Abstract Manager

124 Street between 111 Avenue and 118 Avenue was a four-lane arterial with off-peak parking and narrow curbside walks dividing the central neighbourhood of Inglewood in Edmonton. The City had conducted several public engagement sessions and developed a concept design between 2018 and 2019 that maintained the four lane cross-section. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the off-peak parking was converted to permanent parking for 2 years with extended patio space to encourage physical distancing throughout the period of restrictions. This generated interest in developing a permanent, new design that reduced the cross-section to two travel lanes with space reallocated to active modes. 

As the design of this planned Main Street developed, the City had to balance the policy outcomes, original vision and guiding principles for the project from the public engagement and the technical constraints of a confined corridor. The new cross-section included a road diet of two drive lanes, new boulevards with trees, two parking lanes, and doubled the space for active modes to create a corridor that improves safety and livability and provides flexibility to support redevelopment in the future.

Construction on the project was completed in Fall 2023. With the new corridor operating for over a year, this presentation will reflect on lessons learned for how we got here and how it’s going. We will share how the City used traffic diversion impact analysis using projections for future growth to test the impact of the two lane configuration on the transportation network to support the final decision, how the City revised the design after public engagement had already been completed on this constrained corridor, highlight creative solutions used to integrate traffic calming and crossing improvements, and how space for active modes was considered in the final design.