TransEd completes train testing on southeast Valley Line LRT route

A Valley Line LRT train being tested on June 22, 2022 (Jeremy Thompson/CTV News Edmonton).

Recent train testing along Edmonton's long-delayed Valley Line LRT route "has been successfully completed," the company responsible for constructing it said Tuesday.

TransEd, in a post on social media, said "independent performance and safety demonstration" along the 13-km line that runs in the city's southeast from downtown to Mill Woods was completed following testing over the last month.

The company had resumed testing in early September after it had replaced cables along the line, which includes stops downtown, in Strathern, at Bonnie Doon Shopping Centre, the Davies Transit Centre and Mill Woods Town Centre among others.

The Valley Line, which was originally projected to open in December 2020, has been plagued by delays since its official groundbreaking in the spring of 2016.

In 2018, a large concrete mass discovered in the North Saskatchewan riverbed under the Tawatinâ Bridge delayed the project. Three years later, absenteeism and supply chain issues further delayed its completion, followed a year later by the discovery of cracks in 30 piers along the line.

TransEd says it now expects to open the line this fall.

The builder says it will perform maintenance work relocating or removing cables in conduit over the next four days.