Stony Plain Road will remain a two-way roadway between 149th Street and 156th Street when the Valley Line West LRT gets built.
City council’s urban planning committee agreed to that option Tuesday, rejecting a design that would have turned the road into a one-way westbound route.
City staff recommended the two-way for better traffic flow on Stony Plain Road — one eastbound and one westbound traffic lane, with the LRT between them and a station between 150th and 151st streets.
But Coun. Andrew Knack was concerned that with two-way vehicular traffic, there wouldn’t be enough room for wider sidewalks, benches and other pedestrian-friendly amenities.
“If all we’re going to do is build really narrow sidewalks and have cars driving through the area, then we’ve missed the whole mark,” Knack said.
Similar to Whyte Avenue and Jasper Avenue, the city has main street guidelines, one of which is a minimum sidewalk width of 1.5 metres.
After Tuesday’s meeting, Knack said he’s confident the city’s LRT team will work to incorporate wider sidewalks into the design by acquiring land along the stretch, such as unused parking lots and business space.
“There’s a lot of opportunities for them to acquire that space while we do construction to build in that pedestrian realm, as well as that vehicle movement realm as well as the opportunity for people to get off the LRT.”
Valley Line West will be an urban-style 27-kilometre LRT line between 102nd Street downtown and Lewis Farms in the west end. Construction is scheduled to begin by late 2019 or early 2020.
The main design is finished. But the city still needs to secure funding from the province before choose a contractor. It’s estimated the line would take five years to build after a contract is in place.