Regional mayors push for second ring road
Proposal would promote sprawl, Iveson says
Some regional mayors hope to put Alberta Transportation’s second outer ring road back on the table Thursday, but face stiff opposition from Edmonton.
The proposed highway would circle Edmonton about eight kilometres outside the Anthony Henday.
Proponents argue it should be discussed and land set aside today to facilitate movement in the region 50 years from now. Critics say ring roads encourage lowdensity suburban growth in all directions and the money is better spent upgrading current highways and expanding light rail transit.
A neutrally worded motion up for vote Thursday morning at the Capital Region Board won’t settle the debate, but it could reopen it. The land-use committee is asking mayors for permission to restart talks with the province on the regional highway network.
“The ring road is a longterm infrastructure component,” said Parkland County Mayor Rod Shaigec, a vocal proponent of making a second ring road a critical part of that network.
The province started setting aside land for the Anthony Henday decades ago. That foresight is reducing “gridlock in the capital region” today, he said.
“In 50 years, how far out is that growth going to be?” Shaigec asked.
Alberta Transportation started planning for a second ring road more than a decade ago, when planning for the Anthony Henday was complete. But the project was shelved in 2012 at the request of the Capital Region Board.
“Alberta Transportation would be willing to resume planning if the Capital Region Board requested it,” said department spokesperson Nancy Beasley-Hosker.
In the past, a majority of mayors has been against a second ring road. But the idea won’t die until the province rules it out completely, said Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson, sounding frustrated.
To lim it the regional footprint, Edmonton and the board are trying to focus growth at higher densities around existing corridors such as the QEII Highway and Highway 16.
A second ring road might cost $11 billion, according to one estimate, and would instead encourage sprawl “outward in all directions,” Iveson said.
“For way less money, we can get them a series of bypasses, heavy haul road upgrades and an LRT system all on the same timeline. I do not understand why the highway department at the province is so fixated on this 20th-century road planning.”
Edmonton Coun. Ed Gibbons has been shopping around his own idea for a second transportation utility corridor, but one that focuses first on rail and is 30 kilometres rather than eight kilometres out. That way it’s too far away to encourage sprawl. It would connect the region’s key financial drivers — the Heartland industrial area, the international airport and the connection west to the tidewater — and it could get the rail lines out of highly populated areas.
“Right now, you drive out to the upper part of Strathcona and getting into Lamont County,” Gibbons said. “These trains are 200 or 300 cars long. The pipelines come down (from the oilsands and natural gas plays) and they get loaded right there. They’ve got no other alternative to coming down right to Edmonton for (Canadian National) and right through Edmonton for (Canadian Pacific).
A derailment in the Yellowhead corridor would quickly impact residential neighbourhoods on either side.
“It’s not the high-igniting stuff that you’ve got in North Dakota, but it’s still gas,” he said. “It just takes one derailment.”