Council also passed a directive to test new low-floor trolleys and hybrid buses and to consider in the 2006 budget extending the trolley system to Northgate. The citys administration, which had recommended killing the 66-year-old trolley system, was also directed in a later motion to maximize the systems operational cost-benefit.

The Edmonton Trolley Coalition, Citizens for Better Transit and the Edmonton Transit Service Advisory Board have all been strong supporters of retaining and expanding the citys trolley fleet. For the hundreds of volunteers and community members who worked so hard to save the trolleys, the decision comes as an enormous victory. The lungs and the ears of Edmontonians will also come out winners, as trolleys are less polluting and quieter than their diesel bus counterparts.

Various community leagues, residents and civic organizations repeatedly asserted that the trolleys benefits of low noise and zero in-street pollution more than compensate for any slight additional cost they may have over diesels, especially when used on busy routes and in high density core areas of the city. The elimination of trolley service would have meant residents of Inglewood and Westmount, for instance, would have been subjected to the noise and pollution of 300 to 400 more diesels each day.

Brian Tucker, Chair of the Edmonton Trolley Coalition, applauded the decisions, calling them a step in the right direction. We need to be looking ultimately at renewing the trolley fleet. When you have a big investment in trolleys like we have, you dont just rip it down without examining its value and full potential.

Tucker praised the initiative to test new technology. Getting a demo low-floor trolleybus to evaluate the latest in trolley technology is a real necessity. Weve seen three hybrid diesel demos in one year, but no trolleys.

Edmonton Transit and the city administration, which at every step has done all it could to kill the trolley system, would do well to listen. In 1993, Council directed administration to maximize the use of trolleybuses, but that just didnt happen. For years now, the city has had trolleybuses sitting idle and the network has not been used to its full potential.

The tipping point in the fight to save Edmontons trolleybuses may well have come at a public hearing in June, when transit managers got an earful from citizens determined to save the system. Nearly 60 of them jammed into the hearing room and, for four hours speaker after speaker 22 in all hammered at the proposal, which could be put into action as early as this summer. Not a single one of them sided with the citys transit managers, who have long been ready to close the book on the long and distinguished story of electric trolleybus use in Edmonton.

Eight of the citys 13 council members obviously listened and learned. Trolleybuses have a place in Edmontons future, just as they have long had a place in its past. The electrically powered vehicles, which run on power lines suspended above the street, have been a part of Edmonton's transit system for 66 years. The first trolley was put into service in 1938, making Edmonton the third Canadian city to use the modern trolleybus, after Toronto and Montreal. By the late 1940s, trolleys were operating in more than 70 North American cities but an aggressive lobby by diesel bus manufacturers whittled that total down over the next 30 years.

Edmontons trolleys are a historical asset and councils decision positions the system to again become a feature of pride in days ahead. Were one of only two cities (Vancouver is the other) that has retained its trolleybus system. Earlier this year, Vancouver ordered 228 new wheelchair-accessible trolleybuses and other cities, including Seattle, San Francisco, Boston and Dayton, Ohio, are also expanding their trolley systems. Cities in Europe rely almost exclusively on electrically powered vehicles as buses in their cores.

Bruce Lake, world news editor for Trolleybus, a specialist magazine in the United Kingdom, has been watching Edmonton with interest over the past several months. Here in the UK, trolleybuses have not been in public service on the streets since 1972. There are constant calls for their reinstatement in many towns and cities. However, the rebuilding of the infrastructure required, particularly in a deregulated transport environment, is seen as being very difficult.

Lake notes that many cities have come to regret ripping out their trolley infrastructure. There is definitely a groundswell of international opinion that trolleybuses provide the answer to clean, efficient and popular public transportation.

City administration had argued that trolleys really arent much more environmentally friendly because fossil fuels are burned to produce electricity. But electricity can be produced from a myriad of renewable resources, such a wind, water and wave turbines. Noise and air pollution created by diesel buses is spewed into the atmosphere at street level in the cities right where people live, breathe and hear.

The flexibility of electricity as an energy source and its relative stability compared with the likelihood of sharp diesel price increases make trolleys a wise choice for a city that already has a sizeable investment in this technology. Throughout the world, the search is on for environmentally friendly solutions to urban problems, yet Edmonton already has one in its own backyard.

The councillors who voted to save the system displayed foresight and vision. They have now positioned our trolleys, significant as an attraction by their very survival, as a potential centrepiece in a green and prosperous city.

If you'd like to offer your thoughts, please drop me an email at lawrenceherzog@hotmail.com. For information on reprints of previously published articles, check out my website at www.lawrenceherzog.com