There's a big change coming to the Valley Line LRT in Edmonton.
Edmonton Transit Service, or ETS, will be taking over full operation of the entire line, starting with the existing Valley Line Southeast, and then extending to the Valley Line West when construction completes in 2028.
Knock on wood.
Built as a P3
Some of you may be thinking, wait, ETS doesn't run the trains?
No, not the Valley Line. It was built as a P3: a public-private partnership.
Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper really pushed for a P3. He made federal funding contingent on the line being built this way.
In 2014 the Harper federal government only agreed to chip in on the project if a public-private partnership, or P3, model was used.
A consortium of private contractors called TransEd won the bid to design and build the Southeast Line, as well as a contract to actually run all the trains and stations on it for 30 years.
Well, not anymore.
The city is immediately beginning a two-year process to transition to fully public in-house operation with ETS.
Probably mutual
We don't know, and likely won't know for quite some time, how much this will cost.
We're only a few years into a 30-year contract, so unless council looked under the couch cushions and found a quarter-century worth of operating payments just lying around, the decision was probably mutual.
TransEd's time with this line has been a bit of a nightmare for them. Years of delays from massive chunks of concrete, cracked pillars, and corroded wires, all of which they were on the hook for.
And then when they finally got it running, dozens of drivers thought, I'll show this train who's boss, and went pedal to the metal.
The Valley Line, asking nicely.
One line, one operator
On the city side, even though Valley Line West is being built as a P3, there's no one contracted to operate it.
ETS wants a smooth, integrated experience for the Mill Woods to WEM line.
To have different operators on each half of the line when a single train is supposed to run end to end is a bit like having Air Canada fly the plane and WestJet land it.
Time and time again, I've seen us experiment with private operation of public services and end up with something fragmented, lower quality, and more expensive.
For me, this is the best Valley Line news I've heard since it opened at 5:00 a.m. on a Saturday.
Train day, November 2023.
We were eating cake and we're doing train.
Part 2 · Jun 10, 2026
Stephen Harper forced a privatization scam on Edmonton
P3 privatization is a scam. I reported yesterday about Edmonton taking back public control of the Valley Line from its private operator, TransEd.
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