Long-awaited Cochrane interchange impact will be ‘night and day’

It’s one of the busiest intersections west of Calgary and after years of waiting, Cochrane is now scheduled to get a long-awaited upgrade to the intersection of Highway 1A and Highway 22.

“The difference will be night and day,” Mayor Ivan Brooker said, after getting the news there will be a new interchange built. “That intersection is an absolute nightmare on a long weekend.”

Overlooking where the two roads meet, Transportation Minister Brian Mason announced plans to twin Highway 1A and build an overpass on Highway 22, with the necessary on and off-ramps.

It’s estimated the cost will be $40-$50 million.

“The engineering and design work we’re hoping will be done by sometime in early 2019 and be in the ground in 2019,” Mason said, adding the search for an engineering consultant is this year. “Then it’s a two-year construction, so hopefully we’ll be done by the end of the construction season in 2021.”

As one of Canada’s fastest-growing communities, business, recreation, and tourism travel flows through the intersection.

“The downfall to that is it’s not set up the way it currently is to handle that kind of volume,” Brooker said, adding it gets especially congested when there’s a serious crash on the TransCanada Highway.

“We are literally the only way to get around that,” he said. “It’s an absolute nightmare, you’re talking sitting in traffic, congestion in our town of nothing less than four hours, that would not be an exaggeration, so this means absolutely everything to our residents and it means absolutely everything to the region.”

It’s not clear how many jobs will be created.

According to the provincial government, there are more than 27,000 trips through the intersection on a daily basis.

“This is not just a Cochrane issue,” Brooker said. “This is a regional issue.”

Photos via Transportation Alberta