2013 Flood reduces transportation spending
Posted Dec 17, 2013 7:51 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Calgary’s mayor says the city won’t have extra cash to throw around to address the long list of road and transit improvements.
Naheed Nenshi says much of the money the city receives from the Federal and Provincial governments for the coming year has been earmarked to cover the cost of flood damage and future mitigation work.
Despite the reduction in transportation funding, Nenshi says the city will look at what minor tweaks can be made to improve the flow.
He points to work at Lake Fraser Gate and Macleod Trail, which has been a big success, and a traffic study on Crowchild Trail and 24th Avenue NW.
As for major interchange work, Nenshi says outside of Glenmore and Ogden and 16th Avenue and Bowfort Road there isn’t much planned.
Nenshi also says even though Council has created a $500-million transit fund, most of that cash will be dedicated to improving transit ways in southeast and north central Calgary, with the only big improvement to the LRT network the opening of the Tuscany CTrain station.
The Mayor says he does not want Calgarians to experience the gridlock conditions that currently exist in Toronto, where commuters are wasting up to an hour a day stuck in traffic.
A controversial project that was approved several years ago, the almost half a billion dollar Airport Tunnel project will open in the spring of 2014.
