The debate over whether Calgary should build a transportation tunnel at the airport reared its head again with three aldermen’s “discovery” of $123 million tucked away in an untapped provincial fund.

Aldermen Andre Chabot, Ray Jones and Jim Stevenson have suggested the city uses the money to build the tunnel — a proposal city council shot down in July — before the airport authority begins its $1.8-billion expansion.

“If we had known this municipal financing initiative money was uncommitted in advance we would have brought it forward on July 19,” says Stevenson, who as the airport-area alderman has long-fought for the tunnel. “But the only thing given to us by administration as a possible source of funds was delaying other projects.”

Barlow Trail, one of the main arteries to the airport, is slated to close in April 2011 to make way for a fourth runway. The proposed tunnel would run east to west connecting 96th Avenue and 36th Street N.E.

Building a tunnel now could cost about $500 million when factoring in road and interchanges; doing it after the new runway is built would require boring underground and doubling the price tag.

Stevenson proposes the city borrows the money now and pays off the loan as the Municipal Sustainability Initiative funds trickle in as early as 2012. According to city officials, borrowing the money could cost the city $30 million in interest.

Stevenson says it took a significant amount of digging to discover the MSI funds were not tied to any project.

The general manager of the city’s transportation department takes issue with Stevenson’s “troublesome” suggestion that administration “hid the money” from council. “The innovation fund that Ald. Stevenson mentioned, that money was allocated by council,” says Mac Logan. “It wasn’t $123 million that we didn’t tell council about.”

“Did they forget about it or are they deciding that there are other priorities now and they don’t want to spend it on innovation, but instead, transportation?”

Although the $123 million is allocated to the innovation fund, which could be used for pilot projects such as citywide compost recycling, it is not committed to any project and can still be moved into the “transportation bucket,” says Logan. Council, he says, was told in July that it was now or never to allocate funds for the tunnel.

Mayoral candidate Ald. Bob Hawkesworth, who recently launched an anti-airport tunnel petition, says the city has no money left in the bank. The province and the federal governments will not commit any money toward the tunnel.

“To suggest that the city, all by itself, should build an airport tunnel is a stretch in my view and we can’t do it,” he says. “I don’t think Calgarians would want to double our tax-supported debt for this one project with such little benefit.”

Without a tunnel, travellers could easily access the airport from the north, says Hawkesworth. But Stevenson paints a nightmare scenario of clogged and frustrated travelers, which will get worse as the city’s northeast grows.

“It’ll be like a MacLeod Trail,” he says. “When you put in an extra 80,000 people in on the eastside of Metis Trail and you create another 30,000 jobs over the next 25 years on the west side of Metis Trail then we’re talking about a major delay to get people up and around there.”

Email: thowell@ffwd.greatwest.ca

***UPDATE***

Ask and ye shall receive. Here's a City of Calgary map detailing the layout of the proposed airport tunnel.

LargeMap_airporttunnelmap