Crown land road closures

Overview

Transportation prepares and approves the closure of road plans, statutory road allowances and unregistered public roads (such as, forestry roads) by Ministerial Order.

Alberta Crown land includes:

• land titled to Alberta and non-patent land within Alberta
• provincial parks
• most of the beds and shores of naturally occurring lakes, rivers, streams (Section 3, Public Lands Act)
• most of the beds and shores of wetlands if they are permanent and naturally occurring bodies of water (Section 3, Public Lands Act)

Exceptions to Alberta Crown land include:

• federal Crown lands – National Parks, Military Reserves, Indigenous lands, surrendered Indigenous lands
• grant or title specifically including bed and shore
• court-defined rights – rights to the bed and shore defined by a court of law

Closure requests

We accept road closure requests from:

• Alberta Transportation
• Alberta government ministries
• Government of Canada

Submit the request to:

Executive Director
Technical Standards Branch
Alberta Transportation
2nd Floor Twin Atria Building
4999 98 Avenue
Edmonton, Alberta  T6B 2X3

Submit all other requests for road closure affecting Crown land by email to Environment and Parks.

Environment and Parks review the request, provide referral comments and request closure by Transportation.

Required technical documents

The following documents must be submitted to Transportation with the closure request:

• relevant background information (related agreements)
• referral or response from affected municipality
• sketches that show road closures clearly marked in red – requirement of Environment and Parks
• legal descriptions for the road closures requested, including the description of the hectares and acres per quarter section, as well as for any intersections

Send questions or electronic submissions to [email protected].

Legislation

Highways Development and Protection Act:

• Section 38 for road plan closures
• Section 38.1 for all other road types

Public Lands Act:

• Section 3

District offices

Contact the Development and Planning Technologist with your District Office using the Map of Alberta Transportation Region and District Offices (PDF, 2.3 MB).

Use the Alberta Transportation District Office Contact List (PDF, 170 KB) to find an office closest to your community.