If you listened to an opinion article in the paper, or a mayoral candidate vying for your attention, you might believe our downtown is about to go through something cataclysmic — all the bridges in and out closing at the same time.
You've may have heard about how this is going to be the final nail in the coffin for our downtown, from a City Council with horrible planning that needs to be replaced.
It's a compelling narrative, with just one critical flaw: it's almost entirely untrue.
We're not about to "bridge-lock" our downtown, no matter what message the organization du jour of downtown businesses or their preferred mayoral candidate are trying to peddle.
The reality is much less stark: over the next five years, in the absolute worst case, only one-and-a-half to two bridges will experience overlapping closures, depending on how you count.
The project timelines are outlined by City Administration below. You can read more about it in an administrative memo here.
Get updates straight to your inbox. Register to get digest updates to keep you informed right up until the election.
Let's dig in to where these bridges are, and how they'll be affected.
Low-Level Bridge
Traffic Volume (2023): 40,205 vehicles/day
Lanes: Two North, Two South
The low-level bridge is actually two bridges, a northbound and a southbound bridge, however most people only think of it as one. It's located just at the bottom of Grierson Hill, south of Downtown.
Beginning in Q3 2025, the Southbound bridge will need to be closed. Traffic travelling south will instead take over the current Northbound bridge.
Traffic travelling north, will instead be rerouted to the James McDonald Bridge on 98 ave.
High-Level Bridge
Traffic Volume (2023): 27,090 vehicles/day
Lanes: Two South
The High Level Bridge requires extensive rehabilitation and maintenance and will require a multi-year closure.
However, the High Level Bridge closure does not overlap with any other bridge closure. Design is currently being finalized, and no closure will occur until at least 2027, when all the other bridge projects are complete.
Wellington Bridge
Traffic Volume (2023): 17,845 vehicles/day
Lanes: Two East, Two West
The wellington bridge is the small, historic bridge along 102ave just east of 130st. It's the one with the incredibly tight sidewalk that requires cyclists to dismount.
It is west of Downtown and serves commuters travelling toward Stony Plain Road.
Full closure of the bridge will start in Q4 2025. The plan is to compress work to minimize closure time, including doing non-weather-dependent activities like demolition in winter.
The work is slated to be complete by late 2026.
Dawson Bridge
Traffic Volume (2023): 9,768 vehicles/day
Lanes: One east, one west
Dawson Bridge is located east of downtown connecting the Riverdale Neighbourhood across the river to 106 ave and Forest Heights.
It is not an extremely popular bridge in terms of volume.
The construction is being planned to minimize the requirement for a full closure. There may be some night-time or weekend closures for steel strengthening.
At least one sidewalk will remain open at a time to accommodate active transportation.
Addressing the mayoral-hopeful misinformation
The big media drive against this bridge plan has been led by mayoral-hopeful Tim Cartmell, and a group of people who all have some relation to his campaign.
The past chair of the DRC, the business group mounting opposition to bridge maintenance, is Alex Hryciw, who has been tapped to run Tim Cartmell's campaign. The current chair, is Cheryll Watson, a past mayoral contender who also had her campaign ran by Hryciw. The DRC was calling for the "short-sighted" plan to be delayed to avoid "Cutting off access to Downtown"
In his media release Cartmell says "we're looking at extended closures of critical river crossings that hundreds of thousands of Edmontonians use daily".
The daily traffic volume of all of the referenced Downtown-adjacent bridges in total is 94,908 vehicles per day — and at maximum two of them will be impacted at any one time. In the worst case, this means roughly just over 30,000 vehicles daily use the bridges that would be closing.
"Hundreds of thousands" is quite a stretch, especially for a professional engineer talking about a civil engineering project such as this.
As for the suggestion that this came out of nowhere and we now suddenly need a "pause" to think about our transportation network holistically: there have been several reports, updates and checkpoints in the process.
In 2018, a full Bridge Maintenance Audit was presented to council detailing the maintenance strategy for over 300 bridges.
In 2020, Council received a memo regarding a crack in a pier in the low-level bridge. It advised of an upcoming in-depth assessment of LLB renewal in the next capital cycle.
In 2022, the full bridge renewal report was presented to council for approval. In it, administration highlights "Renewal of these bridges must be coordinated within the program for funding availability and cash flow, resources and network impacts"
In 2022, the High Level Bridge Lifecycle Strategy confirmed plans to renew the High Level Bridge (with extensive closures)
In 2023, the borrowing bylaw for the High Level Bridge work afforded a last chance to change course.
In May 2024, a memo to council outlining the potential impacts and timelines of construction, and the work administration is undergoing to mitigate transportation network impacts. This memo which has been raised by Councillor Cartmell and business groups nearly a year later is the source of much of the consternation.
In October 2024, the Wellington Bridge Environmental Impact Assessment which re-affirmed that the construction timelines for Wellington Bridge were aligned with Valley Line West construction timelines for efficiency and to minimize disruption to the transportation network.
Finally, this week, an attachment to a City Council Report addressing the misinformation being disseminated, and hoping to correct it.
There have been, in the past eight years that Councillor Cartmell has been around the table at least a dozen structured opportunities to raise and debate concerns, and correct course. He has availed himself of none of these. Even now, none of his complaints are accompanied by a notice of motion to actually do something.
When you hear something that scares you, always interrogate whether the person saying it has something to gain by instilling fear
The thing that would scare me most is delaying maintenance on 100-year-old bridges in service of electioneering.