CALGARY -- Premier Jason Kenney and Transportation Minister Ric McIver announced up to $21.1M in provincial funding has been earmarked to build a new interchange along the QEII Highway in Airdrie.
The overpass will be built at 40th Avenue.
"Frankly, I think the turning point was the crisis we're in," said Kenney. "I called Mayor (Peter) Brown back in April when we were in the beginning of the COVID crisis and economic catastrophe and I called a bunch of mayors and I said 'What can we do together to get some people back to work in this crisis?' and the mayor said 'This project's been on the books for many years, the city's willing to put up some real coin, we need the province to be there'."
"We decided as a government, frankly, that we had to do something dramatic in the crisis so we ramped up our capital budget for projects like this by over $3 billion additional over what we planned to $10 billion this year."
The construction project, which is slated to begin in 2021 or 2022, is expected to create 300 jobs. The overpass is scheduled to be complete by 2024.
The City of Airdrie will be allocating approximately $62M to the estimated $83M project cost.
According to the province, approximately 85,000 vehicles drive on the stretch of highway between Calgary and Airdrie each day, including 7,000 commercial vehicles.
