Southwest Edmonton is the fastest growing section of the city, and it is one of the slowest moving during the morning and evening commutes.
The Terwillegar corridor is a problem spot the city has been looking to fix for several years.
Tim Cartmell is the councillor for the area and he says development on Terwillegar Drive between Whitemud Drive and Anthony Henday is about 30 years behind because of cost.
READ MORE: Cartmell urges council to support upgrade of Terwillegar Drive
He was in the Global Edmonton studio Sunday morning to discuss the motion he’s presenting to city council on Tuesday.
“There’s essentially three parts to the motion. One is that we suspend the current consultation work that’s being done on the neighbourhood. That is a rerun of consultation work we’ve already done in 2001, 2006 and 2012,” Cartmell said.
“The second part is to breakup the Terwillegar Drive corridor into smaller, bite-sized pieces that we can begin to contemplate as a progressive, sequential way of developing corridor.
“The third part is to layer on some bus rapid transit or other mass transit possibilities to the corridor and some active transportation, so multi-use trails or bike trails along the corridor as well.”
READ MORE: Plans in the works to convert Terwillegar Drive to freeway
One of the controversial subjects surrounding the development of the corridor is the option put forward of eliminating some access to Terrwillegar Drive to reduce cost, including at Haddow Drive and 40 Avenue.
Cartmell said that’s not a feasible option. He said eliminating that first neighbourhood access point would create all kinds of problems with having cars drive further south, only to circle back north into Riverbend through the neighbourhoods on Riverbend Road.
“Questions like this were asked and answered three different times in three different consultations,” he said.
“We need all of those ramps and all of that access at all of those intersections, and we need to move on with that plan in mind.”
READ MORE: No decision yet on southwest Anthony Henday but it’s getting closer
The Ward 9 councillor started a petition on his website that asks Edmontonians to support that “the time is now for the development of the Terwillegar Corridor.”
“When people first heard there was an option out there about limited access they reacted quite negative to it, and we were really looking for a way for people to react positively to something,” Cartmell said.
“So we put the notice of motion out. We intend to make the motion on Tuesday and we really just provided a website where people could show their support for that direction.”
As of 1 p.m. Sunday, there were 1,752 signatures in support of the councillor’s motion.
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