The Town’s remaining portion of the Highway 27 construction will begin early this spring, and be completed late spring to early summer, depending on weather. This includes completing the replacement of critical underground infrastructure and existing service connections to businesses along the highway between Centre Street and 4th Street. On March 7, 2024, the Town invited businesses with direct access to Highway 27 between the bridge east of Centre Street and just west of 4th Street NW to a meeting to discuss the 2025 traffic accommodation strategy. These businesses were directly impacted during the Town’s portion of construction during the fall of 2023, as the traffic accommodation strategy at that time required direct access to the highway to be closed, which caused a severe impact to these businesses. In 2025, Transportation and Economic Corridors (TEC), will commence their portion of the construction, with a possibility of some of the work beginning in fall of 2024.
The Town requested that TEC come up with an alternate strategy that would allow access to the businesses to remain open during their construction period in 2025. TEC has come back with the most workable solution, which will reroute westbound traffic along 1st Avenue NW. This project has been technically complicated due to the nature of the geography in Sundre, and because Highway 27 is part of the High Load Corridor Network for oversize, overweight vehicles, which has made traffic accommodation strategies particularly complex. On March 18th, TEC and the Town will be meeting with residents along 1st Avenue NW to discuss the alternate route, as they will be directly impacted by the 2025 construction. It is our hope that the residents will support the detour route, and the inconvenience for one season to ensure our downtown businesses have the ability to remain viable and sustainable during the construction period. In mid to late April, TEC and the Town will be hosting an additional information session for other businesses and residents. The date, time and location will be posted on the Town website and in the local paper.
TEC and the Town have engaged a communication strategist to ensure that concerns and communication with stakeholders and the public are addressed through one source for consistency and reliability. All concerns and questions can be directed via email to: hwy27@sundre.com.