2011 Plan B – Calgary Ring Road

The picture below shows the Lakeview area in 1951, comprising forest and farmland.

Much has been said about the impacts on the reservoir and the Weaselhead with respect to a ring road crossing, but in this article, I want to focus on the impacts to the community of Lakeview. In recent years, Lakeview seems to have become the focus on southwest ring road issues in the city. Given its location directly adjacent to the Tsuu T’ina reserve, it’s unsurprising, but this wasn’t always the case. When Lakeview was built, the community was not adjacent to the Tsuu T’ina reserve, and was in fact more than 1.5 kilometres from the city limits. it remained that way until the early 1990s.

City Limits

When Lakeview was planned and constructed (throughout the 1960s), the area to the west of 37th street SW was owned by the Canadian Military and used as a training facility, known progressively as Sarcee Camp, Sarcee Barracks and Harvey Barracks. This 940 acre parcel of land was originally part of the Tsuu T’ina reserve, but along with the Weaselhead, it was surrendered by the Nation in 1913 (Much more on this in here).

That land was used almost continuously for military operations from 1910 until the barracks closed in 1996. In 1952 the Military purchased the land outright, and it was formally annexed by the City of Calgary in 1956, making it legally a part of Calgary. It wasn’t until the return of the land to the Nation in 1992, and the de-annexation by the city in 1993, that 37th street SW in Lakeview once again became the City limits; the boundary between the City of Calgary and the Tsuu T’ina Nation.

What all of this means is that while 37th street SW in Lakeview is currently the city boundary, and it is now the ‘last available place’ to build a North-South connector road within city limits, that was not the case when Lakeview was planned and built. Continue reading “Lakeview and the Ring Road”

In 2009, five years of planning and negotiating for a ring road in Southwest Calgary was voted down by the members of the Tsuu T’ina (more here). When the province walked away from further discussions, they declared the Tsuu T’ina option dead and were anxious to move on; to develop another option entirely within the city of Calgary. This would be called the ‘Plan B’.

On November 27 2009, only five months after the rejection of a Tsuu T’ina alignment, the City of Calgary and the Province of Alberta signed a Memorandum of Understanding to jointly explore the 37th street SW corridor for the purposes of building an 8-lane freeway entirely within the city limits. The scope of the MoU was eventually expanded to consider alternative routes to 37th street SW, and the study was meant to conclude in the fourth quarter of 2011 with a proposed route.

Was there really no ‘Plan B’?

When the 2009 deal was initially defeated, then Mayor Dave Bronconier stated that they did not have a Plan B for the City and Province to fall back on.

Every transportation plan since 1959 planned for an extension of Sarcee Trail to become the primary north-south freeway on the west side of Calgary (essentially the ‘Plan A’). Though there have been a few alternatives proposed throughout the years, mainly involving on 37th street SW, these concepts had never been fully explored, and none have ever been approved (you can see these preliminary concepts here).

Continue reading “‘Plan B’”