“A cornerstone of the community’s vitality is its transportation network, which addresses such priorities as mobility (choices of how we are able to move and the ease which to do so) and accessibility.”
City council has recently received the long awaited update of its Transportation Master Plan which when adopted will set the agenda for future transportation planning in St. Albert. It’s a lengthy document, largely motherhood and apple pie however the meat of the document in part four is certainly worth a read.
Some of the highlights from my perspective include the projected widening and extension of Ray Gibbon Drive, once known as the West Bypass, and the extension of 127th Street formerly known as the east bypass.
The recommendation for Ray Gibbon Drive is for widening to four lanes. This appears to be very short-sighted in view of the fact that the original proposal for Ray Gibbon was for four lanes and it was over capacity almost from the get go. This is intended to be a provincial bypass highway connecting to Highway 2 north of St. Albert. Council needs to lobby the government hard to have this highway widened to six lanes and pushed through to Highway 2 at the earliest possible time in order to alleviate over capacity on St. Albert Trail, which accommodates a considerable volume of flow through traffic. Look at Anthony Henday as an example – it is already overcapacity and should have been built to a six-lane freeway initially. Once the Henday is completed around the City of Edmonton the volume will increase even more.
The 127th Street extension would also help relieve flow through traffic but would not likely be as effective as the western alternative.
It is a little disappointing that the plan only speaks of speed limits in a very general sense. It would seem appropriate to set a policy of raising the speed limits on arterial roadways – with some exceptions such as downtown – to 60 or 70 km/h. For instance the westerly portion of Sir Winston Churchill, which parallels the railway, is ridiculously underrated at 50 km/h. The TMP only proposes roundabouts on collector roads, however roundabouts on arterials may be good for traffic calming as well, particularly at intersections and in transition zones.
Although it may be in the details, there needs to be a policy to establish traffic control cameras on all collectors entering onto arterial roadways. These cameras work very well where they are currently placed but intersections such as Tache Street and Sir Winston definitely need cameras to avoid waits on the arterial when there is no traffic coming from the very short, low traffic Tache Street.
One item that doesn’t seem to be addressed is the location of schools along arterial roadways. The report speaks of pedestrian safety. One way to decrease the danger to school pedestrians would be to locate schools within a subdivision rather than on the periphery along a busy arterial.
It will be interesting to follow the debate on the Transportation Master Plan after council has had an opportunity to review it and draw its own conclusions. Hopefully, residents will also review the document and provide further input even though there was extensive public consultation as part of the plan preparation.
Ken Allred is a former St. Albert Alderman and MLA
