By Tristan Tuckett and Sam Borsato

Emergency Traffic Management Plan for Whoop-Up Drive Presented at Council

Jan 13, 2016 | 4:22 PM

LETHBRIDGE – A new emergency traffic management plan for Whoop-Up Drive was unveiled at City Council today.

It’s designed to ensure two-way traffic during a complete or extended closure of Whoop-Up.

In that case, two way traffic will be created using the unaffected lanes, with the construction of median cross-overs to divert traffic.

The concrete cross-over points will come at a one-time cost between $90 and $100-thousand, which will be taken from the city’s operating budget.

The plan will also include managing eastbound traffic in the event of a mass west side evacuation.

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“We’ve had this issue on the table in the past, in specific to grass fires. In the most extreme situation and we’re calling for mass evacuations of west side residents to the east, we now have a plan in place that can actually turn Whoop Up Drive into six lanes, one way,” explained Director of Infrastructure Services, Doug Hawkins.

Every situation will be evaluated with three specific criteria. It will only be implemented if the emergency or planned work makes it so not even one lane can be open, if one traffic movement must be closed for two hours or more and the closure falls between 7-am and 7-pm on a weekday.

However, there will be some amount of flexibility in that. The police, fire department and traffic control will act as the ultimate deciding bodies.

At this point, the plan goes into a final vetting process and will then be passed to the operations department. All three of the major deciding bodies will also undergo desktop training to make sure the plan will run smoothly.