EDITORIAL – 1st and Lansdowne plan fixes one problem, creates others
(Image: City of Kamloops)
An editorial by Mel Rothenburger.
THE CITY WANTS INPUT on proposed changes to the intersection at 1st Avenue and Lansdowne Street so I’ve got some.
The transportation department says traffic sometimes queues back onto Lorne Street as well as the other streets that feed into that spot.
And, it says, during the afternoon peak hour, the intersection sees volumes northbound on 1st that are higher than the southbound left-turn traffic from 1st onto Victoria.
But will the fix be worse than the cure? Traffic backup certainly does occur in that area but it just takes some patience. It’s nothing like the tie-ups that used to occur coming down from Summit onto Overlanders Bridge before the merge lanes were altered.
The solution to the perceived problem at 1st and Lansdowne, according to the City’s transportation engineers, is to eliminate the southbound lane that allows drivers to hang a left from 1st onto Victoria Street, and make it into an extra northbound lane on 1st Avenue to channel more traffic onto Lansdowne and Victoria Street West.
It’s a complicated configuration to follow without tracing it out on a map but let’s focus on the fundamentals: the option of a left turn onto Victoria to get back downtown will be gone in favour of the expected improvements at Lansdowne and 1st.
That means if you’re heading west on Lansdowne and want to circle back to Victoria Street, it’s going to be a bit of a rigamarole — you’ll presumably have to get up to Seymour, then find your way back down to Victoria, so accessing the 100 block won’t be terribly convenient.
The plan also raises some safety questions for pedestrians and cyclists that don’t currently occur at the intersection.
Is that better than having occasional queues at the intersection? Not in my opinion, but maybe in yours. The City’s survey is on the Let’s Talk Kamloops page of the City website until the 26th.
I’m Mel Rothenburger, the Armchair Mayor.
Mel Rothenburger is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
The City spent a long time and $millions to change that intersection a few years ago. Now the City wants to change it again. Could city engineers not use computer programs to iron out the bugs before making these costly brick-and-mortar changes instead of making the taxpayer pay for do-overs due to poor planning?
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Without adding new lanes (widening) or adding new alternative routes, signal and lane usage changes only relocate gridlock. They do not eliminate gridlock. You can move bottlenecks but can’t lose them. So,, we must prioritize our bottleneck locations. Does this endeavour have a favourable overall effect?? I can only say that we certainly have a problem with the backing up of Landsdowne trying to get to the north shore at peak times and that should be priority that gets the city’s attention. Incidentally, that blocks long traffic back up on Landsdowne comes from having two lanes turn into one lane before the bridge. This was the effect of closing the right lane from summit to help reduce that gridlock on the hillside. Good for commuters coming from summit but not so pleasant for commuters coming from downtown. Moving bottlenecks.
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Would “C” flow for this area happen with a large roundabout?
Why was it rejected before this current construction?
This was the last answer but I completed the city form three (3) times before it accepted all my YES or NO answers.
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Does anyone have suggestions for a town of similar size to Kamloops, in BC or Alberta, that has the following:
Hostile climate toward homelessness, open drug use and encampments
At least some availability of family doctors and an emergency room that doesn’t close
Professional council and city administration with a good work ethic and can-do attitude
Reasonably tax increases per year, not double digits
Good infrastructure and planning with good traffic flows
Commitment to reducing crime and vagrancy
My family and I are actively looking to leave Kamloops and hope to hear from others that have or suggestions of a better destination. Thank you all.
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Edmonton city council recently went about dismantling dangerous homeless encampments and weren’t scared off by vague legal threats. An Alberta court has quashed a lawsuit and proposed injunction against the City of Edmonton that would have set rules around how homeless encampments are removed.
Alberta also has whacky groups like we have here. The nurse drug addict association etc. Coalition for Justice and Human Rights was the one in Alberta that failed in their bid to tell the city how to manage bylaw enforcement. But the courts there seem to have common sense and quickly shot them down. Even stating that the Coalition doesn’t have the right to represent the homeless population, unlike how the BC judge allowed the Nurse addicts to represent the homeless here and took anecdotal evidence as fact.
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One way to address overuse of intersections is to install transponders which will automatically detect vehicles’ plate numbers and collect tolls.
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