BANFF – A change is coming to the Bow River Bridge in Banff this Saturday, and while only temporary it could be a sign of things to come as the community deals with congestion on weekends.
A lane reversal of the bridge will occur in the afternoon on Aug. 13 and the Town of Banff and Parks Canada will be monitoring how it impacts traffic going into and out of the community.
In the trial, one of the two southbound lanes will be turned into a northbound lane.
“We are testing out the idea of that centre lane that is southbound to switch it to northbound so that more vehicles coming from Sulphur Mountain can get across the bridge,” said Jason Darrah, director of communications and marketing for the Town of Banff. “It is something that has been requested and we want to trial it and we want to monitor on what are the impacts on improving traffic times.”
The bridge, which was built in 1921, is a heritage bridge and is narrow by current standards. Modelling has shown that adding a fourth lane to Bow River Bridge would have a limited impact. The sidewalks on each side would also have to be reduced by one metre, which would negatively impact pedestrian traffic.
The major issue on the bridge is that many people go to Sulphur Mountain parking lots to find they are full, then turn around and go back down the hill, creating congestion. Doing a trial run of the lane reversal on a Saturday in August offers the town the opportunity to see if it will help with that congestion.
“We have been experiencing our threshold, which is 24,000 vehicles, that creates a congestion when we hit that threshold,” Darrah said. “We didn’t want to do it on a long weekend when we know it is highest, but we still wanted to do it on a weekend when there is high volume.”
Traffic in the mountain community can be high, especially on long weekends when people flock to the townsite and Banff National Park. During the August long weekend from July 29 to Aug. 1, there were 113,466 vehicles in Banff. July 31 had the highest number of recorded vehicles this year at 31,526.
The Town and Parks Canada have been aggressive in redirecting vehicles to park at the train station lot – which has free parking – or look at alternative ways to get to the area such as via bus.
This is a manual trial, with pylons and signage in place to mark the change.
“Visitors probably wouldn’t know one way or the other and ample signage leading up to the bridge will help both visitors and residents know which lane to be in,” Darrah said.
If the trial is successful and congestion is relieved, at least somewhat, the lane reversal could become a more permanent fixture but that won’t be anytime soon.
“We need to evaluate in terms of what we are going to do,” Darrah said. “Anything we brought into place, like big cities, they have light signalling systems and that would have to be part of a capital project.”
