Castanet

I think congestion is likely due to speed limit confusion. While the old signs are covered there is no indicator until you get to Boucherie that the limit is 80 and Eastbound the sign is covered and there is a 60 sign near bridge hill. So what exactly is the speed limit and where does it start?

dodgerdodge wrote:So the construction zone is no longer and all lanes now look like they should, so we should now be able to cruise through this multimillion section seamlessly, but it seems not. Tonight i had the misfortune to be coming to West Kelowna over the bridge at 4.55pm and guess what we were crawling bumper to bumper from bottom of bridge hill all the way to Boucherie. Of course the right hand lane was busy with drivers taking the Westside rd exit then through the lights and straight back down to rejoin 97 and in the process causing more issues for drivers in the right hand lane.
This was supposed to help congestion yet here we are in middle of January when half the over 60's are still out of town and tourists are sparse yet we have a line up like its middle of summer. Anyone else think this is crazy?

At about 4:15pm it was like that also.
I thought it was probably a car accident.
I was one of those people in the right hand lane.
However, I was actually going down Westside Rd.
and so was every car around me.
Alot of people live down Westside Rd.
Are you sure there was no accident?
If there was no accident then, like you said, its crazy.

Lore wrote:At about 4:15pm it was like that also.
I thought it was probably a car accident.
I was one of those people in the right hand lane.
However, I was actually going down Westside Rd.
and so was every car around me.
Alot of people live down Westside Rd.
Are you sure there was no accident?
If there was no accident then, like you said, its crazy.

No sign of any accident or breakdown that i could see and as i sat in the middle lane heading very slowly towards the new overpass it was clear to see that whilst some vehicles were indeed turning off at Westside road, many were heading straight through the lights at the top and could be seen re joining. I do hope that maybe something happened and it is not a sign of things to come.

Something confusing is the roundabout at the new mall.. the other day I missed the turn off to get to the new mall and I was sent back on the highway. Well, actually the road was covered by snow so didn't see I was in the turnoff lane until too late. The exit is located just just just before the roundabout.

Had to turn off campbell, spin my butt in two extra roundabout and come back on 97, then out again at westside rd.

Between shortly after 4 to almost 6 there's a phenomon known as rush hour. This is when the thousands of people that live on the Westside but work in Keowna head home. The volume of traffic means that it can take an extra 10 minutes to get from the bridge to downtown Westbank. Now that being said, I have seen something as simple as an RCMP pulling someone over to cite for some infraction or other, cause traffic to slow considerably.

To add something constructive to this conversation; I am disappointed that an underpass was built for Nancee way rather than investing that money to improve the intersection at Boucherie. It would make a tremendous difference if there is a way to eliminate the lights at Boucherie.

I'll second Castnuts comments about that traffic circle, I too did for the first time just after all the snow and am glad there was no traffic to curse at me as I likely looked like a complete tool figuring out where I needed to exit.

Yeah you definitely need to be paying attention to that roundabout, luckily there are the ones before the bridge or you'd be going for quite the detour should you pick the wrong exit.

I'll never understand the overpass at Nancee Way, it's completely useless so far as I can tell.

Steve-O wrote:Between shortly after 4 to almost 6 there's a phenomon known as rush hour. This is when the thousands of people that live on the Westside but work in Keowna head home.

True enough but odd that yesterday was the first time I've seen it backed up like that since before the final realignment of the lanes was completed before xmas.

While there was no sign of anything by the time I actually made it past Boucherie I certainly hope the back up was due to an incident of some sort and not strictly due to volume because if it's that bad in mid Jan I am not going to be looking forward to mid-July!

Steve-O wrote:
To add something constructive to this conversation; I am disappointed that an underpass was built for Nancee way rather than investing that money to improve the intersection at Boucherie. It would make a tremendous difference if there is a way to eliminate the lights at Boucherie.
.

I agree, bet let's hope they put in underpass at Boucherie since it would be less disruptive while constructing and given past experience, the contractor seems to be better at digging holes for themselves than building overpasses.

In order for an underpass to have been built at Boucherie it would have to benefit the WFN and since it doesn't it isn't going to happen.

Wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to build a service road from Boucherie to the new underpass? That way Boucherie would use the underpass, and the existing light could go away.

Tony wrote:Wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to build a service road from Boucherie to the new underpass? That way Boucherie would use the underpass, and the existing light could go away.

That makes perfect sense.

In order to tie Boucherie road into the underpass you would have to acquire more land from WFN for the roadway, given the amount of money and land they are receiving for the Westside road overpass I couldn't imagine how much more it would cost to tie those roads together. How would you get to Boucherie coming from Kelowna? Take westside road and turn off it and backtrack along Nancee Way? The only purpose for the underpass was to tie future commercial areas on the other side of the highway together to the new mall.
As for the congestion the other day, when I came across around 4pm there was a car stalled just before Boucherie in the left lane.

Yes i am sure that something had happened earlier that afternoon to slow the traffic up. This afternoon it was starting to slow up because of the rather strange accident on the opposite side between truck and bus. I am sure it probably got worse over the next 30 minutes.

Awesome. Let's put another over/underpass at Boucherie with highspeed on/off lanes and keep the speed limit at 60kms/hr. Only in Kelowna... idiots.

AirHoss wrote:Awesome. Let's put another over/underpass at Boucherie with highspeed on/off lanes and keep the speed limit at 60kms/hr. Only in Kelowna... idiots.

Speed limit is 80km/h....


idiots.