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The City of Calgary will need to spend nearly $6 billion over the next decade to address the worsening condition of the city’s most critical assets, according to city officials.
The figure is part of an update on the city’s corporate asset management plan presented to the city’s Infrastructure and Planning committee Wednesday.
According to the report, roughly 11 per cent or $18 billion worth of city-owned assets and infrastructure is in poor or very poor condition.
Around $1.7 billion of the assets in poor condition are deemed “critical,” the report said, which means a failure could result in a significant service disruption and potential risk to life safety. That figure represents the current replacement value of those critical assets, but not the costs to repair or maintain them.
“Our infrastructure is very close to crisis mode,” Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas told reporters. “We can act now modestly to invest in the needed proactive investment, or we can respond in crisis mode and pay massively down the road.”
The report includes $5.7 billion in required spending over the next 10 years to repair, replace and add redundancy to the city’s most critical assets including water and wastewater infrastructure, roads, bridges, transit assets and city-owned facilities.
According to the update, close to 120 km of the city’s water transmission mains are without redundancy and recent condition data with plans to update condition assessments and upgrade redundancy by the end of 2029.
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That would require $1.2 billion over the next decade, with an additional $590 million over the same timeframe to address “single points of failure” at city water treatment plants, as well as $400 million to build redundancy for nine large wastewater river crossings with unknown condition data.
The report also recommends city council increase the city’s roads budget by $10 million in 2026 to $100 million, with annual spending of $140 million annually starting in 2027.
City officials are also recommending four bridges be repaired or removed over the next five years, including a pedestrian bridge at Macleod Trail and 63 Avenue. $115 million would be required within five years to complete the work.
The report also shows 10,000 steel streetlight poles need to be replaced due to rust, and will require a $5 million funding boost in 2026 to increase the number of poles replaced from 4,000 per year.
Transit amenities would require $2.3 billion in funding over the next decade and the report recommends another $1 billion in spending for repairs across city-owned facilities; seven per cent of those facilities have been deemed in poor or very poor condition.
“The ’70s and ’80s are when we built most of the pipe in the city, most of the water pipes, most of the infrastructure and recreation facilities,” said Ward 4 Coun. DJ Kelly. “Those are the kinds of things that we as a council need to be taking the time right now to figure out how do we fund those to be able to get those up to speed.”
More information on how the city would fund the plan are expected in the coming months, when the completed Corporate Asset Management Plan and a 10-year Capital Infrastructure Plan are presented to councillors in the spring.
“It’s a preliminary number,” said Steve Wyton, the city’s manager of asset management. “We’re still developing those plans right now, those asset management plans.”
It comes after the city’s infrastructure services general manager Michael Thompson told city councillors the capital budget would need to increase to $5 billion, up from the $3.8 billion budgeted for this year.
It signals tough conversations ahead, according to Ward 5 Coun. Raj Dhaliwal, after concerns were raised about potential property tax increases or utility rate hikes.
“We cannot be reaching out into our reserves as lazy financial planning,” Dhaliwal told reporters. “We cannot mortgage the future of our kids by using those reserves.”
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