Concept plan to widen Highway 97 in Kelowna
City of Kelowna council agenda (Image Credit: City of Kelowna)
There are plans to widen Highway 97 through Kelowna, but don’t hold your breath.
The work is likely many years off as the City and Ministry of Transportation are set to create a corridor protection plan that ensures space is available for future rapid transit lanes.
In the near and medium term there are plans to potentially consider bus-on-shoulder opportunities and improvements near the Bennett Bridge. But only in the longer term will specific new rapid transit lanes on a wider highway be built and the province has committed resources to refine a practical corridor protection plan.
It will consider implications for existing and future development to limit the need for costly land acquisition but the widening work is likely many years in the future.
Reports presented at this week’s city council meeting showed there’s an immediate opportunity to develop a concept plan to enable the necessary space to be secured through redevelopment and coordinated planning to avoid future improvements becoming infeasible, more costly, and disruptive.
The plan will define corridor needs, consider implications for existing and future development, and address current constraints so Highway 97 can be improved incrementally while minimizing impacts to new development, and reducing future constraints.
A phased approach to improve traffic flow and transit space along the highway covers many years. It allows the City and Province to make practical progress on roadway, transit and sidewalks in the near term while protecting the space needed to maintain flexibility for larger transit and congestion-reduction investments in the future.
Near-term work will finalize a strategy for regional rapid bus improvements over the short and medium term.
Mid-term work will consider targeted measures such as queue jump lanes, bus-on-shoulder opportunities, and improvements near the W.R. Bennett Bridge, where travel time reliability is particularly important.
Over the longer term, Highway 97 can support faster and more reliable transit through dedicated lanes and improved station areas, helping move more people through the corridor while reducing pressure on general-purpose lanes.
