Article content

The daily parking lot on Sarcee Trail will get worse over the next decade, thanks to the province’s decision to delay completion of the Calgary ring road’s final segment until 2024 or 2025.

While the province plans to begin construction of the southwest leg through Tsuu T’ina Nation lands as soon as this fiscal year, Alberta Transportation confirmed the shovels won’t hit dirt until 2021 for the ring’s west leg — from the Trans-Canada Highway to Glenmore Trail.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Budget: Ring road won’t be complete for another decade Back to video

Cabinet cut about $1.5 billion from existing ring road spending plans by delaying the west leg, which the government had initially planned to start building in 2017 and have finished by 2021 — finally closing the loop on Calgary’s decades-long ring road saga. Alberta’s revenue plunge forced a change of plans.

“That saved money, pushing it back. That’s definitely one of the reasons,” Transportation Minister Wayne Drysdale said in an interview.

In a budget that Calgary city hall is mostly happy with — it escaped with mostly minor grant cuts — the expressway delay will provide the biggest headaches.

What many Calgarians may not understand is that the remainder of the ring road is now split into two phases: the southwest leg from Highway 22x to Glenmore — through the First Nations reserve — and the west leg on lands the province has owned for decades.