Construction to close 215 Street starting March 31

As part of planned improvements, part of Winterburn Road will be closed to traffic for nearly a year.

A stretch of road in west Edmonton will be closed for about a year starting March 31 to improve traffic flow near the River Cree Casino.

Ward sipiwiyiniwak Coun. Thu Parmar said the city will be turning the rural road into a normal road with one lane going south, another going north, a shoulder and street lights.

“This is just a temporary widening and making it up to a standard that we’re used to, to have thousands of people going on Winterburn Road and 215 Street,” said the first-term councillor.

But she adds that it would be ideal to go to four lanes, and perhaps six in the future, depending on how busy the road gets.

“The city actually isn’t the one that builds the roads,” explained Parmar. “When developers start to use parcels of land and when they start to develop parcels of land, what will happen is, in an agreement with the city, they are the ones that are responsible for upgrading roads.”

She went on to say that developers often hesitate going straight to four lanes because they need to see how their revenue is coming in from the sale and how quickly the area is being bought up.

Motorists are asked to use 45 Avenue to 199 Street and Anthony Henday Drive as alternate routes during construction.

Yoana Wakeford said the closure will be challenging for business Los Andes Coffee, but the area will benefit from the upgrades.

“It’s very dangerous … a lot of people drive at higher speed limits than they should for the road conditions,” Wakeford told CTV News Edmonton. “It’s pretty dark at night, it’s not properly marked and there are big potholes.

City council approved the $9-million upgrade in December.

Construction is to wrap up at the end of February 2027.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Amanda Anderson