One more reason to commute? Party trains!
It was the weekend’s greatest party in Edmonton, and you missed it!
On Saturday night, 54 delegates from cities across the Prairie provinces and the Yukon who were in the city for the Youth Summit on Sustainable Transportation boarded their own private LRT car outfitted with turntables and lights for a dance party that shook from northeast to southwest and back again.
Don’t feel bad. We missed it, too. We were chomping on shrimp and crackers at a party with Edmonton’s hoi-poloi that night, minding our manners, believing that we were the ones living it up.
Fortunately, we have friends who were there for the ride, and they snapped a few pics (thanks to Chris Chan, shutterbug extraordinaire.).
Maybe you watched as the train rolled past you as you stood on a station platform, bass pumping, with young 18 to 28 year-old urban transit advocates grooving inside. Or maybe you sat in a car waiting for the crossing arms to rise and the red lights to stop flashing, and wondered in astonishment why so many people seemed to be having so much fun in a transit train.
“Some people were puzzled. A few people waved at us. They thought it was funny,” explained Vicki Gudelj, an ETS employee who was an organizer of the conference.
“It’s not something we would do in a typical year.”
The summit did have a serious side. Delegates learned about how public transit systems are designed, run and promoted with the idea that they can take their knowledge and use it to influence policy decisions about transit in their own communities.
They brainstormed. Stayed together on the University of Alberta Campus. Shared ideas. Encouraged each other. And then danced.
According to at least one attendee, dancing on a train was easier than expected. While one might expect it to be difficult as the train sped up and slowed down, dancing was easier than standing still.
When you’re dancing, the attendee explained, you could easily incorporate a corrective step or movement into whatever style of dance you were doing. Standing still, such as you would normally be trying to do on a train if you didn’t have a seat, requires you to hold on tight to compensate for momentum.
Maybe dancing on trains should be encouraged.
