City may pilot right-turn-only at bottom of Dunmore Hill
The city will study changes this fall to get traffic moving at a busy central intersection.
Long lineups in the righthand lane of northbound Dunmore Road at the Spencer Street intersection of are known to stretch up the hill, said transportation officials at the infrastructure committee meeting on Sept. 15.
That is the likely result of relatively few drivers who remain in the lane to proceed straight onto Kingsway Avenue but encounter a red light.
Meanwhile, others who could turn right on the red light must wait before proceeding toward Allowance Avenue to destinations in the River Flats, Maple Avenue, or all points north of the South Saskatchewan River and Crescent Heights.
“We’ve all been there at some point, waiting,” managing director of the division, Brad Maynes, told the committee. “And we’ve all thought, this doesn’t make sense when 95 per cent of the traffic turns right.
“We get some calls complaining about it, like other issues. But there’s certainly enough interest to run a pilot project.”
That would occur at some point in October, officials said, and would likely temporarily designate the right-hand lane to be a right-turn-only lane. The centre lane would remain through-traffic only, and the dedicated leftturn lane would remain.
Director of city assets Pat Bohan said it is not likely barricades would physically block access to Kingsway Avenue from the lane during a pilot. Instead signs would direct motorists and the results, including vehicle counts, would be analyzed before permanent changes are made.
The intersection is the joining of four main arteries: Kingsway and Allowance, Dunmore Road and Spencer Street (going west).
Improvements there have been on the radar of the municipal works department for at least two budget cycles, but the space is physically difficult to reconfigure.
That is owing to the presence of a bridge over the Seven Persons Creek as well as a spur rail line on the south side of the intersection, which makes adding lanes difficult.