If you live in the capital city of Alberta as I do, you may know about the awesome little intersection I like to call the "Colon" of Edmonton, that is, Calgary Trail/Gateway Boulevard and 23 Avenue. For several years now, since the development of the South Edmonton Common business/commercial district, this intersection has become one of the worst sites for accidents, rush-hour/any-hour traffic jams, and general douchebaggery with respect to driving skills. The once simple southern T-intersection that was once a oft-ignored landmark on the way out of town, has become a significant infrastructural blight on the face of this fair city.
Could this nightmarish roadway crossing have been averted? Of course. Are the solutions only being acted upon now? Of course. Construction on an interchange that will service Calgary Trail south, Gateway Boulevard north, 23rd Avenue and 19th Avenue will begin the day after April Fool's Day this year, and will continue for 3 years until it is operational. 3 years! Not only is traffic and general "getting around" terrible now, but it's going to become even worse, and for 3 years. This project is so intense and utterly awesome in scale, it has its own website, 23avenue.com. What I want to know is this: I assume that city planners weren't broad-sided by an overnight pop-up of commercial development that spans 320 acres, and has 2.3 million square miles of retail space. I assume that this area was in the works for some time before it was actually built. Therefore, WHY THE FUCK WASN'T THIS INTERCHANGE BUILT THEN? Why is it always a knee-jerk reaction when it comes to projects like this? Because the City of Edmonton has done it before.
You may know of a fairly significant landmark between 170th and 178th Street, and between 90th and 87th Avenue, for an area coverage of over 570,000 square metres. Yeah, it's West Edmonton Mall. Recently, the City is trying to figure a way to extend the Light-Rail Transit (LRT) system to the mall to alleviate traffic along 170th street. The cost will probably be in the hundreds of billions, and probably won't be done until 2050, but it's worth a shot, right? I mean, who'd have thought that there would be traffic to THE WORLD'S LARGEST SHOPPING AND ENTERTAINMENT COMPLEX. I sure didn't. Naturally, the city would have probably known that this sort of development was happening in advance. I can imagine, though, the following conversation taking place when the mall was being built:
City of Edmonton Employee #1: "Wow! We're going to have the largest mall in the world, right in our city. Edmonton will be world-class! Perhaps we should consider extending the LRT in that direction, as we discussed as far back as 1962? I mean, it's bound to have a huge draw, and it sure would make it easy to get there and back from central locations along our existing LRT line."
City of Edmonton Employee #2: "Nah".
Simplistic, but probably not far off. Just crazy. This town has a serious hard-on for "better late than never" construction projects. From the interchange to the LRT, nobody will do it better, or later, than the City of Edmonton. And if you think I'm exaggerating the possible completion date of 2050 for a westbound LRT, look at the stats for the extension from the University station to the Health Sciences station:
Distance: 800m
Time from initial planning/construction to completion: 6 years.
By comparison, let's look at the development of the Chunnel, the fixed-link crossing between Folkstone, Kent, England and Coquelles, France.
Distance: 50.5 kilometres. UNDER WATER.
Time from initial construction to completion: 6 years.
Awesome.
However, it could be worse. It could be very worse. Check out this site for some serious traffic issues around the world. We might have it bad sometimes here, but damn if it isn't a Sunday stroll compared to some of these places. Edmonton rules.
