Northeast residents unhappy with ring road detours

The permanent closing of parts of 84th Street NE to make way for new ring road interchanges is cutting off access for some residents, businesses and a Sikh temple, they say.

The 84th Street NE intersections with Country Hills and McKnight Boulevards will be permanently closed starting Friday, and new interchanges as part of the Stoney Trail ring road will open.

Prem Singh, who speaks for a group of area residents and businesses, said they lobbied the province a year and a half ago to build access roads before the closings, but that never happened.

Instead, people now have to follow a convoluted detour that takes them out and then back into the city.

'We are being asked to drive outside the city limits, to 100th Street, go back towards 80th Avenue, which is not a paved road.' —Prem Singh, resident

"We are being asked to drive outside the city limits, to 100th Street, go back towards 80th Avenue, which is not a paved road," Singh said. "It is somewhat grated at this point, but come snow and rain, it's going to be too difficult for most cars to drive on."

Singh, who lives in the area and worships at the temple, said it looks like the province doesn't realize how much the area, including the neighbourhoods of Saddle Ridge and Taralake, has grown.

In addition to the inconvenience of the detours, Singh has concerns about safety.

"Are [there] sour gas wells in and about that area? And if there is an emergency, it would be devastating," she said. "I don't really think the city or the province has contemplated what they would do given a state of emergency like that."

Access roads not province's priority

Trent Bancarz, spokesman for Alberta Infrastructure and Transportation, said the province will be upgrading and paving the detour roads to make them more accessible, but he said the contractor's priority is finishing the ring road by fall 2009.

"They're not even part of that contract. So in a sense, due to the terms of the contract that we have with them, we can't very well hold them up for something that's outside the scope of the contract," he explained.

Bancarz said the province is still planning on building the access roads, but it's not considered a pressing objective.

"Because of their nature that they're not a necessity, we're having to negotiate with private landowners to acquire the land, and we don't have expropriation at our disposal."

Singh said her group will keep pushing to have the ring road delayed until the access roads are complete.