Edmonton City Bus service now links airport to LRT

This is one of the buses used on the new ETS route to Edmonton International Airport (EIA) at the Century Park Transit Centre in Edmonton on April 27, 2012.

EDMONTON -  Edmonton finally has a direct bus route to the airport.

The aptly named Route 747 will begin running on Sunday, offering service seven days a week between the Edmonton International Airport and the Century Park LRT station.

“Its time has come,” Mayor Stephen Mandel said of the route. 

The plan to start a three-year trial run of the route was recommended for funding by city council last fall. Sunday’s ferrying of the first passengers on the route will be a victory for the city, Mandel said.

Edmonton was the only city in Canada with a major airport that wasn’t served by public transit.

“It’s important for the future, to how our city’s perceived and the movement of people,” said Mandel.

Passengers can board at Century Park every half-hour during peak flying times from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. and from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Service will run every hour during the rest of the day. 

A one-way trip on the bus will cost $5 and take about 17 minutes. The fare is non-transferable, and those looking to take the LRT to Century Park to catch the bus or go elsewhere in the city will have to pay a regular ETS fare of $2.75 on top of it.

The majority of the route’s passengers are expected to be some of the nearly 5,000 people who work at the airport. ETS has partnered with the airport to offer employees a $100-monthly bus pass, said Myron Keehn of EIA.

“It’s a critical link for us,” Keehn said.

Tiffany Fuhr, who drives herself and two other airport workers to the airport every day, won’t be using the new service. Though the 5 a.m. start time is earlier than other city routes, it’s not early enough for her and her co-workers. “To be here by 4:30 a.m. to open, it doesn’t really work,” Fuhr said.

There are no plans to make the service start earlier, says Coun. Bill Henderson, but that is exactly the kind of information the three-year trial is intended to collect.

“If our system was running a little bit earlier, they could go earlier, but we’ll see, we’ve got to get this going,” Henderson said.

The same data could help extend the LRT further south, bypassing the need for a connecting bus.

“When we finish with the LRT to the west end and the north, I think we have to look at moving it south and then out to the airport,” Mandel said.

“Cities need to have transit out to the airport and this is the first step in the long term of getting real transit out there.”

ETS has allocated five buses to the route. The buses, which are postered with images of travel destinations such as Cancun and Houston, have added luggage racks.