The Town of Banff plans to test scramble intersections in the downtown core to help deal with traffic congestion.
Banff council approved the scramble intersections trial to the capital budget Wednesday (Jan. 22), at a cost of $100,000.
“How fun will his be?” Mayor Karen Sorensen joked at the beginning of discussion on the proposed project. “If the Europeans can figure this out, I can’t see why we shouldn’t?”
The scramble intersections trials would be situated at Banff Avenue and Wolf, Caribou and Buffalo Streets; with the trial starting at Caribou and Banff Avenue.
The purpose of the trial will be in stopping vehicular traffic at major intersections to allow pedestrians the opportunity to cross in every direction, including diagonally to speed up movement in congested areas.
“To try and streamline pedestrian traffic downtown to reduce congestion and to do a trial to see how well it will work,” Town of Banff engineering manager Adrian Field said. “They have worked in Calgary and other places in Canada, where it has worked really well.”
“I for sure see that we will need to trial all three intersections,” Sorensen said. “I had a quick conversation with Mayor Nenshi and he said they work really well in his perspective in Calgary.
“I certainly see this as a big piece of the transportation master plan in terms of trying to better traffic flow,” Sorensen added.
“Clearly the intention of this is to be year round, it’s not something you’re going to switch seasonally?” Sorensen asked Field, with Field saying it would not.
A concern for council with the trial would be having assurance the trial would be properly observed for the purpose of data collection over the course of the project.
“Having people there is part of the intention then?” Councillor Stavros Karlos asked towards plans for monitoring the project. “To have a debrief of those people to have a better understanding of what signs seem to work, what signs don’t work, if they have any additional suggestions because if they have a body there, they’ll see a lot more than just me or Karen (Sorensen) walking by.”
Karlos asked if administration would be able to end the trial ahead of schedule in case the results prove to be of no added value during the trial. Field said that it could be ended ahead of schedule if that were indeed the case.
“I’m going to support this and would really like to see this trial move forward,” Coun. Chip Olver said. “After reading the report last year and having that knowledge behind me, it was really obvious watching pedestrians crossing other than their assigned times was really impacting the traffic.”
Field told council the trial would likely begin in the month of June.
