Drug use and overdoses among reasons Macleod pedestrian tunnel being closed

A tunnel that crosses under Macleod Trail near Glenmore will be closed down for good next week after safety concerns were raised about it.

Crews will start shutting down the tunnel, nicknamed Needle Alley, on January 24.

Tara Norton-Merrin with city roads explains why the closure is happening.

“There’s been a lot of safety issues and activity in the tunnel that we believed that it needed to be shutdown, and after visiting the tunnel we noticed that there is not a lot of pedestrians using it right now,” said Norton-Merrin.

In a letter to business owners in the area, the city says Calgary police and bylaw officers have reported incidents of drug use, overdoses, hazardous materials and fires being set.

She adds people can add two minutes to their walk and use a pedestrian overpass which is just north of the tunnel.

“We believe that it won’t have a huge impact. Most of the business owners who we talked to today, who work around that tunnel say that they don’t use it and that they will walk the two minutes to use the overpass. Most of the business owners we spoke to today were quite happy that we were going to be closing it.”

The one problem some people may run into is the closure of curb lanes going in both directions on Macleod, but it will only happen between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.

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