A new LRT Station for NAIT?
By Lexi McFarlane on November 24, 2023
With the Valley Line LRT now open, students in southeast Edmonton now have a much faster commute to the NAIT campus. Taking the Valley Line into Downtown, then transferring to the NAIT-bound Metro Line at Churchill Station, will encourage even more students to commute to campus by train.
The noteworthy thing, however, is that Metro Line trains are always quite packed heading to and from the station in front of NAIT Arena, with the Churchill to MacEwan stretch being the most jammed. Which begs the question: How are these trains going to accommodate more ridership if they’re already chock full?
NR92 has intel on what the solution to this issue will be- and if you have an observant eye, it’s something you’ve maybe already noticed.
Across the parking lot from the Arena and Gymnasium is the Brigadier James Curry Jefferson Armoury. And right next to that building, something has been going up over the past couple of years. It will be the new NAIT/Blatchford Market LRT Station, slated to be a replacement for the current NAIT Station.
When the current NAIT Station was built in 2015, it was only intended to be a temporary station. That’s why, less than a decade later, it’ll be replaced by a new, permanent station in the same spot of NAIT campus.
It’s also why each Metro Line train has only been able to have three cars per train, as opposed to the four or five cars per train that the Capital Line can have. The temporary station’s platform was only built to a certain length. With the new NAIT/Blatchford Market Station, longer trains can be accommodated, which should help alleviate a bit of the congestion trains on the Metro Line currently struggle with.
The even better news is that the new station is slated to open in early 2024, so it will be pretty immediate relief for the busy Metro Line. Even as soon, possibly, as before the end of Winter Term 2024.
Eventually, the line will run deeper into Blatchford, and go further on into Northwest Edmonton. But for now, at least, the new NAIT/Blatchford Market LRT Station cannot come soon enough. Its arrival will be a welcome boost- and make our train commute to campus a bit less cramped.