Fixing transportation in West Kelowna won’t be easy
June has arrived and so has the annual summer traffic congestion on Highway 97 through West Kelowna.
But according to the priorities laid out at a Central Okanagan Integrated Transportation Strategy presentation to West Kelowna council last week, the way to move forward may look like going backward.
Relief could look like long-desired interchanges at Boucherie and Westlake roads, the removal of the Westbank couplet built in 1985 and getting people onto transit by allowing more bus routes to cross the bridge, something that has not been available since the Rapid Bus began in 2014.
Traffic snarls on the Westside have become so frustrating some drivers choose to avoid Hwy. 97 as much as possible, increasing traffic and wear and tear on arterial roads.
The Central Okanagan Integrated Transportation Strategy replaces the Central Okanagan Planning Study which began in 2014 and is the next step in the development of a 20-year plan to improve the Highway 97 corridor through the Central Okanagan.
(The original vision that saw the highway become a 100 kilometre -per-hour continuous freeway from one end of the Okanagan to the other is gone.)
Bypasses in Kelowna, West Kelowna and a second lake crossing of the lake are not part of the plan as they wouldn’t encourage the desired growth and development along the highway and in urban centres.
While a second crossing is out, James Donnelly, senior transportation engineer with Urban Systems told council adding a third lane to the bridge coming into Kelowna from the Westside is possible, as the pedestrian pathway was built wide enough to become a lane. The current pathway would be replaced.
“It’s not a small thing,” Donnelly said. “It would take millions of dollars, but it would be technically feasible.”
Interchanges at Boucherie and Westlake Roads would allow for more free-flowing traffic between Westbank and the bridge and would allow transit to perform better.
These two intersections were identified in 2016 as the pieces of Hwy. 97 most in need of safety and mobility improvements following the completion of the Bennett Bridge and Westside Road interchange projects. They ranked as the top two collision-prone intersections on the Westside.
The council of the day, however, wanted a second highway corridor around the city.
But the new mayor and council in 2018 reversed themselves and began advocating again for the interchanges.
The couplet, which divides the heart of downtown Westbank with two one-way sections of the highway, was built in 1985.
Drivers must run a gauntlet stoplights through downtown Westbank.
A 2011 revitalization plan for downtown noted the couplet’s negative impacts were significant: heavy through traffic, limited access and perceived lack of on-street parking which hurt local businesses.
Enough work has been done now to say the couplet can be removed although details of how are scarce.
“There is plenty of work that would need to follow up on what exactly and how that would happen,” said Donnelly.
The strategy proposes moving the highway to Dobbin Road, currently the northbound lanes of Hwy. 97, building two lanes in each direction with a centre turn lane. Main Street, currently the south-bound route for the highway, would revert to a local road.
The functional classification for the highway through West Kelowna’s downtown is urban, defined as having a 50 to 60 kilometre per hour speed limit and traffic signals.
“It’s not going to magically solve any transportation issues or anything like that,” Donnelly told council about removing the couplet. “But what we really want to see is if that could be a catalyst to help see more growth and development in the Westbank Centre area.”
Following the completion the Boucherie and Westlake interchanges, Donnelly said they would work on the intersections at Daimler, Bartley and Ross roads including possibly removing some signals.
The strategy also proposes improving the transit system.
“More buses on the road, more buses on the highway, more buses crossing the bridge,” said Donnelly, adding they want to get cars off the road by making transit a more attractive, more reliable and realistic option for more people.
Improvements on the Westside include adding routes that would cross the bridge into Kelowna, in addition to the 97 Express Rapid Bus. One route would collect passengers from Shannon Lake before crossing the bridge and another from the Boucherie area with no transfers, a 15- to 20-minute trip if done right.
That’s the way the routes worked before the rapid bus, said Donnelly.
“We want to get back to that,” he said. Buses also get caught up in the congestion on the highway, so the strategy proposes using the shoulders of the highway as a dedicated bus lane.
To make transit more attractive, a park and ride would be added so people could more easily transfer. Adding another lane to the bridge that would be a bus-only lane in peak periods would also improve transit.
West Kelowna council has been playing the chicken-and-egg game with transit services for years, reluctant to add service because there aren’t enough users rather than improving service to attract users.
Although the new interchanges, removing the couplet and transit improvements are priorities in the strategy, there are a number of other hoops before shovels go into the ground.
The interchanges are at the detailed design stage. Regional transit route enhancements are at the planning stages, while the couplet removal is in the infancy stage.
Although Coun. Carol Zanon said the removal of the couplet was needed “yesterday,” she wasn’t sure other parts of the strategy were the right direction.
“I want a throughway to get to Kelowna,” she said. “Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint, people love their cars, they love their trucks.”
Although there are no timelines for the improvements – and there’s a need to compete with other jurisdictions for money – West Kelowna Mayor Gord Milsom said the report was encouraging. “We will continue to advocate,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll get these projects done sooner than later.”