BANFF – Paving paradise to put up a parking lot to help ease Banff’s summer traffic snarls is not a route Parks Canada is willing to take.
While the Parks Canada-struck expert panel on moving people sustainably recommended large mobility hubs in Banff, which are essentially intercept lots, the federal agency says legislation and policy for Banff National Park simply does not support this outside the Banff townsite boundary.
High-ranking Parks Canada officials say the advisory panel provided recommendations without digging into the legal and policy ramifications, adding the federal agency’s position on intercept parking lots outside town boundaries has not changed.
Sal Rasheed, the superintendent of Banff National Park, said decisions are bound by the Town of Banff’s legislated fixed boundary and commercial growth cap, as well as the park management plan approved in parliament in August.
“It makes it really difficult for Parks Canada to approve proposals that do not demonstrate conformance with applicable park policy, the park management plan, which was approved in parliament, and the law, which is the Town of Banff boundary and commercial space limits,” he said.
“We really are tied to those principles when we do consider any sort of development. Having said that, we remain committed to working with the Town of Banff on exploring parking solutions within legislated town boundaries.”
More than four million people visit the park annually and visitation increases almost every year. Between 2010 and 2019, there was a 29 per cent increase in the number of visitors.
With the explosion in visitation, the past decade has seen a steady rise in vehicle traffic. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, there were more than 8.5 million vehicles on Banff highways. It is estimated that half of all traffic on the Trans-Canada Highway in Banff National Park is driving through.
This rise is even greater at some of the park’s main attractions. At Lake Louise, for example, where tourists come to visit the famed lake and nearby Moraine Lake, there has been a 71 per cent increase in traffic volume over the past decade.
On Lake Louise Drive, traffic jams can back up to the Trans-Canada Highway, At iconic Moraine Lake, private vehicle are now banned year-round and visitors are mandated to take park shuttles, Roam buses or commercial transportation.
In Banff, back-to-back traffic heads up Mountain Avenue to Sulphur Mountain tourist hotspots such as the Banff gondola and hot springs every summer, only to be turned away when the parking lots are full.
To help deal with this, the Parks Canada-struck expert panel on moving people sustainably, which released its 73-page report last month, recommended consideration of large transportation hubs at the Mount Norquay entrance to the townsite or along Banff Avenue, among many other recommendations.
These hubs, or intercept park-and-ride lots, could also connect visitors by expanded transit to other tourist hotspots like Lake Minnewanka and Johnston Canyon.
The advisory panel suggested visioning and planning in a collaborative manner for the mobility hubs in Banff – which would accommodate public and private mass transit from Calgary either by bus or train – is a critical first step and this work should begin immediately.
“Within the Banff townsite, a comprehensive review of potential locations along Banff Avenue or Mt Norquay Road will be required and can begin once some initial visioning is done,” stated the expert panel’s report.
“Once a vision and plan are established, medium-term actions could include constructing infrastructure pieces to support the long-term plan. This could include not only the physical assets but also potentially piloting various modes of transport from each hub.”
There is currently a 500-stall intercept lot at the Banff train station, which is at peak occupancy in the busy summer months, and the Town of Banff has long eyed the so-called Elk Woods lands off Banff Avenue, outside town boundaries.
Town of Banff officials say the panel’s recommendation for mobility hubs are welcomed, noting a series of studies commissioned by the municipality over the years have recommended intercept lots at both entrances to town.
“We’ve been able to move forward on the Mount Norquay Road side through a partnership with Liricon at the train station parking lot, however, we have not had any movement on the Banff Avenue entrance parking lot,” said Darren Enns, director of planning and development for the Town of Banff.
“We are evangelists when it comes to intercept parking and have been so for a number of years, and so it’s fantastic to see an expert panel again coming up with the exact same recommendation that the long-term transportation study did seven years ago.”
A project for an intercept lot at the Banff Avenue entrance to town sits within the Town of Banff’s no-year-identified projects within the capital budget.
