| Barlow Trail to close before Métis Trail is finished |
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| Written by Matt Kennedy |
| Friday, 16 April 2010 12:22 |
Alderman and ATAC still hopeful tunnel can get done
With traffic on Barlow Trail just a year away from coming to a halt, some more bad news has come in for Calgary drivers. It had previously been indicated that the Barlow Trail closure would not take place until Métis Trail was complete. According to Ald. Jim Stevenson, the earliest “that we can have Métis Trail open to provide that link to Country Hills Boulevard would be Sept of 2011.” 
A stretch of Barlow Trail will be closing April 2011.
Graphic: Matt Kennedy/ Calgary Journal
“Now that the signs have gone up, we’re starting to get phone calls and emails,” Stevenson said. “There’s going to be a lot of confusion and frustration there in that time period from April until August for sure.” However, Stevenson doesn’t blame the airport for the crossover. ”The airport has been put into a bind,” Stevenson said. “It’s our fault that we’re not together on this, it’s not their fault. We should have been working on this years ago.” “I see it as the city having dropped the ball,” Stevenson said. ”This is such a terrible example of us having to react to growth rather than plan for growth. And that’s unfortunately too much of a legacy of this city.” Like Stevenson, Grant Galpin, spokesperson for the Airport Trail Access Committee, otherwise known as ATAC, is still dedicated to getting the tunnel built. Galpin said city council is the place to start. “The next step is to get a unified city council that puts (it) in their top three priorities,” Galpin said. With some estimates saying a decision on the tunnel will be delayed until 2015, Galpin said “the truth is (that) nobody knows what could be done if we had a united city council.” Stevenson also said the tunnel could still be an option sooner than 2015. “As it stands now, city council has directed city transportation to come back with a preliminary cost estimate of what it would take to boar the tunnel,” Stevenson said. “That’s to be brought back to us in May.” “If we were to come up with the money in some way in the next few months, I’m sure that the airport would be under a great amount of pressure to allow us to get in there right away and build, even if that delayed the runway for a few months,” Stevenson said. |
