How Alberta is spending $8.5B in Budget 2025 on transportation

Andrew Jeffrey · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 14, 2025 5:57 PM EDT | Last Updated: 9 minutes ago

Upgrades to Deerfoot Trail successful Calgary and a road to link Fort McMurray to Grande Prairie successful bluish Alberta are among the projects the provincial authorities has highlighted successful its budget.

Alberta's 2025 budget, if passed, slates astir $8.5 cardinal toward assorted proscription and economical corridor projects to amended roads, bridges and h2o infrastructure around the province. It doles retired $2.1 cardinal for Calgary-area projects, $2 cardinal successful the Edmonton area, and much than $4 cardinal for different proscription undertakings astir the remainder of the province.

Alberta Minister of Transportation and Economic Corridors Devin Dreeshen noted the accrued concern successful proscription infrastructure is designed to boost economical improvement and pull investment.

In Calgary, the $2.1 cardinal includes much than a cardinal dollars successful backing for Calgary LRT projects, similar the long-embattled Green Line task and $5 cardinal to enactment readying enactment to link the Blue Line LRT to the airport. It besides includes $484.8 million to upgrade Deerfoot Trail.

In the Calgary region, the backing implicit the adjacent 3 years successful proscription and economical corridor projects includes:

• $100 cardinal for the Calgary ringing roadworthy (west Stoney Trail).
• $62.4 cardinal for the Springbank off-stream reservoir, a flood mitigation effort redirecting h2o from the Elbow River into a adust reservoir.
• $26.5 cardinal to implicit the Stoney Trail and Airport Trail interchange.
• $11.9 cardinal for the proposed Bow River Reservoir.
• $8 cardinal to implicit the Highway 201 Bow River Bridge connected southeast Stoney Trail.

Work to upgrade respective parts of Deerfoot Trail, a large Calgary freeway, archetypal started successful 2022, with an oculus to present other lanes, caller bridges and revamped interchanges.

With a booming colonisation astir the province, Business Council of Alberta vice-president Scott Crockatt said the infrastructure readying passim the adjacent 3 years is invited to support up with that growth. He highlighted Deerfoot Trail arsenic a important portion of the state successful request of much backing arsenic much radical determination to Calgary.

He besides peculiarly pointed to further backing earmarked to survey an LRT transportation to the Calgary airdrome arsenic an important constituent of this year's budget.

"Calgary is 1 of the best-connected mid-sized cities successful each of North America, and this is simply 1 of the cardinal missing links successful our puzzle," Crockatt said.

Dreeshen noted the state is waiting for the national authorities to o.k. the caller concern lawsuit for the Green Line project. Once that's completed, helium said, the state and metropolis volition beryllium capable to nonstop tenders to statesman laying tracks soon afterward.

In the Edmonton area, the fund invested $2 cardinal passim the adjacent 3 years via:

• $52.7 cardinal for the Terwillegar Drive enlargement task done improvements to the Anthony Henday Drive interchange, and $31 cardinal to widen Terwillegar Drive.
• $40.2 cardinal for an interchange astatine the QEII Highway and 65th Avenue successful Leduc.
• $31.9 cardinal to grow Ray Gibbon Drive.
• $20.3 cardinal for information improvements to Highway 16A and Range Road 20, an intersection that's been the tract of dozens of collisions westbound of Stony Plain.
• $17.2 cardinal to duplicate Highway 19, southbound of Edmonton, which has besides antecedently been a information concern.

The Alberta authorities besides announced provincial funding for extending Highway 686, to nexus Fort McMurray to Grande Prairie. Improving Highway 686 was portion of Dreeshen's mandate missive successful 2023, and it volition transverse hundreds of kilometres to link 2 large regions successful Alberta's vigor industry.

"That's a crippled changer for the north," Dreeshen said. "It not lone opens up lipid and state and forestry operations, but it besides gives that secondary entree successful and retired of Fort McMurray successful the lawsuit of a occurrence oregon flood ever happening again."

Other large proscription projects receiving backing astir the state include:

• $208 cardinal to duplicate Highway 11 betwixt Sylvan Lake and Rocky Mountain House.
• $141 cardinal for information and roadworthy improvements connected Highway 881.
• $127 million for superior improvements connected Highway 60.
• $106 cardinal to duplicate Highway 3 betwixt Taber and eastbound of Burdett.
• $101 cardinal to duplicate Highway 63, northbound of Fort McMurray.
• $92 cardinal to regenerate the Balzac interchange astatine Highway 566 implicit the QEII Highway.
• $87 cardinal to conception the La Crete bridge, spanning the Peace River on Highway 697.
• $69 cardinal to widen Highway 40 betwixt Hinton and Grande Cache.
• $24 cardinal to upgrade Highway 1A.
• $9 cardinal for the interchange ramp for the QEII Highway and 40th Avenue adjacent Airdrie.
• $7 cardinal to widen Highway 956 from La Loche, Sask., to Fort McMurray.