Alberta Highway 216
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| Highway 216 | |||||||||
| Anthony Henday Drive Maintained by Alberta Transportation |
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| Formed: | 2015 (in entirety) | ||||||||
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| Beltway around Edmonton | |||||||||
| Major junctions: |
Highway 2, Highway 14, Highway 15, Highway 28, Stony Plain Road, Whitemud Drive, Yellowhead Trail | ||||||||
| Counties: | Strathcona County | ||||||||
| Major cities: | Edmonton | ||||||||
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>Highway 216, also known as Anthony Henday Drive, is a ring road highway around Edmonton, Alberta, currently under construction, named after Alberta explorer Anthony Henday.
More than half of the road is completed and in use, starting east of Edmonton at Yellowhead Trail (Highway 16), south to Highway 14, then west past Gateway Boulevard / Calgary Trail (Highway 2), to Cameron Heights, then north to 137 Avenue. The highway designation 216, denotes its bypass linkages to the two major crossroads of Edmonton, Highway 2 and Highway 16. A similar ring road, Highway 201, is also being constructed around the city of Calgary.
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[edit] History and past construction
The eastern leg from Yellowhead Trail to Highway 14 was already an existing highway for several decades - this was formerly known as Highway 14X.
The Alberta provincial government developed the ring road plan during the 1970s and purchased the land for this purpose. This encircling land became known as the Transportation and Utility Corridor, ("utilities" being both overhead high-voltage transmission lines, and underground gas and oil pipelines), TUC for short on engineering drawings.
The western leg from Yellowhead Trail to Whitemud Drive was constructed by the City of Edmonton during the 1990s, then the province took over responsibility. The 87 Avenue and Whitemud Drive interchanges were built, and the southwestern leg from Whitemud Drive to Calgary Trail / Gateway Boulevard was completed by October, 2006. This section was the highest priority for construction due to its CANAMEX designation since it will eventually provide a free-flowing link between Highway 2 south and Highway 16 west. The total distance of the southwestern leg from Yellowhead Trail to Gateway Boulevard is 24 kilometres (15 mi).
The 11 km southeastern section from Calgary Trail / Gateway Boulevard to Highway 14 began in April, 2005 and was completed in October, 2007. The southeastern section is a public-private partnership (P3 — also known as a design-build-operate project), in which Access Roads won the contract for $493 million to build the road and maintain it for 30 years.[1]
[edit] Current and future construction
On the northern section of Anthony Henday Drive, construction was partially completed from Highway 16 in the west to 137 Avenue as part of St. Albert's West Regional Road project. A P3 agreement was signed and construction of the next leg started in 2008. When completed in 2011, it will run 21 kilometres (13 mi) from the Yellowhead west of 184 Street to Manning Drive (Highway 15).[2]
The remaining 9 km section in the northeast, from Manning Drive to the Yellowhead Highway east of Edmonton, is currently in the design stages but construction is targeted for completion by 2015. This final section of the ring road includes a crossing over the North Saskatchewan River, so approval will be needed from Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Transport Canada, in addition to intensive environmental and geotechnical studies, for construction to begin.
Also in various stages of design and construction are the following interchanges along the western sections of the road:
- Stony Plain Road: construction began in April 2009, completion by fall of 2011 [3]
- Lessard Road: construction began late in 2009, completion by fall of 2011 [4]
- Callingwood Road / 62 Avenue: construction began late in 2009, completion by fall of 2011 [4]
- Cameron Heights Drive: currently in the design phase. [4]
[edit] Interchanges and intersections
Eventually the entire route will have freeway status, which means grade separation at all crossings to allow free-flow traffic. This is a list of all the intersections (completed and planned) starting at the north-eastern river crossing, heading clockwise.
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[edit] External links
[edit] References
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