Municipalities across the industrial heartland are teaming up with a municipal transit collaboration agreement.
This agreement was made between Edmonton, Beaumont, Devon, Fort Saskatchewan, Leduc County, Parkland County, Spruce Grove, St. Albert, Stony Plain, and Strathcona County.
The hopes it that this agreement can lead to a new, collaborative framework to improve transit services across the region.
“There are tremendous opportunities to permanently transform our transit network and coming together in this way opens the door to bettering the lives of every transit rider,” said Darrell Reid, chief administrative officer (CAO) in Strathcona County.
In the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the agreement, it outlined the following principles:
- Municipalities retain sole control of their assets and workforce
- Municipalities retain sole control of their public transit service decisions
- Municipalities have mutual respect for each other’s values, policies, areas of expertise and jurisdictions
- Municipalities will continue to seek to make efficient use of existing resources
- The CAO of each municipality will be responsible for achieving the desired level of collaboration
Municipal CAO’s will be having regular meetings to look for efficiencies and keep lines of communication open.
Recent examples of this collaboration working includes Strathcona County Transit making a stop at the Cloverdale neighbourhood in Edmonton, and Beaumont transit providing services to Mill Woods Transit Centre.
