3rd route to Upper Mission to be ready in 2019
Residents of the Upper Mission will have a new way to drive to central Kelowna in two years.
Completion of a stretch of South Perimeter Road, between Gordon Drive and Stewart Road West, is expected in 2019.
Also to be completed that year are upgrades to a stretch of Stewart between Crawford Road and Bedford Road to handle the extra traffic.
When the work is done, residents of neighbourhoods such as The Ponds will have a third route to central Kelowna, to go with Gordon Drive and Lakeshore Road.
The driving time to Highway 97 on the opening day of South Perimeter Road is expected to be 17 minutes, equal to the time it will take from the intersection of Gordon Drive and Frost Road, and six minutes longer than from the intersection of Lakeshore and Oka view Road.
“South Perimeter is expected to be beneficial as a safety valve which prevents worsening delays on Lakeshore and Gordon,” Rafael Villareal, a city planner, writes in a report to be considered by council on Monday.
The two-kilometre-long Gordon-to-Stewart section of South Perimeter Road was not originally planned for construction until at least 2025.
But the timetable was advanced when developers agreed to pay up front the $7.6-million cost to enhance the sales appeal of new homes in the area. Normally, the city’s share of such a project would be about $1 million.
The arrangement was approved by council in January 2015, and there were initial hopes the road would be built by now. But it has taken some time to work out the details, and the targeted opening is now 2019.
The city will pay about $7 million for the upgrades to Stewart Road, Saucier Road and Bedford Road necessary to handle the extra traffic from South Perimeter Road to Casorso Road.
Years ago, the city had a plan to eventually extend South Perimeter Road farther east. But a revised long-term growth strategy doesn’t allow for much new development in Southeast Kelowna, so the road will now connect only to Stewart Road West.
In 2014, a city-sponsored survey of 300 randomly chosen Upper Mission residents supported fasttracking South Perimeter Road even if it meant delaying other already-planned transportation improvements in the area.