Alternative to Highway 97 a ‘top priority’
A long-anticipated driving alternative to Highway 97 through Kelowna has been bumped to a top priority transportation project by the city.
But construction of the Clement Avenue extension from Spall Road to Highway 33 is still more than a decade in the future unless the city receives provincial or federal funding support.
“I think it’s definitely of interest to a lot of people out there who’ve been waiting for that project,” Joe Shaw, the city’s acting financial services divisional director said Friday.
“That was a big piece of the new transportation master plan that was recently adopted, making sure the project is now a Priority 1 project.”
The city’s plan for the extension, currently estimated to cost $37 million but certain to rise in the coming years, is to begin design work in 2027 with construction to begin in 2034.
“It’s still a ways out there,” Shaw acknowledged. “But if we were to receive a senior government grant for the project, it would probably accelerate the timing of it.”
The city’s 2022 10-year-capital plan goes to council for consideration and discussion on Monday. Elevation of the Clement Avenue extension from a Priority 2 project, for which no funding sources are identified, to Priority 1 status is one of the most significant changes to the 650-page plan, the full implementation of which is currently estimated to cost $2.3 billion.
But only $1.6 billion worth of the projects have a funding source – such as taxation or reserves – associated with them. That means $744 million worth of projects are basically on a city wish-list, and would not proceed unless future councils allocated specific funding sources to the proposed undertakings.
Despite the elevation of the Clement Avenue extension to a Priority 1 status, the current 10-year-plan has a projected implementation cost of about $200 million less than the one adopted by council in 2021.
More than 30 smaller projects have been removed, cancelled, or dropped to a Priority 2 status, in large part because inflation has led a big increase in the anticipated cost of higher priority projects.