A map showing proposed improvements at the intersection of Lansdowne Street and First Avenue. (Photo via City of Kamloops)
The City of Kamloops will be reaching out residents and business owners, in a bid to improve the flow of traffic at the intersection of First Avenue and Lansdowne Street.
Transportation Manager Purvez Irani says a possible short term change is to convert the dedicated left turn lane from 1st Avenue onto Victoria Street into one that goes from 1st Avenue onto Lansdowne Street
He says the proposal comes as traffic data shows there are on average 235 vehicles that turn left from 1st Avenue onto Lansdowne Street during peak afternoon hours, compared to just 21 vehicles that wait to turn left onto Victoria Street.
“What we have to do is provide adequate green time to First Avenue and we have to remove green time from Lansdowne,” Irani told Radio NL.
“By making the switch, we’ll be able to green time to the Lansdowne westbound movement.”
-
- Traffic volumes during the peak afternoon hours at Lansdowne and First. (Photo via City of Kamloops)
-
- A breakdown of intersection service levels. (Photo via City of Kamloops)
Irani told City Council that if implemented, the short term changes will lead to a reduction in delays at the intersection.
“We will see delays reduced by 30 per cent, which is quite significant in the traffic engineering field,” Irani said. “Also, what it does is allows more green time to be passed on to Lansdowne and your queues are going to be shorter.”
“You will see hardly any queuing occurring on Lansdowne, and you don’t have any queuing that extends all the way to Seymour, you don’t have any queuing extending to Victoria Street.”
At this time, Irani says he is not sure when the public consultation will take place. Like most public consultation in Kamloops, it is expected to be a mix of online surveys and in-person meetings.
“That is going to take a couple of months, then come back to council and if we get the go ahead then we’d so some signal timing plans, a bit of design work, so it could be 2025 if all the signs align when we could be done with the changes,” Irani said.
“But that would be a rough high level guess.”
Over the course of the longer term – possibly a decade or more – Irani says there could be just the one dedicated left turn lane from First Avenue onto Lansdowne Street, instead of one dedicated and one shared lane being proposed in the short-term.
The city could also add a median island on Lorne Street near Riverside Park, and lower the speed limit to 30 km/hr, with Irani saying those moves would mitigate the risk associated with the limited sight lines, owing to the curve in the road.
