Edmonton city councillors spent a portion of Tuesday's meeting grappling with a revelation that has rattled the foundations of municipal budgeting: the 112-year-old High Level Bridge costs millions of dollars to keep standing, and would continue to cost millions of dollars to keep standing even if every Edmontonian solemnly agreed to never use it again.

"We asked administration what it would cost to keep the bridge if nobody crossed it," said one councillor, visibly hoping the answer would be a smaller number. "They told us it was still millions. We asked what it would cost if we just left it alone. Also millions. At a certain point you start to suspect the bridge is doing this on purpose."

City staff explained, with the weary patience of people who have explained this before, that large steel structures spanning a river valley do not enter a low-power standby mode when unattended. Rust, they noted, does not require ridership. Gravity, they added, continues to function during fiscal restraint.

"We looked into letting it fall down on its own, but it turns out that's also a multi-million-dollar project, just with a worse outcome," the report's lead author confirmed. "Decommissioning is expensive. Maintaining is expensive. Looking at it and sighing is technically free, but it is not a structural strategy."

Council briefly explored alternatives, including selling the bridge, renaming the bridge in exchange for sponsorship money, and converting the bridge into a revenue-generating attraction. The latter idea collapsed when someone pointed out that the bridge already is one, and people use it for free, which is precisely the problem.

"What we've learned today is that infrastructure, like many things in Alberta, is something you pay for indefinitely whether or not you derive any benefit from it," the councillor concluded. "Honestly, it's the most prepared I've felt for the provincial budget all year."