Edmonton Transit Service Northlands
Opened | Prior to 1965 |
Location | Borden Park Road/ 76 St |
LRT Lines Served | None |
Platform | 2 Lanes, with platforms |
Passenger Access | N/A |
Park and Ride | No |
1965 |
Northlands was an organization who owned a number of venues
and the exhibition grounds, generally located north of Borden Park, East of the
CN/ LRT tracks, West of Wayne Gretzky Drive and South of 118 Ave, but also
including the Northlands Coliseum, from which Coliseum Station took it's name.
The grounds hosts K-Days during the summer as well as other events. At the South
end of the property was the Northlands Park horse racing track. Located outside
of Northlands Park was a 2 lane trolleybus loop. While I need to do more
research on the history of operations here, in general I don't believe this was
ever a regular route for buses. Rather, on race days some routes would be
extended to serve the loop. As well, as needed for other events the loop could
see use. In more recent years, a shuttle service was operated between Northlands
Park and Stadium Station on race day, and as well as the route 91 from Capilano
to Northlands during K-Days, rather than extensions of existing bus routes.
Judging from aerial images and satellite photos, the loop stayed very much the
same from 1965-2008/09. The trolley wires at Northlands were among the first to
come down with the demise of the trolleybus, and it seems their removal spurred
a redevelopment of the loop by about 2011 which removed the 2 lanes that buses
would have used and changed it all into parking.
On January 31, 2019 Northlands Park closed as horse racing shifted to a new
venue located near the airport. Following this, the former loop, now a parking
lot has largely been blocked off from use. While in recent years Northlands has
been used as the site of the Heritage Festival, the Park'n Ride buses used
the large parking lot near Wayne Gretzky Drive.
One interesting piece of history occurred when on August 6, 2021 ETS #4045 ran in service on the 292 Northlands Shuttle. The bus had seen use on historic tours earlier that summer. On this long weekend, the Heritage Festival was on, requiring a large deployment of buses to that and this point Centennial was still closed on weekends, which would have limited the number of buses available. Whatever the specific reason was, #4045 was used on the Northands shuttle, making 7 round trips between Stadium and Northlands between 11:51 and 13:30.