There’s an old saying in Canada: the Western prairies are so flat that if your dog runs away, you’ll see it leaving for about three days. Typically used by our Rocky Mountain neighbours for some friendly ribbing at the expense of us flat-landers, the adage does contain a degree of truth.
When you arrive in Edmonton, you’ll notice it’s pretty spread out (why build up when you can build out, right?), so if you’re migrating from one of those hyper-walkable cities, you’ll find Edmonton a little less stroll-friendly, which means you’re going to need wheels or rails to navigate the city effectively. Edmonton is almost 70o square kilometres in size; by comparison, Toronto takes up just 630 square kilometres.
Despite its earliest days of streetcars ch-chunking their way along Jasper Avenue, modern Edmonton is today a motor city and that means the easiest way to get around is by car. Whether using the grid-aligned streets to traverse though the inner city or hitting the Anthony Henday or Yellowhead freeways to circumvent downtown altogether, a set of four wheels is essential to easily getting from point A to point B. And with at least half the traffic of congestion-heavy Toronto and Vancouver, you can reach your destination with minimal headache.
Don’t let all those open roads fool you into putting the pedal to the metal, though, because parts of Edmonton and the surrounding area use photo radar (you’ll know them from their big, fluorescent yellow trucks) and, yes, they’ll ticket you for going 10 kilometres over the limit. But, as of December, 2023, the province significantly reigned in the use of photo radar. Which is good for me, because, before these changes, I was dropping around $600 a year on tickets. What can I say? Lead foot, I guess.
Not everyone owns, or can afford to buy, their own vehicle, especially if you’re a newcomer to the city. But you can still cruise around on four wheels even without shelling out for a new or used vehicle.
Taxis and Uber are both widely used in Edmonton. But don’t expect to just hail a cab like you might’ve seen in the movies. Taxis here aren’t as likely to just pull over for a waving hand on the street corner. You’ll have more luck calling a taxi directly or using an app to order a car from your phone.
You can expect to pay a base fee of $4.10 any time you hop in a cab and then about at least $0.25 per 135 metres thereafter. Most cabs in the city accept payment in cash or via credit or debit card. Tipping is optional, but we like to give our drivers around 10 per cent.
If you’re feeling a little light in the pockets, or just forgot your wallet at home, Uber can be a cost-effective and convenient alternative. Often quicker than a cab, Uber is widespread in Edmonton and has the added benefit of charging your card directly, meaning no waiting around to pay at drop off. They’re also often a bit less expensive than a traditional taxi, however, be careful when ordering because prices (and availability) vary greatly depending on your location, the time of day and whether the Edmonton Oilers are playing or not.
Shelling out for Ubers to and from work (or play) gets expensive fast. But there’s always the Edmonton Transit Service (ETS). Running buses and Light Rail Transit (LRT) throughout the city, the ETS is the best bet for the budget conscious.
Standard operating times are from around 6 a.m. to about 3 a.m. A cash fare will run you $3.50 for adults (25 to 64), but those in the know are already switching to the Arc Card system. Arc Cards — Edmonton’s answer to Toronto’s Presto or Vancouver’s Compass — cost $6 to buy, but you can preload them with as much or as little money as you like, as many times as you like. But the real benefit? Fares are only $2.75 when you use this method and are good anywhere on the ETS service route for up to 90 minutes after use. You can also purchase day passes ($10.25) and monthly passes ($100 for adults, $73 for students, and $35 for seniors) with or without the Arc Card.
Outside of peak hours (6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.), you can expect buses to arrive every 15 to 30 minutes, which can be a long time to wait in -30-Celsius winters. Luckily, the ETS has a handful of tools that can help you plan your trip in advance, so you’re not left out in the cold for too long.
Busing is also the most comprehensive way to access each part of the city, with buses running to all corners of Edmonton and connecting to regional transit systems, too.
Now here’s the rub when it comes to the ETS. For all its affordability — and, we’ll be honest, some pretty great work from the people who actually operate the routes — the LRT is not the be-all and end-all of rail-based transit. If you’re arriving from somewhere like Hong Kong, Madrid or Medellin, the offerings in Edmonton might seem a little… sparse.
Edmonton’s LRT system runs northeast to southwest and, recently, southeast, thanks to the opening of the long-awaited Valley Line. That means if you’re living on west or northwest, you’ll need take the bus or wait for the completion of the Valley Line’s western expansion.
Despite a sluggish development, the LRT is a convenient way to get around, particularly if you’re moving around the inner-city, where trains run most frequently. However, frequent can mean different things in different places.
Toronto’s TTC, for example, runs trains every two-to-three minutes during rush hour and every five minutes outside of those hours. On the LRT, you can expect to wait between five and 12 minutes for a train during peak hours and 15 minutes on weekends, which can be a real pain if you’re waiting at one of the open-air platforms in the winter, or at night.
One important note when it comes to riding the train is safety. Edmonton’s LRT has had a lot of bad press in recent years concerning safety on the trains and at the LRT stations. The City has implemented uniformed personnel at many stations and a number of other tools to try to crack down on safety issues. City council is pondering the idea of installing security gates at some of the stations, as a pilot project. While our experience has been that riding the LRT is (mostly) safe, we do recommend you try to plan your trips to avoid late-night arrivals.
Whether you’re trying to do your part to ease the burden on our planet’s delicate ecosystems or just looking for a new way to see the sights, there are plenty of alternative transportation options in Edmonton that neither break the bank nor the climate.
Bird. Lime. Whatever brand they’re repping these days, e-scooters are ubiquitous in the capital city. A few years back, before the pandemic, these things were everywhere — on street corners, in parks, and even, for a time, winding up in the river, too. Don’t ask, it’s an Edmonton thing.
More a novelty than a truly reliable mode of transport, you’ll often see twenty-somethings zipping from bar to bar around Whyte Avenue on these. They require signing up for an account, after which you can simply tap on and tap off with the costs (about 35 cents per minute) billed directly to your credit card.
If there is one thing you absolutely must know about these things, it’s this: they don’t go everywhere. E-scooters have a limited range built into them, and taking them out of that range will cause them to lock up faster than a stolen shopping cart at Costco. How do I know this? Because I spent half of my first experience with an e-scooter lugging the 46-lb scooter back to Old Strathcona after accidentally taking it out of bounds in the river valley. Don’t be like me.
Ah, the noble bicycle. Is there any purer, more stoic form of transportation? Two wheels and a little bit of willpower will take you as far as you can pedal, and luckily for you, in Edmonton, that’s pretty far.
While granola-eating Vancouver might try to bill itself as the city to be in for outdoor recreation, few cities have invested as heavily — like $100-million in the 2023-26 budget — in their bicycle infrastructure as Edmonton has. The result? A cycling destination with bike lanes — many functional year round if you’ve got a fat-tire bike — that you can peddle from Ellerslie Road in the south to Castle Downs in the north.
But the real benefit of picking up a ten-speed in Edmonton? The river valley. With more than 18,000 acres, the Edmonton river valley is the largest urban park system in Canada and there’s about 160 kilometres of multi-use trails to cycle, many of which connect or intersect with the rest of the city’s bike network. That means your morning commute can see you through the hipster-laden Whyte Ave for an Americano with oat milk, before hitting the black diamond-rated Upper Ewok switchback on your way to Riverdale.
Overwhelmed? Don’t be. Just like the ETS, Edmonton has plenty of online active transportation maps to help you familiarize yourself with the network and ensure you don’t end up cycling into a row of jacked-up, diesel-spewing F-350s.
