OLDS — Thanks to funding from the province, Town of Olds officials are planning to upgrade the intersection of 70th Avenue and Highway 27, including the installation of traffic signals, complete with left and right turning signals.
Finance director Sheena Linderman and operations director Scott Chant made that announcement during council’s Oct. 5 planning and priorities meeting.
Linderman said the town has applied to the provincial government for $1,091,694 under the new Municipal Stimulus Program (MSP), announced a few weeks ago. She said the budget for the project is $1.1 million.
Linderman said town staff had been looking at upgrading that intersection next year anyway, but the MSP has moved that project up in the queue, because one stipulation of the program is the money granted must be used up by 2021.
“The project does not have to be complete, but the million dollars has to be spent,” Linderman said.
“This is a project that we did have in mind for 2021 to use our Municipal Improvement Program and with this funding, we are able to move this up.”
Coun. Mary Anne Overwater asked if the intersection improvements will include advanced turning signals.
“There’s quite a busy intersection going south to the Highlands development,” she noted.
Chant said the project will include dedicated left turn lanes heading east and west out of town and a right turn lane for traffic heading north to the Rotary Athletic park.
Coun. Mary Jane Harper asked if town officials had looked at creating a traffic circle at that intersection, rather than traffic lights.
“Yes, we’ve had many discussions with (Alberta) Transportation on this,” Chant said.
However, he said the problem is part of the land in the area belongs to Mountain View County or is privately owned.
As a result, he said, the traffic signals are an interim step until land in the area is acquired to make a traffic circle possible.
However, Chant added that if 70th Avenue is eventually four-laned (two lanes each way) as envisioned in the town’s master plan, “that’s a fairly large traffic circle that would be required. And everything we’ve seen so far would be in the $6 million-plus range for those.”
