Town of Osoyoos council has voted to spend $165,000 or half of the $330,000 price tag to install a new traffic light and crosswalk at the intersection of Cottonwood Drive and Hwy. 3 in Osoyoos. The project is scheduled to be completed by the end of March. Photo by Keith Lacey
Town of Osoyoos council has approved spending half of the $330,000 costs to install a new traffic light at the intersection of Cottonwood Drive and Hwy. 3, which will enable traffic from side streets to enter the highway during high volume summer periods.
At a special meeting of council on Monday, councillors voted unanimously in favour of spending $165,00 (HST not included) as part of a 50/50 cost sharing project with the province’s Ministry of Transportation to erect a new set of traffic lights and build a crosswalk at Cottonwood and Hwy. 3.
The project will be put out to tender this week and construction is expected to be fully completed by the end of March, said Jeff Wiseman, operations manager with the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure’s Okanagan-Shuswap district.
Barry Romanko, the town’s Chief Administrative Officer, said council has been in discussions with the ministry of transportation on several improvement projects within town boundaries for several years and new traffic lights at this intersection has become a top priority.
Council agreed to fund the project by taking $42,000 from a road development fund and the remaining $124,000 from reserves.
Councillors also tentatively approved the installation of a new pedestrian-activated flowing amber light allowing people to more easily cross 62nd Avenue at Hwy. 97. The province will pay the entire costs of this project as the town has already spent $10,000 on engineering fees. Final details on this project have yet to be finalized or approved by council.
During the peak spring, summer and falls months, Hwy. 3 can often be difficult to access off of several side streets in the area and construction the new traffic lights will allow for easy access, particularly from Cottonwood, Wiseman told council.
Traffic flow will be maintained on Hwy. 3 as underground electrical sensors will only activated when vehicles from side streets approach the intersection to gain access to the highway, he said.
“Operation of this signal will be fairly simple,” he said.
The ministry has technology in place allowing for the adjustment of the new traffic signal based on time of day, time of week and even seasonally, he said.
“It’s amazing today what they can do with traffic signals,” he said.
A study done by the ministry indicates there will be 20 per cent traffic growth in Osoyoos over the next few years, but the same study concluded there would not be any need to pay significant dollars to install left hand turning lanes in the Cottonwood Drive area for at least another 10 years and a simple traffic light will ease a lot of problems during peak summer months, Wiseman said.
There will be minor delays during construction of the traffic light and crosswalk, but single lane options will be available at all times and no delay should last more than 20 minutes during a few of the busiest days of construction, he said.
Construction of the project is expected to begin some time in February once the two-week bidding process wraps up and the contract is awarded.
