St. Albert’s traffic is a topic of much discussion around the city, and likely comes up in every coffee shop and restaurant. The recent introduction of protected left hand turns has had a noticeable and welcome effect on reducing collisions, injuries and quite likely deaths. Yet there’s still room for improvement.
There’s no doubt careless or even dangerous driving at intersections and while performing left hand turns are a major cause of property damage, injury and death. St. Albert RCMP traffic specialist Cpl. Don Murray has told the Gazette in the past three-quarters of St. Albert's collisions are intersection related, and four-fifths of our most frequent collision locations are on St. Albert Trail.
Obviously, traffic on St. Albert Trail, particularly at intersections, had to be addressed and change was overdue. The protected left hand turns were introduced earlier this year, and the changes clearly had an effect.
As reported by the Gazette earlier this summer, new data shows the number of total collisions on St. Albert Trail have dropped 41 per cent, from 114 collisions in 2013, from January to the end of June, to 67 during the same time period in 2014.
The number of left-turn collisions decreased to seven this year from 24 in 2013. All seven collisions happened prior to the installation of the protected left turns.
It appears, however, that the protected left hand turn may be doing its job just a bit too well. Anyone who drives the trail knows that getting from one end to the other takes longer now, and using St. Albert Trail to access other parts of the city isn’t as worry-free as it used to be. Long line-ups in turn lanes or intersections can see motorists sit through entire cycles without moving farther than a few feet. So collisions are down, but blood pressures and incidents of profanities are way up.
St. Albert has a massive exodus of motorists in the morning, as many people live here but commute to Edmonton. It’s obvious something had to be done to increase safety and reduce careless driving during the morning and evening commute. The protected left hand turns appear to be doing that admirably.
However, there is an opportunity to examine whether protected left hand turns need to be in effect all day. There are intersections in Edmonton, for example 97th Street and Yellowhead Trail, where traffic lights change roles depending on the time of day. Another suggestion is a second turn lane, and the experts likely have many more ideas.
Protected left hand turns only during rush hour would make getting around St. Albert Trail much easier during the day. There must be a better way than to have strict turn controls all day, even when the traffic flow has waned.
