The Rockies Set the Scene, but Canmore’s Streets Are the Focus
Most people might associate Canmore with access to the Rockies… The hiking, the biking, and the climbing… But I love it for what they’re doing from an urban transportation perspective… The bike paths, the continuous sidewalks, and the much safer intersection designs… The choices this mountain town is making to build a more sustainable future provide lessons for others…
I have a few previous blog posts from Canmore, but it never hurts to share good transportation designs more than once… Last week, I had a few days in town with my ISL colleagues Andrew Monson, our local Canmore Transportation Lead, and Scott MacDonald, a Sustainable Transportation Planner based in our Squamish office. The light got no better than the first morning there, and it was nice to walk along Andrew’s recent Bow Valley Trail project, that took us from our accommodation at Basecamp Lodge to the ISL office... Not everyone is familiar with the red bike facilities in the Netherlands and might not appreciate that red in Canmore also signifies this space is for people riding bicycles (and other micro mobility options), while grey is for people walking. A little guidance helps, especially for visitors…
The crossings feature tactile surface warning indicators to both guide people walking along the sidewalk to the crossing and warn them when crossing the bike path and roadway. I also like the little corner cuts for people walking and biking as well as the large rocks to force the tighter turns at the driveway… Albeit the added flex posts suggest there’s been a few people turning too soon…
Pogies and shorts are an interesting combo… I guess the fingers do feel the cold more than the legs… Note the continuous bike path and sidewalk across the driveway in the background that lets the car sit waiting for a gap without blocking the bike path…
The intersection of Bow Valley Trail, Benchlands Trail, and Railway Avenue is always a highlight when coming to town. It’s a rare example reflecting the Dutch approach to signal design, where the landing and phasing eliminates all conflicts. So, as a car driver making any movement, or a person crossing on foot or by bicycle, when you pass through the intersection, assuming you’re obeying the signals, you don’t have to think about conflicting movements; you just go with your signal… I’ll have another post on this soon, but for now, take in the view of the separate turn signals for each movement with a backdrop you’d never get in the Netherlands…
An example below of the safe signal operation… People biking have a bike signal, the adjacent and non-conflicting through traffic has a green arrow, while all conflicting traffic, i.e., the cross street through traffic and all left and right turns have a red arrow signal and no right turn on red restrictions… While no right turn on red signs are provided, the red arrow is much more intuitive.
Trains are neat… Except when they’re rolling by your bed several times a night or holding you up while you try to cross the tracks… It’s pretty common that towns formed around rail lines back in the day, but it might have been better urban planning from a transportation perspective if they had formed on just one side and removed the need to cross…
Another relatively new intersection configuration in Canmore is the new local/local raised intersection… Calming traffic by default on streets that people shouldn’t be driving fast on in the first place. Designing local streets where it’s not possible to drive fast should be a staple of every design guide…
On Collector Streets that haven’t yet seen the complete street treatment, these precast pieces come in a range of sizes and styles and help keep vehicle lanes narrow where they weren’t originally, and look better than the more commonly used traffic calming curbs. It would be nice to see these in more places...
Only a few streets actually have a posted speed of 50 km/h, most of the Town is 30 km/h…
Bike parking is in increasingly short supply in many places, perhaps it’s the small size of the Town, perhaps it’s the bike infrastructure, maybe there’s less bike theft, maybe a combination of many things, but this sight is not uncommon throughout town… Whether these are used for commuting to work or more generally as an option to get around for other purposes, the Town had a bike mode share of 6.7% in 2021 and I suspect we’ll see an increase in that with the 2026 census due to recent projects.
Main Street in its winter configuration, but it’s closed to cars for a couple of blocks over the summer… Here the wide paint line helps keep things feeling narrow while also creating a bit of a door zone buffer…
Quick panning attempt… Didn’t quite get it…
A scramble crosswalk allows people to cross in all directions while no right turn on red prevents conflicts with vehicles during this stage of the signal cycle…
The separate pedestrian and bicycle bridge over the Bow River connects downtown to the Bow River Pathway that further connects a few neighbourhoods to the south of downtown…
Roam Transit operates in and between Canmore and Banff. It’s free in most cases, except for visitors in Banff…
On some streets, the posted speed even reduces to 20 km/h with people walking and biking having priority…
Back at the intersection… Right and left turns going without conflicts…
When those vehicle turns are done, people walking and biking go along with adjacent through traffic… For an intersection on the edge of downtown rather than in the centre, it sees a pretty consistent volume of people walking and biking…
A stop by the ISL office to get a bit of work done and for Scott to test out the climbing wall…
It’s easier to see all those red signals above each of the vehicle lanes at night… People crossing again with no conflicts…
We lucked out that night and caught a pretty good show…
It wasn’t easy getting a decent shot with a proper camera and no tripod, but I managed a couple at various shutter speeds. The one above at 1.5 seconds, the one below at 5 seconds just experimenting… Not easy keeping still when hand holding the camera and the temperature was hovering around freezing…
The sun didn’t come back out on this trip, but a few other interesting things… Can you tell what this is?
I like the Towns wayfinding signs that better align with the Town’s branding than a standard road sign…
Scott has been designing a partial turbo roundabout with raised crosswalks recently, and this roundabout has provided some inspiration for that, so we had to check it out in person…
Didn’t quite get the bus entering the roundabout, but yes, buses can negotiate a raised crossing with minimal impact on passenger comfort… We did ride the bus through here…
The roundabout is located in the Three Sisters neighbourhood, where new development is rapidly increasing the population in that part of town. What’s neat to see is the commercial amenities that are coming along with that to allow residents to meet their day-to-day needs, such as grocery shopping. The other important thing is having a great set of street design standards in place so that any new development must build the neighbourhood out to accommodate all modes safely and comfortably… The Town recently updated these so be sure to check them out.
Back closer to downtown, the Bow River Pathway is another ISL project including a 2 km section that was upgraded from a narrow gravel pathway to a paved shared use pathway providing a consistent connection between downtown and the Three Sisters neighbourhood…
The project also included two new bridges across this creek that feeds into the Bow River…
Up early on the final day in town, mostly because of the trains… I took a few more photos along Bow Valley Trail with people getting around on this -3 morning…
The Tesla chargers are out back of the Circle K if you were wondering…
Those glimpses of the Rockies never get old…
While taking some final shots at the intersection… I bumped into Rich Collumbine, ISL’s Special Structures Lead in the Canmore office on his way to the office on his unusual commuter, a Tern Orox… There shouldn’t be any Canmore weather that Rich can’t get through on this machine…
More importantly, a final reminder that at this intersection, while Rich waits for the left and right turning vehicles to pass through the intersection, he then gets to cross safely and comfortably with no conflicting traffic… If we truly want safe signalized intersections, separate turn lanes with appropriate signal phasing are the only way to go…