City Government

What is Municipal Infrastructure

Did you:

Drive to work today or take public transit?
Sign out a library book or take a walk in the park?
Pour dishwater down the drain or flush a toilet?

If you answered "yes" to any of those questions, then you used the City of Edmonton's municipal infrastructure.

There is over $33 billion of City-owned infrastructure all around us, providing the essential services that maintain Edmonton's enviable quality of life.

Much of this infrastructure passes unnoticed every day. For example, there are over 4,800 kilometres of storm, sanitary or combined sewers beneath the City, and almost 3,300 km of roadways. Other infrastructure includes over 750 buses and the LRT that, combined, provided 44 million trips last year.

Most of us take for granted the important role that municipal infrastructure assets play in our day-to-day lives.

We expect that potholes will be filled
We assume that wastewater is properly treated
We trust that our parks are safe and well maintained.

These infrastructure assets are essential to the City's growth, economic development, citizen safety and quality of life, and are among the most important attributes that make Edmonton an attractive place to live and do business.

Like any good homeowner, the City maintains its infrastructure assets to protect its investment. But the job is becoming increasingly difficult. The average age of Edmonton's infrastructure assets is over 30 years and their average life expectancy is 50.

A key fiscal objective of the City's municipal development plan, is to meet the demands for new infrastructure while ensuring that existing infrastructure remains safe and reliable. The City will soon require significant investment to renew or replace deteriorating assets in order to maintain existing service levels. Edmonton is like many other Canadian cities facing a similar dilemma.

Cities across Canada face a number of significant challenges:

Population growth
Urbanization and regionalization
Fiscal restraint from other orders of government
Increased demand from citizens for services
A lower tolerance for tax increases
And more stringent environmental regulations

All of which threaten a municipality's ability to meet citizen demands for services that depend upon municipal infrastructure.

Edmonton also has to build new infrastructure to accommodate an ever-growing population. Each year, new residents move to Edmonton in search of employment opportunities created by our thriving economy. This population growth requires new infrastructure – roads, fires stations, recreation facilities.

Even with roughly $2 billion newly committed for municipal infrastructure from the federal and provincial governments, Edmonton still faces a significant shortfall over the next decade. A considerable gap remains between the infrastructure we need to repair or build and the funds available to pay for the rehabilitation and construction of those infrastructure assets.

For more information:

Office of Infrastructure

5th Floor, Chancery Hall
3 Sir Winston Churchill Square
Edmonton, AB
T5J 2C3

Telephone	780-442-6439
Fax	780-420-4884
Email	infrastructure@edmonton.ca