21 hours Ago By Devika Desai
Starting Monday, commuters taking Memorial Drive in northwest Calgary should anticipate major traffic jams, longer drive times or find detours, as the roadway will once again be constricted to single-lane traffic for the coming months. The restrictions will accommodate construction on the Sunnyside Flood Barriers project, which started last July and is scheduled to end Oct. 31 of this year.
According to the city, all eastbound lanes will be detoured to one westbound lane, and a single westbound and eastbound lane will be kept open depending on direction. Several pathway closures will be in effect as well, between the Peace Bridge and the Prince’s Island Park Pedestrian Bridge. Pedestrian traffic will be detoured to the sidewalk on the north side of Memorial Drive N.
W. The wheeling pathway on the north side of the river between 14 Street N.W.
and Poppy Plaza is also expected to close in July, until October, with traffic to be detoured to the south (downtown) Bow River pathway. “I think most Calgarians will be able to tell you upfront that on Monday morning, this is going to take them longer to get in and out,” said Coun. Terry Wong.
“But it’s one of those realities we have to deal with because you can’t do the flood mitigation work in the pathway without shutting down lanes for construction activity.” “And it’s going to be congested with a lot of traffic coming from the other direction,” Wong added, noting that those from the west may need to divert onto 14th St. or 10th St.
The greatest concerns, he said, are the increased traffic in the Sunnyside community on the north side of Bow River “especially with parks and schools in that area.” However, the project’s fiercest advocates come from the community, whose residents were among the most affected by the deluge of 2013. “I’m sure that there are many community members that would have liked to see something sooner,” Kate Stenson, executive director of the Hillhurst Sunnyside Community Association, told the Calgary Herald in 2024 .
“I think the perspective that we’ve taken as the community association is that it took a longer amount of time to know what was needed and then to get it right.” The project, once completed, will see a barrier along Memorial Drive that will protect Sunnyside residents from a one-in-100-year flood event, more than 10 years after the floor that devastated the city and cost billions of dollars in damages. The barrier — which will be comprised of a mix of permanent flood walls, sheet piles and temporary installations, such as sandbags, water-filled tubes and demountable flood walls — will run approximately 2.
4 kilometres along Memorial Drive. The project will take two years to complete. The plan was first broached more than five years ago, when the city approached the community association to build a smaller wall that would protect residents from a one-in-20-year flood.
However, members advocated for a stronger barrier, which the city accepted. The project will also improve the pathways for pedestrians and cyclists along Memorial Drive. Last month, the city cut down more than 200 trees along the roadway to make the room for the barrier, an unfortunate but necessary resort to ensuring the city’s resiliency, Amy Stansky, the city’s project manager told the Calgary Herald .
“We know these trees are important to the public, but I think they also understand the work we took to minimize the impact to get down to this number,” she said. “We’ve gotten to a place where I think there’s an acceptance of balancing the need for this public flood infrastructure with some of the tree removal that has to take place.” While the project initially required the removal of 700 to 900 trees, the city’s engineers were able to reduce the impact on vegetation and bring down the number.
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