With a growing population comes an increase in traffic flow and the City of Airdrie is continually looking for ways to improve their roadways.

Although the completion of 40th Avenue is not in the immediate future, there is hope the opening of the roadway will lighten the burden on Yankee Valley Boulevard.

"So when we look at 40th Ave, and I think our residents can see, we're building our first ever bridge across the railway tracks that will ultimately connect 8th Street to Main Street and we're hoping to have that open by about this time next year," said Lorne Stevens, Director of Community Infrastructure with the City of Airdrie.

The plans with the railway tracks don't stop there, however, as Airdrie plans to begin a functional study on the possibility of easing traffic flow over the railway tracks on Yankee Valley.

"We are hoping, later this year, to start with a functional study for looking at putting Yankee Valley Boulevard under the tracks, just West of Main Street. That's an incredibly complex project; we have a number of our main utility lines in close proximity with the railway, we also have Nose Creek in close proximity, so we are going to start some early stage engineering work on that," said Stevens.

The city also plans to look at the possibility of building an overpass at the railway tracks on Veterans Boulevard in the future.

Another big project on the horizon involves 8th Street between Yankee Valley Boulevard and Hillcrest Way.

"We do have in our capital program, this year, the four laning of 8th Street between Yankee Valley Boulevard and Hillcrest Way and included in that is a number of traffic signals, as well, and that's intended to accommodate the growth in that area as well as some growth that's occurred in some traffic that is finding it's way down to Balzac."

Although many plans are in the works, or early research stages, Stevens said it does take some time to put ideas into motion.

"We do hear feedback that growth happens faster than we can do the necessary improves for. We're always playing a little bit of catch up. We are trying to link in growth and development with roadway upgrades with a just-in-time basis."

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