Alberta Transportation is making plans for certain upgrades to Highway 3 through the Crowsnest Pass, and while the highway will not see its long-desired four lanes anytime soon, there are still some interesting projects on the horizon.
Darrell Camplin, Regional Director of Alberta Transportation, along with engineer Phil Luchka, attended the July 13 Governance and Priorities Committee meeting to speak with council about the plans and seek the municipality's input. Camplin said that his department is looking at ways to improve traffic flow on the highway, which in recent years has been backing up on long weekends.
Luchka told council that Alberta Transportation has worked with AMEC, an engineering company, to review intersections along Highway 3 in the Pass, and to look at the possibility of creating four lanes between the golf course in Blairmore and the Highway 40 turn-off in Coleman.
He said that the four lane idea, which had previously been suggested to council, turned out to be financially infeasible at this time. A four-metre painted median would need to be installed in the middle, he said, since a raised median would be troublesome during snowfalls, creating drifts on the highway. This widened the design and brought the total estimated project cost to $11 million for three kilometres of highway.
"It was a bit of a harder pill for us to swallow, as far as budget," said Luchka. "When we saw the price tag on that, we started to rethink where we should go."
"Eleven million dollars for a three kilometre section is very, very expensive," added Camplin. He said that it would be difficult to secure the funding for such a project.
Instead of creating four lanes, said Camplin, they are considering the possibility of installing traffic lights on the highway at two heavily used intersections, to alleviate some of the stress on the highway during high traffic periods.
The two intersections they are considering are the west Blairmore access near Tim Hortons, and the access to Highway 40 –– otherwise known as 86th Street –– in Coleman.
Camplin said that putting lights at these intersections would provide gaps for people to get onto and off of the highway more easily during high traffic periods. Both of the intersections would also be improved to have through lanes, right-hand turn lanes, and left-hand turn lanes. The lights would be connected to motion sensing cameras that would adjust the timing based on the traffic flow –– in other words, the light would stay green longer if there is a lot of traffic on the highway, and would only stop highway traffic when people needed to get on or pedestrians needed to cross.