How do I get around Edmonton?

Edmonton is a car city that happens to have a light rail line. For visitors without a rental, Uber is your workhorse and the LRT fills in around it. The Capital Line runs 21 km from Clareview in the northeast through Churchill station downtown to Century Park in the south. It passes the University of Alberta campus along the way. That corridor covers about 60% of what a first-timer needs. For everything else, open Uber. A ride from downtown to Whyte Avenue in Old Strathcona runs about $10-12 CAD ($7-9 USD). Downtown to West Edmonton Mall is $15-20 CAD. Taxis exist, but they tend to cost 20-30% more for the same trip, and you'll wait longer for pickup.

Pick up an Arc card at any LRT station vending machine for a few dollars deposit, then load $20-30 CAD to cover a few days of riding. A single tap costs $3.50 CAD, about $2.50 USD, and the card works on both LRT lines and every ETS bus. The Capital Line runs every 5-10 minutes at rush hour, every 15 minutes midday, and drops to every 20-30 minutes on evenings and Sundays. Churchill station is the transfer point between the Capital Line and the Metro Line heading north to NAIT. Mind you, this is not Toronto or Montreal. Two lines, roughly 25 stations total. The coverage feels thin for a city of over 1 million people. The system opened in 1978. Edmonton was the first city in North America to build a modern LRT, but the network has grown slowly since.

Edmonton's walkable pockets feel like islands separated by parking lots and six-lane roads. Downtown along Jasper Avenue from 97 Street to 109 Street works on foot. The Art Gallery of Alberta, founded in 1924 and now in a twisting steel-and-glass building since 2010, sits near the eastern end. Cross the High Level Bridge, built in 1913, and you drop onto Whyte Avenue in Old Strathcona, the best 10-block stretch in the city for restaurants, record shops, and afternoon pints. The 124th Street corridor between 102 and 108 Avenue has good coffee and small galleries. Between these pockets, sidewalks thin out and the city assumes you drove. In June, walking is pleasant at 12-22°C with 17 hours of daylight and the smell of cottonwood fluff floating through the river valley. From November through March, wind chill drops below -25°C. The downtown pedway system, a network of enclosed walkways above and below street level, becomes the only sane way to move between blocks.

West Edmonton Mall sits 13 km west of downtown. The Route 100 bus gets there, but the ride takes 40-50 minutes with a transfer. Uber covers the same ground in 15 minutes for about $15-18 CAD. The Royal Alberta Museum, which moved to a new building on 103A Avenue in 2018, is a 10-minute walk north from Churchill LRT station. You can smell the North Saskatchewan River valley before you see it from the bridge. The Muttart Conservatory, four glass pyramids on the south bank since 1976, is a 5-minute Uber from downtown or a 25-minute walk through the ravine trails where cottonwoods muffle the traffic noise above. If you're staying more than 3 days and plan to reach anything outside the central core, renting a car starts making financial sense. Budget $45-65 CAD per day from the rental counters at Edmonton International Airport.