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The second of two Saskatoon Transit open houses and public information sessions on changes planned for parts of the downtown area takes place on Monday evening.
According to Rob Dudiak, the city’s technical services department special projects manager, part of the city’s Link Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project — First Avenue, from 20th Street to 25th Street — will be transformed to included dedicated transit lanes in the centre of the road, pedestrian platforms and just one lane of vehicle traffic in each direction.
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The first of two open houses on the proposed changes was held on Oct. 23 at the Hilton Garden Inn. The second will also be held in the same location tonight from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. (Lara Fominoff/650 CKOM)
“Some places there’s limitation on on-street parking, other places there’s some removals of left hand turns, but not at every intersection,” he said.
The changes are somewhat similar to plans on College Drive from Preston Avenue South to Clarence Avenue. But Dudiak said there aren’t any other areas of the city that will have centre-dedicated bus lanes.
“There’s a couple of intersections where there’s very, very short pieces of what are transit-only lanes for a queue jump. At those intersections, the bus just gets in an additional lane to come up to the intersection, and then there’s a transit-only traffic signal for them at the intersection,” he explained.
Dudiak said he and other staff have listened to a lot of feedback, from those expressing support or opposition to the project, and from those who have questions about parking and turning changes.
“Ultimately, we went to council in 2019 and they approved of it being along First Avenue, including dedicated transit lanes in that case. Part of the reasons around that was access to the future downtown event and arena site … and then also support from Midtown Mall for having it on First Avenue,” he said.
Traffic modelling has been completed showing that if everyone who currently drives along First Avenue continues to do so, there would be a two-minute time delay to get from 20th Street to 25th Street during peak hours.
All of the feedback from the open houses and from an online survey will be compiled and included in a future report to Saskatoon City Council.
The total cost of the BRT project is around $250 million, with 78 per cent of the funding coming from the provincial and federal governments. It’s expected to be up and running by sometime in 2028.
The open house will take place between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. at the downtown Hilton Garden Inn.
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