“That, of course, is constrained by our ability to access land. We simply do not have the real estate within the Town of Banff to make this happen,” said Enns during a Jan. 9 council meeting.
With a Feb. 5 deadline for public feedback to Parks Canada on the expert panel’s report, Enns said the Town of Banff is in the process of formalizing its response, which will include a call to work together on mobility hubs.
“Our response will be indicating our willingness and availability to meet at the drop of a hat to discuss that concept,” he said.
The lands outside the Town of Banff’s boundary are protected by legislation and there is concern a large parking lot would have a negative impact on the area’s wildlife such as bears, wolves, elk, cougars and more.
Rasheed said there are many years worth of research and data to support this, including the long-standing wildlife monitoring transects and remote cameras that are set up at the wildlife underpasses beneath the highway.
“It’s abundantly clear that wildlife are using these lands around the borders frequently and regularly, whether that’s the Elk Woods area immediately at the entrance or whether that’s the so-called Indian Grounds further north,” he said.
“These are areas that are valuable wildlife transportation corridors that are even more important in a narrow pinched valley like the Bow Valley … that’s why we continue to feel strongly that those areas around the town boundary serve as valuable wildlife transportation and security habitat.”
These lands also fall within sensitive and critical montane habitat.
“The entrance to Banff is essentially critical montane habitat, which is a decreasing ecosystem type in the mountain,” said Rasheed.
“It would almost be a double effect where not only would you be removing valuable wildlife habitat, you’d be removing valuable sensitive habitat that’s already in short supply.”
Banff town councillor Grant Canning said he hopes the panel’s report has more credibility than previous studies commissioned by the Town of Banff because it was established by Parks Canada.
“For far too long the Town of Banff has basically been left to fend for itself to deal with congestion within the Town of Banff,” he said during the Jan. 9 council meeting.
“Whether it’s been said directly or indirectly, the message is ‘it’s your problem, you solve it within your existing footprint’. We have tried so many things over the years to do just that, and it is getting increasingly harder and harder to do that because of the constraints that have been put upon us.”
In December, Banff council directed administration to spend $30,000 to hire a consultant to come up with potential ideas for a land swap with Parks Canada in order to get space outside the boundary for an intercept lot.
Canning, who has previously highlighted there is precedent in such a deal with Sunshine Village Ski Resort creating more parking in the area of Mount Bourgeau and Lake Louise Ski Resort exchanging land in the Porcupine Ridge area, said the idea is to open up a different type of conversation with Parks Canada, rather than just asking for extra land.
“If we can create incentives to that effect or opportunities to that effect, I think that’s where our chance of success is much greater,” he said.
Rasheed said he sees misconceptions in some of the discussion regarding the land swap idea Banff town council is investigating, noting comparisons with ski areas and the Town of Banff are “a bit inaccurate and not really similar.”
“Instead, what actually happened was an overall reduction in each ski areas’ commercial leasehold size and lands from that reduction were returned back to Parks Canada so we could realize an ecological gain in the process,” he said.
“If there’s any precedent that exists, it’s one where the Crown has reduced the commercial leaseholder space and capped development within that space and the national park has gained an ecological advantage … whether it’s secured grizzly bear habitat or it’s a wildlife corridor, or valuable aquatic riparian habitat.”
Rasheed said solutions for parking are different in different places, noting the intercept parking lot at the Lake Louise ski hill – which currently has space for 1,800 vehicles but will be expanded to 3,100 under the ski hill’s approved long range plan – sits on disturbed land within an existing leasehold.
“The pressure in Lake Louise has been far more acute for far longer for a longer period of the year than they are in Banff townsite,” he said, noting there is 24-7 traffic management demand in that region in recent years.
“Now having said that, we again certainly are not naive or ignorant of the challenges during the busy summer months here in Banff, and are committed to work with the Town of Banff to look for solutions within the boundary of the town.”
In order to reduce vehicles coming into the national park in the first place, the expert advisory panel also recommends paid parking as an option as well as variable pricing for park entry based on whether people arrive by mass transit or private vehicle.
