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City officials are finalizing plans for the west LRT line and struggling with how to avoid snarling traffic at 149 Street.

One option could make a new “rathole” — sending north-south traffic under an LRT track at grade.

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Another fix — putting the track on stilts as it follows Stony Plain Road — could force officials to expropriate local businesses and create an unfriendly concrete monolith for an eight-block stretch of the commercial district.

After a full design review for the 14-km west leg of the Valley Line LRT, city officials are poised to send three options to council. The third and most expensive option is tunnelling along Stony Plain Road.

The option of sinking 149 Street rather than the track itself is new, introduced at an open house in November and still spreading through the neighbourhood.

“You mean like a rathole? A rathole would be bad,” said Michael MacFynn, marketing manager for nearby Revolution Cycle, remembering how 109 Street used to tunnel under CN rail yards north of 104 Avenue. It was notoriously ugly. MacFynn worries it would flood.