What’s with all the construction in downtown? City of Edmonton explains

City of Edmonton explains all the ongoing construction in downtown Edmonton and when each project is expected to be done.

There’s LRT work on 104 Avenue, revitalization on 107 Avenue, the Imagine Jasper Avenue project and the warehouse park project construction on 106 Street. Acting deputy city manager Craig Walbaum, also with the city’s Integrated Infrastructure Services, joined CTV Morning Live Edmonton to speak on all the construction progress.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Kent Morrison: There’s a lot going on, especially downtown. Why is all that happening at once?

Craig Walbaum: When we look at the timing of all of our projects, there’s a number of factors that come in. One of the big ones is the condition of our assets. So a lot of the projects, like Jasper Avenue and 107 Avenue, are really founded in the condition of those roads and the timing around when we need to replace them and redo them. Then with LRT, that’s a combination of opportunity of other levels of government funding and needing to meet those timelines of getting the projects done. It’s a combination of all those effects that lead us to where we are today.

Kent: What about Imagine Jasper, because that’s for the most part, a beautification type thing – does that need to be happening along with all these other projects?

Craig: Jasper Avenue needed to be renewed, and because it’s such a key corridor for our downtown, we layered in not just the base renewal of it, but enhancing it. It’s a combination of both of those things of how the timing came up. There’s actually other federal government funding that goes along with that, which has timing with it, too.

Kent: What’s your message to people who are trying to get in and out of downtown? It seems like every route they try to take, they run into more cones and more construction.

Craig: I think there’s a couple of key messages with that. We know, especially from the west end into downtown, there’s a lot of those corridors that have either restrictions or partial closures. So plan ahead if you can. We have a lot of maps on our city website, which shows you the status of projects to our traffic disruptions. Use Google as well. Your navigation systems in your vehicles are very good in real time and knowing where disruptions are.

We do a lot of combinations of things to help people plan and avoid those corridors. Before we start all of this and decide how much the system can handle those restrictions, we have a very robust traffic model that shows all the major roads in the city and we do a cursory analysis before we even start thinking about how the system will handle the roads.

Kent: Is there flexibility if things exceed the models more than you expected, to try to make a shift?

Craig: Yes. Beyond the models that tell us what we think we can try and accomplish, there’s detailed plans that go on with each project to look at. How are we going to stage and phase? What lanes will we keep open? When can we close them? 107 Avenue is an example. We leave two lanes open in the peak times. It’s only in the off peak times that we restrict lanes to get the work done.

Kent: How close are we to getting some of these done?

Craig: That will vary. With Jasper Avenue, we’re maintaining one lane and that’s going to be a three-year project, so that’s happening in chunks. The LRT is actually a few years away – 2028 is our plan for the west to be completed and 107 Avenue will be done this year.

Kent: Is it tricky sometimes to get people to see that far into the future when they have big orange roadblocks in their face?

Craig: It is, for sure. There’s two things out of the route, even for me, as I drive from the west end into downtown. What your commute is like today is what’s the strongest in terms of impression of what’s going on today, but we have to remember that what we’re doing is building an LRT system right from the west end into the downtown area, so there’s more choices. You can either choose to use your vehicle if you need to or use that LRT. It’s short-term restrictions now for some of those corridors for a better future and options.