BANFF – Banff council has slammed the brakes on plans for traffic lights at one of the busiest intersections in town.
A $2.1 million complete reconstruction of the intersection of Buffalo and Bear streets, including underground utility work and traffic lights, won’t go ahead this year as planned and is being placed in no-year-identified in the 10-year capital plan as part of council's plan to reduce the 2024 capital budget spend.
Town of Banff officials say traffic lights at this intersection, also known locally as the post office corner, won’t help with Banff’s traffic woes during periods of heavy congestion, particularly in summer months of July and August.
“It’s not going to help remedy a situation and it comes with a $2.1 million price tag from the general capital reserve and at a time when we’re really trying to be strategic about the projects we’re doing,” said Mayor Corrie DiManno.
“It can be brought out of no-year-identified in the future if we do come to a place where we feel this is a more viable solution … but I think in the meantime the budget for flaggers is way more manageable compared to the budget for this.”
The intersection of Buffalo and Bear streets is considered a critical intersection for vehicles and pedestrians in the downtown core.
In recent years, flaggers have been stationed there in peak times to help direct vehicle traffic and pedestrians through more efficiently and safely, which comes at a price of $26,000 a year.
While never proposed as a silver bullet answer to traffic problems, the idea was that synchronization of traffic signals at Banff Avenue with proposed new signals at the post office corner would help with coordinated traffic flow southbound and northbound.
But Adrian Field, director of engineering for the Town of Banff, said traffic lights there would not solve the problem during times of heavy vehicle congestion when there can be more than 1,000 vehicles per hour driving through.
“On those super heavy days this isn’t going to help because, as you can imagine, the back-ups start at the CIBC and backs up all the way sometimes across the train tracks and in the other direction too,” he said.
“It will help when it’s less pronounced and we’ll be able to have synchronized intersections so that folks can move down past Nesters and Town Hall … but that’s really only going to help when the road isn’t already backed up.”
A big part of an eventual redesign of the intersection will look to facilitate better pedestrian movement, especially given the dramatic increase in foot traffic following the opening of the Nancy Pauw pedestrian bridge across the Bow River from Central Park to the rec grounds in late 2022.
Officials say the project would look at an improved sidewalk experience around the civic institutions of the library, post office and seniors’ society.
Darren Enns, the municipality’s director of planning and environment, said all options would be on the table in a future redesign of the intersection, including traffic lights or a traffic circle, also known as a roundabout.
He said the sidewalk near the post office is extremely narrow, making it a “pretty underwhelming pedestrian experience.”
“Even today you could have your foot run over by a bus as it turns the corner at that intersection,” said Enns.
“That’s probably going to be the driver for what administration flags to bring back, is that we’re going to have such a pedestrian flow that we will not be able to host them all on the sidewalk.”
