'It's really exhausting': What one councillor says could speed up Edmonton's construction troubles
City Councillor Andrew Knack is looking for solutions to make the city’s construction in the west end more bearable for drivers.
With major projects like the west LRT, Yellowhead and Terwillegar Drive interchange, road construction is nearly impossible to avoid.
“Combined with every other avenue and street, seemingly in the city that has road construction right now and there comes a point where it’s really exhausting,” Knack told CTV News Edmonton.
Knack says one solution could make the situation worse, but only for a short time. One idea is to fully close sections of road along the LRT route to traffic, so work can be completed faster.
“Ripping off the bandaid on paper sounds great, but it also could mean some pretty significant impact for the next six to eight months. Are we willing to accept that so that we don't have two or three years of road work going on?” Knack said.
The Ward Nakota Isga councillor says from what he’s heard from Edmontonians, many people would be willing to make the trade off. It could mean closing major intersections to all traffic for weeks at a time.
Another option would be to speed up the road work to 24 hours, which could be disruptive at night for people in the area.
The city is working with builder Marigold Infrastructure Partners to expedite road construction.
Construction manager Jonathan Cox says the focus would be on intersections and segments like 104 Avenue with lots of businesses and homes.
“It is time sensitive that we get the commitment for this summer season, so the city can be in a position where other projects are not disrupted,” Cox said.
He says there has been an ongoing volume of complaints for the disruption of construction in the city.
“We did a big year in 2024, we demonstrated that we can produce a volume of capacity along the alignment and now we want to take that into 2025 and tailor our approach to be less disruptive to the communities,” he added.
City council is set to discuss the options of a report that will be discussed by the city’s Urban Planning committee on Feb. 11.
Construction for the $2.7-billion West LRT is scheduled to be completed in 2028.
With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Jeremy Thompson
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