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.

 
ETS 4912 outside of the Northlands while working a charter.
2004
ETS 4912 outside of the Northlands while working a charter.
2004
A doubleheader BBC charter with 1 bus on each of the two sets of wire at Northlands.
July 1, 2009
By this time the wires were down at Northlands.
March 19, 2009