| Highway 216 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anthony Henday Drive | ||||
| Route information | ||||
| Maintained by Alberta Transportation | ||||
| Length: | 69 km[1] (43 mi) Planned: 78 km (48 mi) |
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| Major junctions | ||||
| Beltway around Edmonton | ||||
| Location | ||||
| Specialized and rural municipalities: |
Strathcona County | |||
| Major cities: | Edmonton, St. Albert, Sherwood Park | |||
| Highway system | ||||
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Provincial highways in Alberta
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Anthony Henday Drive, designated Alberta Provincial Highway No. 216 by Alberta Transportation,[2] is a ring road highway around Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It is currently under construction and named after Alberta explorer Anthony Henday.
Nearly 90% of the road is completed and in use. It starts in east Edmonton at Yellowhead Trail (Highway 16) and travels south to Highway 14, then west past Gateway Boulevard / Calgary Trail (Highway 2) and across the North Saskatchewan River to the Cameron Heights neighbourhood, then north past Whitemud Drive, Stony Plain Road and Yellowhead Trail to Ray Gibbon Drive, and then east past St. Albert Trail and 97 Street to currently end at Manning Drive. The highway designation 216, denotes its bypass linkages to the two major crossroads of Edmonton, Highway 2 and Highway 16. A similar ring road, Highway 201, is also being constructed around the City of Calgary.
The free-flowing northwest leg of Anthony Henday Drive from Yellowhead Trail in the west to Manning Drive in the northeast opened on November 1, 2011.[1] An estimated 40,000 motorists use Anthony Henday Drive daily.[3] Upon completion in 2016, Anthony Henday Drive will be the first free-flowing orbital road in Canada.[citation needed]
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The eastern leg from Yellowhead Trail to Highway 14 was already an existing highway for several decades - this was formerly known as Highway 14X.
The Alberta provincial government developed the ring road plan during the 1970s and purchased the land for this purpose. This encircling land became known as the Transportation and Utility Corridor, ("utilities" being both overhead high-voltage transmission lines, and underground gas and oil pipelines), TUC for short on engineering drawings.[4]
The western leg from Yellowhead Trail to Whitemud Drive was constructed by the City of Edmonton during the 1990s, prior to the province taking over responsibility of the project. The 87 Avenue and Whitemud Drive interchanges were built, and the southwestern leg from Whitemud Drive to Calgary Trail / Gateway Boulevard was completed by October 2006.[5] This section was the highest priority for construction due to its CANAMEX designation, providing a link between Highway 2 south and Highway 16 west. It became entirely free-flowing on November 2, 2011. The total distance of the southwestern leg from Yellowhead Trail to Gateway Boulevard is 24 km (15 mi).
Construction of the 11 km (6.8 mi) southeastern section from Calgary Trail / Gateway Boulevard to Highway 14 began in April 2005 and was completed in October 2007. The southeastern section was built through a public-private partnership (P3 — also known as a design-build-operate project), in which Access Roads won the contract for $493 million to build the road and maintain it for 30 years.[6]
On the northern section of Anthony Henday Drive, construction of the interim segment from Highway 16 in the west to 137 Avenue was partially completed as part of St. Albert's West Regional Road (Ray Gibbon Drive) project. Construction of the entire 21 km (13 mi) northwest leg from Yellowhead Trail to Manning Drive (Highway 15) was started in 2008 through the signing of a P3 agreement. This leg opened to traffic on November 1, 2011.[1]
The remaining 9 km (5.6 mi) section in the northeast, from Manning Drive to the Yellowhead Highway in east Edmonton, is slated to begin construction in 2012, and targeted for completion by 2016. This final section of the ring road includes a crossing over the North Saskatchewan River, as well as improvements to an existing 9 km (5.6 mi) segment between Yellowhead Trail and Whitemud Drive.[7]
Eventually the entire route will have freeway status, which means grade separation at all crossings to allow free-flow traffic. This is a list of all the intersections (completed and planned) starting at the southern Highway 2 crossing, heading clockwise.
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