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It makes sense. It takes into account how our city has evolved, where we live, where we go and when.

This is the first truly serious re-think of ETS’s goals in … well, forever.

But before we go on with a discussion of the 100 bus routes that will be cancelled and how the city will handle one really big problem with their new plan, there are two things that Edmontonians must always keep in mind about transit.

Thing No. 1: At $366 million a year, transit is already the biggest item in the city budget, except for policing. The city doesn’t spend as much on road maintenance or running recreation centres and arenas. It doesn’t devote as much to firefighting as it does to transit. And that doesn’t include the hundreds of millions being spent on building LRT, transit stations and bike lanes.

Thing No. 2: Despite all those hundreds of millions, the percentage of Edmonton commuters who use transit is exactly what it was 25 years ago — just under 10 per cent.

In all that time, we’ve built new LRT lines, built fancy new transit depots and equipped all our buses with expensive GPS monitors so riders waiting for a bus can watch where theirs is in real time through an app on their phones.

(Mostly, all they learn is that like 58 per cent of all buses, theirs is late.)

The relevance of Things No. 1 and 2 to the new transit plan debate is that no matter what council and ETS have done to encourage ridership under the old split-personality system — part transportation, part social service — it hasn’t worked.