Emergency gate policy needs to be reopened for discussion
By Lethbridge Herald on July 14, 2023.
OUR OPINION
Once again, commuters have endured frustration and long waits to get home to West Lethbridge because of incidents that blocked both Whoop-Up Drive and the Crowsnest Trail.
The matters that had residents stranded for hours on the east side of the river a couple of weeks ago has prompted a huge amount of debate among residents on social media, in coffee shops and on the street.
Much of that discussion has focused on a third bridge. Much has focused on a City policy on opening the eastbound lanes of Whoop-Up Drive to westbound traffic to ease congestion when emergencies arise.
In a release sent to media the night of the blockages, the City said the emergency gates that were built into Whoop-Up Drive “were built to be used when no lanes of traffic were available for an extended period (four or more hours). Opening the gates would also limit traffic flow in the eastbound lanes from West Lethbridge into the downtown tomorrow morning.”
This policy needs to be re-examined given how long the disruption to traffic occurred and how many people were impacted.
These two events – there were actually more collisions that day – triggered a situation that could have put lives at risk because residents couldn’t get home. People who didn’t have the ability to take needed medicines, such as insulin, could have faced life-threatening problems.
One Herald staffer was a few vehicles behind the trailer that went on its side and was among the lucky ones who managed to get by it. However, he had to return to downtown in the evening for an interview and experienced firsthand the impact this had. Streets such as 6 Ave. 5 St., Stafford Drive and Scenic Drive were jam-packed with vehicles trying to access the Crowsnest Trail. Like many others, this person took a circuitous route home, driving through Coaldale and Picture Butte instead of sitting idle. There was a veritable cavalcade of traffic on that route as motorists decided they weren’t willing to – or couldn’t wait – any longer.
If access to the westside hadn’t been cut off when most people who work days were heading home, it wouldn’t have been such a serious situation. But it was.
This situation could have been eased if the City had immediately opened those emergency gates to even one lane of traffic for just a couple of hours to speed up the ability of commuters to cross the river.
Why this couldn’t be done is hard to understand. Most traffic on Whoop-Up Drive in late afternoon and early evening is westbound so the impact on eastbound travellers would have been relatively minor. As daily commuters know. during the hours after 4 p.m. eastbound traffic is far lighter than westbound. The opposite, of course, is true for mornings when Whoop-Up Drive is busy as early as 6 a.m.
Do collision problems give more reason for the City to consider building a third bridge? Not necessarily. Those accidents/collisions weren’t caused by weather impacting driving conditions – roads were clear and dry that day.
The drivers involved are the ones responsible for creating such a mess, not Mother Nature. Such incidents don’t happen frequently here – but when they do the City needs to take measures to ensure traffic flow isn’t disrupted as badly and for such length as it was. This isn’t the first time collisions have occurred on the Crowsnest link after a disruption to Whoop-Up Drive and it won’t be the last.
There are many opinions on a third bridge. Residents on the east side of the river understandably don’t want to pay more tax dollars for a bridge they don’t often use. With little commerce and virtually no industry on the west side, many on the east side of the Oldman River don’t regularly have a reason to cross either existing bridge. The ATB Centre, university and Paradise Canyon country club would arguably be the main destination points for those who don’t have family living on the westside or children attending school there.
The westside, as the recent municipal census showed, has the largest growth in Lethbridge and traffic is increasing on both bridges. Those who live there see and experience it daily. A person now sees and drives in much more traffic on Whoop-Up Drive than even five years ago and that traffic is only going to increase as West Lethbridge grows.
And as it grows and time passes, the potential costs of a new bridge will grow, as well. It’s safe to say those costs would be too much for the average city taxpayer to bear so funding would have to come from elsewhere to make such a plan feasible in the longterm. In the meantime, residents are constantly having to worry about when the next big mishap will happen on Whoop-Up or the Crowsnest Trail, putting traffic at a standstill.
This recent situation was not a minor one – contrary to what some have expressed, this wasn’t just a small inconvenience for drivers heading west. It was a lengthy delay that could have been mitigated in part if the emergency barricades on Whoop-Up Drive had been quickly opened to get some traffic flowing again in a timely fashion.
Re-assessing its policy on those emergency gates would help to ensure there is no repeat. Some drivers treat Whoop-Up like a drag strip, others are busy on their phones or chatting with passengers or in some cases, barely crawling up the hill holding up traffic which in itself has the potential to wreak havoc. The worst threat to safe commuting from and to the westside isn’t the weather we can experience here – it’s other drivers. And when driving behaviours prompt either or both routes to the westside to close, we need prompt action to get traffic moving again.
19-18
In the event that Whoop-up Drive is closed in one direction, a city crew should be ready to open emergency gates and drop lane separation pilons. However, there also needs to be more police on that road. Many traffic violations, hundreds, could be written up in only a few hours due to all the laws broken I witness day to day. No deterrents lead to disorder!
Whenever that there is a closure during rush hour it leads to more accidents on other thoroughfares causing gridlock.