It’s a day many drivers have been waiting for for years: they will no longer have to wait for trains on 50th Street near the Sherwood Park Freeway in east Edmonton.
The northbound lanes of the much-anticipated 50th Street overpass between 90th Avenue and the Sherwood Park Freeway opened to traffic on Friday. The southbound lanes will open the week of Sept. 16, according to the City of Edmonton.
Both northbound and southbound traffic will use the northbound lanes of the overpass as work begins on the southbound overpass.
This means drivers will no longer have to stop for trains at the rail crossing — something that’s caused Edmontonians headaches for years.
“This is such a good thing,” said Ron Tkachuk, who has lived in the area for 30 years and has driven through the traffic for just as long. “Very happy. So tired of the tie-ups. This train would stop for more than 15 minutes at a time. Every single day.
“The train would stop, move two inches and then stop again,” Tkachuk continued. “I’m happy not to deal with this anymore. It’s a fantastic thing. It should have happened 20 years ago… Finally. That’s all I can say.”
Ramin Rahimi owns Simply Donairs on the corner of 90th Avenue and 50th Street. He’s happy the overpass is open and hopes it will be good for business.
“I feel really excited about it because I know it was hectic, it was a big problem for the commuters,” Rahimi said.
“The business got slow. People were coming from the south side, they were stuck by the train before and lots of construction in this area that’s also affected (business) recently… Hoping the business is going to get better for not only this one but all the other places in this shopping centre.”
The at-grade Canadian Pacific railway crossing along 50th Street has been identified as the City of Edmonton’s top priority location for grade separation based on delays, traffic impact and frequency of train crossings.
Get breaking National news
Mayor Amarjeet Sohi said the route is also a very busy trades corridor, with trucks bringing goods and services through the area.
“It has been a long-standing annoyance for many, many Edmontonians and I’m very glad that that annoyance is over as of today,” Sohi said.
“No one is going to be stuck in traffic at the rail crossing and that is such a huge relief for people travelling through this part of the city.”
Former Global News anchor Shaye Ganam rejoices, no longer stuck behind #stupidtrain
Global Edmonton viewers will know that there was perhaps no driver more frustrated by the backups caused by the train than former Morning News anchor and current 630 CHED radio host Shaye Ganam.
Ganam, who lives in Goldbar and travels 50th Street every day, was famous for posting pictures of the train stopped on the tracks on social media with the hashtag #stupidtrain.
“I somehow became #stupidtrain guy, which is great. That’s not a problem,” Ganam said on Friday. “Anybody who lives in southeast Edmonton knows that that 50th Street train is the worst thing that’s ever happened in our city.
“Now, finally, we’re at this point where the train is not going to be stupid as much and I’ll have to retire the hashtag.”
- Air Canada strike: As intervention calls grow, ‘we’re not going to do that,’ Trudeau says
- Hospital shaving elderly Sikh patient without consent ‘cannot happen again’: WSO
- Man charged with killing missing N.S. woman was fleeing to Mexico: police
- Doctors thought she had the stomach flu. But it was near-fatal sepsis
All joking aside, Ganam said the traffic tie-ups could become serious, as he would sometimes see emergency vehicles stuck in the backlog.
“I was always surprised that there wasn’t an ambulance that got stuck and we heard that somebody died because the ambulance couldn’t get past the stupid train.”
Ganam wasn’t able to make it to the overpass on Friday for the ribbon cutting, but he said he’ll be taking a drive along it this weekend.
“At some point today, tomorrow, this weekend, I’m going to drive over that bridge and I’ll probably shed a tear when I do just out of pure joy, because even when they announced this project, I didn’t think it was going to happen because they’ve been talking about it for as long as I’ve been alive,” he said.
“The first time I drive over a train on that overpass is going to be probably the highlight of being an Edmontonian for me.”
The overall project involves widening 50th Street to a six-lane divided roadway between Sherwood Park Freeway and 90th Avenue. A shared-use path will be built on the east side of 50th Street. The sidewalk on the west side of 50th Street will also be upgraded.
Work on the southbound overpass is expected to begin this fall and continue through 2025.
Construction on the $181-million project began in 2022 and is expected to be complete by the end of 2026.
Comments