The final piece of Anthony Henday Drive was put into place this week with an announcement from Premier Ed Stelmach that the northeast leg of the ring road will open in 2016.
Stelmach announced government funding for the project in front of the Fort Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday but the government is keeping the cost of the megaproject under wraps until it receives bids.
With the northwest leg of the road set to open this fall, the northeast leg, by far the most complex part of the project, will complete the road.
St. Albert Mayor Nolan Crouse said he was thrilled with the announcement and believes it will be great for the city's economic development.
"The whole ring road just makes the region smaller. It connects everyone to everyone else and it is just going to help St. Albert immensely eventually."
The project is being built through a P3 or public-private-partnership model. With the contract the province will award the design, engineering and maintenance of the project for the next 30 years.
It will complete the road from Manning Drive to the Yellowhead Highway, but will also widen the highway between the Yellowhead and Whitemud Drive and make other improvements.
Heather Kaszuba, a spokesperson for Alberta Transportation, said the upgrades to that section of the road are absolutely necessary to make the complete project.
"We need to upgrade the infrastructure that is there to meet the capacity and the amount of volume traffic that we are anticipating."
Kaszuba said the government wants to make sure they receive the best possible bids for the project and aren't releasing budget estimates to avoid skewing the process.
"We have a highly competitive market right now and the reason we are not releasing estimates is because we want to get the best bid for taxpayers."
Over the next three months the government will receive requests for qualifications from companies interested in putting together a formal bid for the project.
From that process, they will select three groups to submit formal bids and then award the tender with construction expected to get under way in 2012.
"We should be, in a year from now, in a position to have the selection of a P3 proponent and a contract in place and at that time we would announce a price."
In total the project will involve eight interchanges, nine flyovers and 27 kilometres of highway construction. It will also include a bridge in each direction over the North Saskatchewan River.
Opportunities abound
Crouse said the connection to the Henday, set to open this fall with several exits in St. Albert is important, but completing the roadway will bring even more opportunities to the city.
"People aren't going to view the boundaries as they used to," he said. "It is going to become visibly evident just how close St. Albert is to major transportation."
Crouse expects the roadway to be a major boon to the city's business parks and bring more non-residential taxes into city coffers.
Ivan Mayer, president of the Riel Business Association, said the announcement is a boon to local business.
"The sooner they can make it complete, the more businesses are going to be drawn to St. Albert and Riel Park and even Campbell Park," he said.
Mayer said the province could have delayed the road but the fact it didn't will mean more jobs and better economic growth in the whole region.
"The government of Alberta is in a lot of red ink and one of the ways they could have saved some of that was to say we are going to postpone the Henday."
Kaszuba said the northwest section of the road will open on time on Nov. 1 this year despite any of the weather related setbacks in construction last year.
"That is one of the advantages of the P3 — a guaranteed price and a guaranteed delivery date, so we are opening on Nov. 1, 2011 for the northwest section," she said. "What they need to do to ensure that roadway is delivered on time is a responsibility of the P3 group."
