which is correct for that particular street. Looking at the street this way is referred to as cross-sections. Implementing mass transit means the street needs to change too.

Example of a Street Cross-Section Design

The locations of the mass transit routes were determined in the Mass Transit Planning for 1.25 Million project and The City Plan. The routes will support major nodes & corridors and improve transit service using current roads. A number of factors about how these routes will change remain to be determined including spacing and location of stations and what the street design (cross-section) will look like for each.

The segment of streets (corridors) that have been preliminarily chosen for immediate mass transit implementation are:

• Whyte Avenue, (between 99 Street & Bonnie Doon)

• 87 Avenue (near West Edmonton Mall)

• 97 Street (South of Yellowhead Trail)

• 97 Street (North of Yellowhead trail)

While Edmonton remains focused on building out the City’s LRT network, the City Plan has identified a number of additional transit lines where bus-based mass transit might work better than LRT. By using both LRT and bus-based mass transit, we can bring high quality transit service to all areas of Edmonton.

For more information on how these corridors were selected, please visit edmonton.ca/masstransit.