The panel indicated a train between Calgary and Banff would be an ideal solution for reducing vehicles, though also noted an expanded bus service, either public or private, could provide many of the same benefits as a train with lower capital infrastructure costs.
The panel also talked of the creation of high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes on the Trans-Canada Highway to encourage carpooling and fewer vehicles. Dedicated bus lanes could also be considered within the existing footprint of the highway.
The nine-member expert panel, which included Banff Lake Louise Tourism president and CEO Leslie Bruce, Banff’s Town Manager Kelly Gibson and former Banff superintendent Bill Fisher, also talked of an aerial gondola in Lake Louise and passenger train service to Lake Louise in the future.
Bow Valley Naturalists (BVN) say the panel’s report starts off with all the right words and has a number of minor good ideas, but also includes several unfortunate recommendations with major implications that lack complete ecological and policy context.
Unfortunately, one of the glaring omissions in the panel structure was the lack of an expert on local ecological issues, something that had been repeatedly pointed out by the various environmental non-governmental organizations prior to the committee makeup but Parks Canada chose to ignore, they say.
“As BVN has repeatedly pointed out, recommendations or ideas that are not first firmly grounded in ecological, legislated and policy reality end up being wasted words,” said Reg Bunyan, BVN’s past president and a retired resource conservation officer for Banff National Park.
Bunyan said creating major transportation hubs outside the townsite’s legally legislated town boundary or within wildlife corridors or critical montane habitat is a major concern and goes against legislation, the management plan and the Town’s stated objective to be a model national park community.
“The alternative transportation recommendations such as the various gondola proposals and the train to Lake Louise are recommendations that are also inconsistent with ecological realities and the limitations of available terrain,” he said.
“Even the Banff National Park Management Plan states ‘no new commercial development outside of existing park communities’. Unfortunately, these poorly considered recommendations dilute the overall quality of the report and appear to have been made in an ecological and policy vacuum.”
Smaller ideas the panel got right, according to BVN, include pricing to encourage transit use, a coordinated and unified mass transit that can easily be ramped up or down according to seasonal needs, better social science, advanced planning tools for visitation, encouraging active modes of transport and private vehicle access closures, such as what is being done for Moraine Lake.
“In the end, a whole bunch of time gets wasted on so-called big picture magic bullet options and less time spent on all the smaller things that might actually help,” he said.
BVN says important issues missed by the panel include potential for mass transit to be additive to visitation numbers and the impacts on town character, and most importantly, a frank discussion about limits to visitation growth.
“As Banff residents, we too long for potential solutions to avoid the peak traffic snarls, especially those of us who live on the south side of the river,” said Bunyan. “But let's not get blinded by our frustration and jump to a poorly considered, overly simplistic solution that impairs the reason we live here.”
Wanda Bogdane, executive director of Banff and Lake Louise Hospitality Association (BLLHA), said overall the organization agrees with the panel that, if successfully managed, the experience for visitors to the park will be improved, and transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced.
She said this will all contribute to Banff National Park’s reputation as an international tourist attraction.
“There’s no doubt that doing things as different as what the panel is suggesting will require critical infrastructure upgrades,” she said.
“We can’t help but wonder how far off Banff National Park’s substructure is from being able to support the government of Canada’s zero-emission vehicle goals and many of the activities identified within the panel’s key strategies.”
For example, Bogdane said what system of charging and hydrogen refuelling stations will be needed to support the envisioned mobility hubs, and parking in areas that currently only have off-grid electricity.
“With many destinations investing in critical infrastructure at an expedited pace, we hope to help facilitate conversations with commercial operators soon so Parks can learn their views on visitor demand, future commercial needs, and what partnership opportunities might be possible,” she said.
Banff Mayor Corrie DiManno said she loves the vision in the panel’s report on moving people sustainably.
“It makes me really excited about the future and what the future should look like,” she said.
