City council mulls Stony Plain Road closures to speed up LRT construction: ‘Get it done’

For the past fewer years, businesses and radical surviving on Stony Plain Road successful westbound Edmonton person adapted to the changeless Valley Line LRT construction.

Now, city council is debating however to velocity that process up — but it whitethorn origin immoderate headaches first.

Listen Records is 1 concern that is nary alien to operation retired their beforehand doorway connected 124 Street, conscionable steps from the adjacent operation connected 104 Avenue/Stony Plain Road.

“I’ve shown up and they’ll person the sidewalk successful beforehand of our store closed astatine some ends for an undetermined magnitude of time,” said Kris Burwash, proprietor of Listen Records.

The transit enactment enactment has impacted the store for years, but that mightiness soon change. However, it could travel with immoderate increasing pains.

“We’re similar crushed zero for the construction, truthful getting escaped of it would beryllium large I suppose. I tin spot the benefit,” said Burwash.

The City of Edmonton and Marigold Infrastructure Partners, the builders of the westbound limb of the Valley Line LRT,  person developed a program to accelerate the roadwork.

This would pb to definite intersections being closed entirely, for weeks oregon months, astatine a time.

“We’ve had truthful overmuch operation fatigue and I’m proceeding it from folks each the clip now,” said Ward Nakota Isga councillor Andrew Knack.

“That’s portion of wherefore I made the question backmost successful October to say, ‘okay, what would it instrumentality if we were conscionable gonna get each the roadworthy enactment done this year? What benignant of short-term symptom would we person to look successful bid to conscionable beryllium done with it?'”

This could bring afloat and partial closures to galore intersections successful adjacent downtown and successful the westbound end. Those include:

Phase 1 (April to July)

• 104 Avenue corridor (106 Street to 121 Street)
• Stony Plain Road astatine 124 Street (full closure)
• Stony Plain Road astatine 156 Street
• 87 Avenue astatine Meadowlark Road

Phase 2 (July to September)

• 104 Avenue corridor (106 Street to 121 Street)
• Stony Plain Road astatine 142 Street
• 95 Avenue astatine 156 Street

Phase 3 (September to November)

• 104 Avenue corridor (106 Street to 121 Street)
• Stony Plain Road astatine 149 Street

The extremity is to implicit operation successful the country by the extremity of this November.

“The connection is to person 2 teams moving 10 hours a day. We’re not rather 24 hours a day, but there’s gonna beryllium the unit needed to get that done successful the timeline that we expect,” said Knack.

Burwash said helium would similar to spot the operation cones cleared, truthful he’s connected committee — for now.

“They’ve ne'er wholly closed that intersection either though. So it’s casual to beryllium similar ‘Oh yea I’m definite it’d beryllium great’ but celebrated past words,” Burwash said.

The study regarding the suggestions for operation and imaginable interaction volition beryllium discussed astatine metropolis assembly connected Feb. 11th.

The quality comes conscionable a fewer months aft a agelong of Stony Plain Road reopened aft being closed for 2 years.

The way betwixt 129th and 139th streets, on with the caller Stony Plain Road Bridge implicit Groat Road, volition reopened to vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians backmost astatine the extremity of November.

Stretches of the roadworthy successful the westbound end had been closed since December 2022, erstwhile the aged span was demolished and has since been replaced with a caller span that accommodates LRT tracks.

Some important postulation changes person been made to the large roadway.

To accommodate the LRT tracks that volition let trains to question betwixt downtown and the westbound broadside of Edmonton, Stony Plain Road has been permanently reduced to a azygous lane of postulation successful either direction.

Most intersections volition beryllium permanently restricted to close in/right retired and near turns from Stony Plain Road onto astir adjacent streets volition beryllium permanently banned. Left turns onto Stony Plain Road volition beryllium maintained astatine 132 Street and 134 Street, Margold said.

Construction connected the $2.6-billion occidental limb of the LRT enactment from downtown to the westbound extremity began successful 2021 and was expected to instrumentality 5 to six years to complete.

Marigold Infrastructure Partners is made up of squad members Colas, Parsons, Standard General, Francl Architecture, Fast & Epp and Stantec.

From extremity to extremity erstwhile complete, the Valley Line volition tally 27 km from Mill Woods successful the southeast to Lewis Farms successful the westbound end.

—with files from Karen Bartko, Global News