City council was presented with a few different options for how to move forward with the next phase of road improvements on St. Albert Trail this week, which could cost as much as $16.2 million.
City council has several different options for the next phase of road improvements on St. Albert Trail, costing as much as $16.2 million.
The North St. Albert Trail Corridor road improvement project was initially approved in 2019 with a total budget of almost $19 million; however, the city been approved to borrow $26 million to fund the first two phases — about 66 per cent — of the project.
The cost discrepancy stems from the original calculation being based on conceptual design plans rather than detailed engineering plans, and the severe jump in construction costs caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent report by transportation manager Dean Schick.
Last November during 2023 budget deliberations, council directed administration to divide the next phase of the project into two parts and develop construction options at lower costs to account for the project already costing more than planned.
On June 13, during a standing committee of the whole meeting, council heard administration has split Phase 3 into northbound and southbound construction, with southbound work considered the higher priority. Phase 3 covers the portion of St. Albert Trail from just north of the Everitt Drive North intersection to the Neil Ross Road intersection. As the southbound construction is considered a higher priority, it will be covered under Phase 3A.
The committee of the whole was presented with three options to consider for Phase 3A, voting on June 13 to move forward with the highest-cost option. Only Coun. Mike Killick was opposed.
The committee-approved option, which was recommended by administration, has an estimated cost of $11.4 million, and will include all already-identified facets of construction originally planned for the project, including the addition of a third lane, realigning southbound traffic to match the work undertaken in the first two phases, constructing a parallel pedestrian trail and required utility and drainage infrastructure, streetlights, new traffic signals, and additional construction around existing intersections to accommodate the additional lane of traffic.
The cheapest option presented to council involved maintaining the existing lane alignment while still adding an additional lane, as well as the other work highlighted above for about $9.5 million.
However, Schick’s report says the main downside of this option is not realigning the southbound lanes “negates the investment made to date for realigning the first two phases.”
“It would be anticipated that costs of construction to accommodate the realignment would be higher in the future,” Schick wrote.
The second option, which council decided against, included much of the same work as the $9.5 million option but included realigning the southbound lanes to match the work already completed in the first two phases. It would not have included adding the pedestrian trail, any landscaping, or completing construction around existing intersections to better accommodate the additional southbound lane.
The cost estimate of this second option was about $10.2 million.
Only one option was developed for the northbound lanes, or phase 3B, and was given an estimated price tag of $3.4 million.
During the June 13 meeting, Schick told council only one option was necessary given there was no need to realign the roadway.
In all, administration’s recommendation, and the option approved by the committee of the whole for Phase 3, is estimated at $16.2 million, not including contingency funding.
“Approval of the recommended motion will result in … approved funding of a total of $16.2 million to be assigned to North St. Albert Trail Phase 3 that will be funded through debt financing and will require a new borrowing bylaw to be developed at an approximate value of ($20.3) million,” Schick’s report says. The $20.3 million total includes 25 per cent contingency.
Speaking against the recommendation, Killick explained that he felt Phase 3 could be delayed for a number of years.
“It sounds like we have a six- to eight-year window,” he said during debate, referring to preliminary time-estimates provided in recent months by developers with major projects planned near the affected area of the Trail. “It just seems that we could defer this without any impact — we don’t have the real growth numbers for traffic — and really saving our money and our taxpayers on our workload prioritization for some of those higher priority projects.”
“I think in long-term view there are other priorities that I would see as being more important for taxpayer dollars,” Killick said.
Opposing Killick’s comments was Coun. Ken MacKay, who said he thought it would be better for the city to complete the Trail improvements now in order to spur potential industrial development in the city’s north end.
“You can’t have a business park if you can’t have specific vehicles and vehicle counts to get to your business park or access (the business park),” MacKay said. “By providing the infrastructure, whether it’s utilities, whether it is actually road corridors, you have an opportunity for (developers) to maybe be able to make decisions that are being driven by other forces much larger than just having a road for example.”
“They need to know where they can build their next project based on the available data.”
Although the committee of the whole approved administration’s recommended phasing and cost estimates, council will need to approve the recommendation again at an upcoming council meeting.