The Province is Partly Responsible for Glennmore Traffic

[Glacier]

People who live along Glennmore don't generally consider themselves a through road, but the province in its infinite wisdom can't build highways with as much efficiency as the city of Kelowna, and this is leading to increased traffic along Glennmore.

I know I have been doing it more and more, and some of friends are saying the same thing. Kelowna could add random traffic lights and/or reduce the speed to 4km/h to bring itself down to Provincial standards, or the province could think hard about bringing the highway into the 21st century. I know they have discussed options, but it looks decades away. In the meantime, traffic will increase, and more and more of us will take the Glennmore cutoff to get through the city.

[gman313]

I exclusively use glenmore

[Grandan]

A great deal of Glenmore traffic is fed by Dilworth Drive and Sexsmith Road through the Valley Road N- Sexsmith Corridor.
The intersection of Sexsmith and Valley during rush is a nightmare for pedestrians. Traffic is fed to the north via Scenic Road.
The city has a traffic counter speed board on Mail road to quantify the traffic diverted through that route.
We hope that things will improve with the widening of Hwy 97 and John Hindle Drive.

[JLives]

Due to home and newly moved work location I use Glenmore daily now. Soooo happy to rarely touch the highway but right now it's not so great with construction and the new Sexsmith light which has caused a daily traffic jam at Sexsmith and Longhill.

[Glacier]

That new light makes a huge difference. I've switched from 90% highway to 90% Glennmore because of it (I do the trip regularly).

[TylerM4]

If we could just find a way to deal with the idiots who are too scared to drive the highway so they take Glenmore and drive 20km below the limit instead. I've resigned myself to expecting to drive 70km/hr in the 80km/hr stretch nowadays.

Glenmore ain't what it used to be. Back in the 80's it was 80km/hr all the way between Winfield and the Kelowna Golf Club. No lights either. That's when it was a real shortcut. Nowadays I find it's a bit of a tossup between taking the Hightway vs Glenmore.

[RustyCrayon]

I completely agree about the folks who drive 20km/hr below the speed limit. Just last week I followed someone who barely went over 55km/hr the whole way to Kelowna. Not sure if they noticed or cared about the 20+ vehicles stuck behind them.

The bottle neck when heading north on Glenmore in the afternoon, in Winfield/Lake Country can be a nightmare. I have seen the traffic backed up around the corner before you even get to the 50km sign. There's a new development going in near Chase Road, plus the continuing expansion of LakeStone which represents 1365 new homes. That's a lot of extra people in that area! It's also going to make a mess around Okanagan Centre Road W. Something needs to be done about the intersection at Glenmore and Seaton Road, as well as Glenmore and the highway. It's ridiculous.

[EZGuy]

The current situation sucks, northbound afternoon rush hour you can wait in 2 Kms lineups for 8 traffic light cycles. Never mind the neighbourhood cut throughs.

In 1997 the Province and the Distruct of Lake Country established a plan to revise the north end of Glenmore Road. The plan relocated the traffic light at Beaver Lake Road/Glenmore and Highway 97 about 200 m south, through the RV dealership area, added more lanes and put in better left turn bays.

That was 20 years ago, wonder if Lake Country engineers or Ministry staff are any closer to realigning this intersection?

[MCB]

The highway at 6:30 in the morning is awesome and I can be at work in 20 minutes! The highway at 3:30 in the afternoon sucks, so to get back to Kelowna I've started going down Glenmore. Prior to this I tried cheating down Old Vernon through Rutland and compared to Glenmore it was...well...meh. Going the Rutland Route was about 50 minutes vs the 45 of Glenmore.

Also where Beaver Lake Road intersects the highway at 3:30 is coincidentally one curmudgeon of a cluster-mother!

[dodgerdodge]

Seems to me nobody wants to plan ahead and spend money. The 5 lane bridge comes to mind
It's so damn obvious that our population is growing rapidly and we are building more houses and more commercial and retail yet we fail miserably to keep pace with the infrastructure improvements.
Add another lane but don't make it too long? Add another light, add another turn signal, make some nice pretty green cycle lanes, leave a pedestrian controlled light at the end of the new bridge to stop all that traffic for a shopping cart man!
It's always a short term fix.
Look at West Kelowna now, the highway hasn't changed in years and neither have the number of lights but now we have advance turns at most intersections and traffic has increased several fold so its a constant nose to tail stop start daily, particularly at rush hour but also outside of those times. Zero forward planning back then and still nothing really big in the pipeline apart from maybe the removal of the Boucherie light

[Glacier]

I think it's time for the interior to form a new province. When highway 1 to hope was far less busy than highway 97/is today, they said "we'd better build a divided freeway because this is a desirable place to live, and data shows it's rapidly growing."

The same thing happens in the okanagan, and all the politicians can do is figure out how to build the cheapest shortsighted road possible so there's oodles of money left for Vancouver projects.