City council mulls Stony Plain Road closures to speed up LRT construction: ‘Get it done’ – Edmonton
For the past few years, businesses and people living along Stony Plain Road in west Edmonton have adapted to the constant Valley Line LRT construction.
Now, city council is debating how to speed that process up — but it may cause some headaches first.
Listen Records is one business that is no stranger to construction out their front door on 124 Street, just steps from the nearby construction on 104 Avenue/Stony Plain Road.
“I’ve shown up and they’ll have the sidewalk in front of our store closed at both ends for an undetermined amount of time,” said Kris Burwash, owner of Listen Records.
The transit line work has impacted the store for years, but that might soon change. However, it could come with some growing pains.
“We’re like ground zero for the construction, so getting rid of it would be great I suppose. I can see the benefit,” said Burwash.
The City of Edmonton and Marigold Infrastructure Partners, the builders of the west leg of the Valley Line LRT, have developed a plan to accelerate the roadwork.
This would lead to certain intersections being closed entirely, for weeks or months, at a time.
“We’ve had so much construction fatigue and I’m hearing it from folks all the time now,” said Ward Nakota Isga councillor Andrew Knack.
“That’s part of why I made the motion back in October to say, ‘okay, what would it take if we were just gonna get all the road work done this year? What kind of short-term pain would we have to face in order to just be done with it?’”
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“I generally am hearing from a lot of folks, the desire to say, ‘Can you rip the Bandaid off — get it done.’”
This could bring full and partial closures to many intersections in near downtown and in the west end. Those include:
Phase 1 (April to July)
- 104 Avenue corridor (106 Street to 121 Street)
- Stony Plain Road at 124 Street (full closure)
- Stony Plain Road at 156 Street
- 87 Avenue at Meadowlark Road
Phase 2 (July to September)
- 104 Avenue corridor (106 Street to 121 Street)
- Stony Plain Road at 142 Street
- 95 Avenue at 156 Street
Phase 3 (September to November)
- 104 Avenue corridor (106 Street to 121 Street)
- Stony Plain Road at 149 Street
The goal is to complete construction in the area by the end of this November.
“The proposal is to have two teams working 10 hours a day. We’re not quite 24 hours a day, but there’s gonna be the staff needed to get that done in the timeline that we expect,” said Knack.
Burwash said he would like to see the construction cones cleared, so he’s on board — for now.
“They’ve never completely closed that intersection either though. So it’s easy to be like ‘Oh yeah I’m sure it’d be great’ but famous last words,” Burwash said.
“I could be on board and then all of a sudden it’s like two months of no customers, because you can’t get here.”
The report regarding the suggestions for construction and potential impact will be discussed at city council on Feb. 11th.
The news comes just a few months after a stretch of Stony Plain Road reopened after being closed for two years.
The route between 129th and 139th streets, along with the new Stony Plain Road Bridge over Groat Road, will reopened to vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians back at the end of November.
Stretches of the road in the west end had been closed since December 2022, when the old bridge was demolished and has since been replaced with a new span that accommodates LRT tracks.
Some significant traffic changes have been made to the major roadway.
To accommodate the LRT tracks that will allow trains to travel between downtown and the west side of Edmonton, Stony Plain Road has been permanently reduced to a single lane of traffic in either direction.
Most intersections will be permanently restricted to right in/right out and left turns from Stony Plain Road onto most adjacent streets will be permanently banned. Left turns onto Stony Plain Road will be maintained at 132 Street and 134 Street, Margold said.
Construction on the $2.6-billion western leg of the LRT line from downtown to the west end began in 2021 and was expected to take five to six years to complete.
Marigold Infrastructure Partners is made up of team members Colas, Parsons, Standard General, Francl Architecture, Fast & Epp and Stantec.
From end to end once complete, the Valley Line will run 27 km from Mill Woods in the southeast to Lewis Farms in the west end.
—with files from Karen Bartko, Global News
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