THE city of Edmonton finally celebrated the opening of the much-delayed Valley Line Southeast light rail line on November 4, a new 13km link from downtown Edmonton south to Mill Woods.
Trains are operating at five-minute intervals at peak times and 10-minutes off-peak. The line serves 11 stops and is operated with a fleet of 26 Flexity LRVs supplied by Alstom. Each low-floor LRV, the first of this type to operate in Edmonton, has capacity for up to 275 passengers. The line is expected to serve 30,000 passengers per day and interchanges with the existing Metro and Captial lines at Churchill in the city centre.
The city confirmed that a formal grand opening will take place in 2024.
The project was delivered by the TransEd consortium of Alstom, Bechtel, EllisDon, Fengate, Arup Canada and IBI Group. Alstom was responsible for the design, supply, delivery, testing and commissioning of the LRVs along with signalling and communications, power supply and distribution, the overhead catenary, and related depot equipment as well as system integration.
The project has been delivered as a public-private partnership with the operations and maintenance commitment with TransEd extending to 2050. Alstom says it has a majority share in the O&M joint venture and is responsible for maintaining the fleet, tracks, catenary, stations, maintenance facilities. It will also lead crew training and dispatching, control room management, customer service and passenger experience with a team of 125 working on the project.
Construction on the line commenced in 2016 and was scheduled for completion in 2020. However, there were multiple issues during the work that led to delays, including notably the discovering in August 2022 of cracks in 18 of the 44 concrete piers that supported the elevated section of the route, which serves Davies station, the location of a 1300-space park and ride facility. This pushed back opening from that summer to this autumn. Testing was also delayed in June of this year due to the need to replace signalling cables.
The second stage of the project will extend the line west to Lewis Farms to form a 27km cross-city link. Hyundai Rotem was awarded a contract to supply 40 LRVs for this portion of the line in 2021. Construction of the $C 2.6bn Valley Line West also commenced that year with work led by Marigold Infrastructure Partners under another PPP contract.
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