Council voted 9-6 in favour of sending the airport authority a counter proposal. The airport now has until Tuesday afternoon to approve the deal. John Mar voted yes this time around, while he voted no for the February vote. That's why this one was 9-6 and the February vote was 8-7.
The counter proposal by the city is that they city will build the tunnel and road connection only from Barlow to 36th Street NE, leaving out the section of road between 36th Street and 60th Street unfinshed for now. The city proposes that they will build the interchanges that the airport demanded when they build the rest of the road. The city would build the second part with future money given to the city by the province, an extension of the MSI funding, or something like that.
By my calculations, that means the city commited to spending roughly $270 million now, and about $70 million sometime in the future when they want to build the rest of the road.
It's certainly better than nothing, the actual tunnel was the important part, but it will serve a lot less people without a direct connection to Stoney for a first number of years. My contention that people in the deep south would take the tunnel via stoney trail goes out the window until the second part is completed.
It will also be a little bit of a weird connection, as it won't connect directly to Metis Trail, which will become the main N/S road later this year when it opens. However, 36th Street will become sort of a tunnel connection road, and not many other people will use it.
A different proposal to just build the shell of the tunnel was not supported by council, and I agree with them there. It would be ridiculous to spend ~$160 million plus financing costs to build something that provides no value at all until it could be completed at a future date. Not only would it have no use, but it would have to be monitored, and kept safe.
The airport authority didn't seem to negotiate in good faith. It seemed like they kept adding to their demands, and especially at the last minute, first of all last week, saying that they wanted interchanges built when traffic reached a certain level. Then, it came out today that the Airport wanted the interchanges open on day 1 of the tunnel. The city's calculations figured that the interchanges would only be required by 2029, 18 years away. It seems that the Airport was really worried about the traffic on opening day, which is pretty absurd. On opening day, it won't connect to much at all. On twitter, there were tunnel opponents that felt that the airport seemed to be trying to extort the city, which is weird, since the interchanges they are demanding only benefit the airport a marginal amount.
I'm glad to see it go ahead (provided the airport accepts the counter proposal, which they'd be crazy not to, IMO). It will provide a decent E/W connection in the north, especially across Deerfoot. I've seen a few of the plans, and the tunnel is as much as 19 metres below existing grade. It has to be, because the runway surface itself is supposed to be well below the existing grade there, as that part is pretty much the high point of the existing ground in the new runway area.
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