I am continuing my fight to increase awareness of the need for the tunnel under the new north/south runway being built by the Airport in the next few years. I am finding that most residents and a lot of businesses and organizations don’t even know where the proposed tunnel would be, let alone its impact on traffic flow. In a little over two years, all access to the Airport from the south (Barlow & McCall Way) will be eliminated. This means anyone living or visiting east or south of the Airport (including hotel & motel shuttles and taxis) will have a choice of taking McKnight to Deerfoot north or Country Hills to Barlow and travel south to the terminal. As to the first option, if you think McKnight is backed up now, wait until they close Barlow & McCall.
At this time, the second option is not that bad, but there are only four stop lights coming south from Country Hills on Barlow. At this time, we only have 60 thousand residents north of McKnight, east of the Airport. At this time, in this area north and east of the Airport, inside the ring road, we have thousands of acres of bare land. But in the next 15 years we will see an increase of 100,000 residents and employment for about 40,000 people. The bare land will be replaced with houses, hotels, offices, warehouses and retail stores all of which are in the planning stages at this time. With these facts in mind, how will the second option look in a few years? Country Hills Boulevard will have many more stoplights (six or seven between Metis Trail & Barlow alone). Country Hills Boulevard is planned as a major roadway, not an expressway, so it will have three lanes in each direction, much like Macleod Trail.
On the other hand, Airport Trail is designed as an expressway so you would come off the east freeway and drive to the terminal without hitting a stoplight. If we do not connect Airport Trail from the east with Airport Trail from the west (under the runway) we will have a stretch of land nearly 8 km long (McKnight to Country Hills Boulevard) with no east-west passage. That would be like not being able to cross Macleod Trail anywhere between City Hall and Heritage Drive. Calgary’s Airport will be an inner-city Airport within the next 15 years and east-west traffic flow will be a major concern to all Calgarians, especially those living in the north. It is a costly venture but if we do it before the runway is built, it is a matter of cut and cover. After the runway is built, it will require tunneling and the huge cost will make it unlikely to ever happen.
This Airport is an International Airport, so it is not just the City’s responsibility. We need the help and support of the Provincial and Federal Governments.
If we don’t build the tunnel now, I believe in 10 years residents will be asking “What were our elected officials thinking? Did they not see this growth and congestion coming? It would have been so simple to make the connection before they built the runway!”
If you agree with me, I need your help. Contact your MLA and your MP. Send a letter or email to Art Hanger, MP, Calgary Northeast. These letters of support are important in his fight to help me at the Federal level. We need support from businesses, organizations, community associations and from individual residents. If you need contact
information for your MP or MLA, please contact my EA, Elaine Kirby at EAWARD3@calgary.ca.
For a map of the area, go to the Ward 3 website at www.ward3calgary.ca and please feel free to contact my office if you have questions or require more clarification. CC
Why is everybody going nuts about this now? The City of Calgar has known about this new runway for 30 years, as well as the requirement for them to fund and build a tunnel before construction of the runway if they want to be able to keep a link to the NE. You should be getting mad at the City for not thinking ahead, especially when they had so mnay decades of advanced warning.
Comment by Lia — June 16, 2009 @ 9:28 pm