It’s been a decade since the completion of an Edmonton road project that was once Alberta’s largest-ever infrastructure undertaking. The opening of the northeastern leg of Anthony Henday Drive on Oct. 1, 2016, marked the completion of the ring road project, which took 26 years to build. The 27-kilometre stretch from Manning Drive to Whitemud Drive took more than four years to construct. At the time, the northeast section was the largest infrastructure project in provincial history. The project included new highway lanes, 52 bridges, nine interchanges and eight railway crossings at a cost of $1.81 billion. Crews upgraded an existing 10-kilometre stretch of Highway 216, added nearly nine kilometres of freeway and improved infrastructure along the Yellowhead corridor between highways 216 and 21. Tom Curtin, a senior policy advisor with Meridiam Infrastructure, said Thursday at an event marking the 10th anniversary of the project’s completion that finishing the northeast section “was such a huge accomplishment” for the public-private partnership between the provincial government and Capital City Link General Partnership, the contractor behind the project that is owned by Meridiam. “It was done very well,” Curtin told CTV News Edmonton. “It is something that’s knit into the fabric of the community. We’ve got not only the commuting public, not only the goods that traverse that road, but along the sides (of the roads), we’ve got pollinator habitats that make honey and beekeeping and things like that. It’s become something that people can rely on, that people use every day, so that’s worth celebrating.” The Henday’s completion capped a project that began in 1990, when crews started work on the first segment of the 80-kilometre ring road: a three-kilometre stretch between Stony Plain Road and Whitemud Drive that opened on Edmonton’s west end in 1992. Over the next two decades, additional sections of Anthony Henday Drive were completed. Major milestones came within a two-year span, including the stretch from Lessard Road to Terwillegar Drive in November 2005; the southwest leg between Terwillegar Drive and Calgary Trail, and the northwest leg between Yellowhead Trail and 127 Street, both in October 2006; and the southeast leg between Calgary Trail and Highway 14 in October 2007. With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Dave Mitchell
