Quote:
Originally Posted by temple5
As an airport/airlines/aircraft nerd I kept as close as anyone to the news about this. The only condition I remember hearing was that the City would have to pay for interchanges once traffic got to a certain level.
I never once heard that the interchanges were intertwined with extending airport trail past 36 st.
Maybe I missed the news about it ending, I remember hear a bunch about extending it to 36 st, I guess I foolishly assumed that meant it would connect and go futher, not create a T intersection at 36 St.
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It was one of the last minute demands by the airport.
Close to the end, the airport said they wouldn't allow the tunnel unless the interchanges at 19th and Barlow were built at the same time. Up until then, it was the city's intention to build the connection all the way to 60th st.
The city couldn't afford to add the cost of those interchanges into the project budget, so the city proposed a compromise (in order to get the deal done) in which the city couldn't build a connection to Metis Trail until the interchanges were built. The airport authority agreed to this.
However, the city's traffic projections have always shown that Airport Trail will function well without interchanges for a couple of decades. The iarport disagreed, and that's why they made the demand. I just don't see how a three lane each way Airport Trail ins't easily enough to handle the traffic for quite a while. Similar roads in Calgary have 60-70 thousand cars per day, and Airport Trail will have around 20,000 in that area at the start. The city's plans never had them building more than one lane each way between 60th Street and Metis, so I don't know how that would funnel enough traffic onto Airport Trail where 3 lanes each way by the airport would be jammed.