Kelowna’s new HOV lanes are a joke

Just when you thought Kelowna’s traffic along it’s major artery couldn’t possibly get any worse, along comes an idea from the braniacs at BC Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure.

Highway 97 is the only route up and down the Okanagan Valley, and it runs as the main thoroughfare in all the towns and cities here. Some are worse than others, since there was generally no forethought or care as to how much future traffic would put a strain on the transportation network.

It was more important for the motels, gas stations and fast food places to succeed than for us poor suckers to get around town easier. At least we usually only had to deal with the of tourist traffic congesting Highway 97 in the summer months. I remember when I was working at a fruit stand along the highway one summer, and as soon as September’s long weekend was over, so was the traffic.

Then came the massive building boom. The Okanagan went crazy with new construction projects, especially in Kelowna, and now the traffic doesn’t end after the summer. It just goes from ridiculous back to terrible.

We did finally get a new bridge at the south end of Kelowna last year. It replaced the world’s dumbest place for a lift-span bridge, that would back up traffic for miles every time a sailboat wanted to go under. In more recent years the bridge would break down fairly consistently leaving motorists baking in the Okanagan heat.

So, now we’re getting this terrific new 5-lane bridge, but do they do anything about the congestion on the other side? Say for instance, like putting in coordinated traffic lights, or an extra lane to handle all the flow from the bridge? Nope, they put in a HOV lane, the only one of it’s kind outside of Vancouver.

Kelowna is big compared to other cities in the Okanagan (115,000 pop) but to add a commuter travel lane there is ridiculous. HOV lanes are built on inside lanes so as not impede traffic flow on and off the corridor, but this one in Kelowna is on the outside lane. It is congested with everyone making right turn exits and with those trying to merge on to it from side streets at every block.

The highway running through Kelowna is only a highway in name anyway, as it’s posted speed limit in the HOV areas are between 50km and 60km. No one can really car pool effectively in Kelowna and the transit system would be impossible for most to use. For the average tax payer in Kelowna, they gained nothing from the $16.1 million the BC Liberal government spent on this traffic engineering fiasco.