‘Get it right now’: Saskatoon city council delays decision on College Drive changes

WATCH: Saskatoon city council will wait one more month to make a decision on potential changes to College Drive.

Saskatoon city council will wait one more month to make a decision on potential changes to College Drive.

Councillors unanimously voted in favour of deferring a decision on a series of concept design changes to the city’s upcoming bus rapid transit (BRT) system at its regular meeting Wednesday.

“A quarter of the BRT funding is direct from Saskatoon taxpayers, but I bet that all the BRT fixes to make the system work properly later on will be 100 per cent on the back of taxpayers, so getting things right from the start is crucial,” Cary Tarasoff, a close follower and critic of city council, said during the meeting.

Link, the upcoming BRT system launching in 2028 , is expected to revamp the transit network and have more buses moving quickly across major routes. One of the most crucial routes will be on College Drive. To accommodate Link, plenty of construction is being proposed by administration.

That includes medians being replaced with one bus-dedicated lane travelling in each direction. Traffic would be reduced to two lanes in either direction from Preston Avenue to Clarence Avenue and a series of Link platform stations would be installed along College Drive.

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Earlier this month, the city’s transportation committee approved a series of changes to the original plan, which included having buses moving in the same direction as traffic as opposed to contraflow as well as replacing the College Drive pedestrian overpass with a street-level crossing.

On Wednesday, Tarasoff’s speech to council prompted some additional discourse from councillors.

“Have we made sure we’ve dotted all the I’s and cross all the T’s on how to optimize things?” Ward 10 Coun. Zach Jeffries said.

Jeffries specifically had issues with eastbound traffic on College Drive trying to turn northbound on Preston Avenue. Long lines in the turning lane have been known to back up traffic, and administration says it will be able to add a second turning lane with the existing land available.

“Every single centimeter you’re thinking about is precious,” Jeffries said.

Jeffries wonders if there’s an opportunity for the city to acquire some land to help widen the roadway on College Drive and Preston Avenue and on College Drive and Clarence Avenue to help with traffic flows.

“Because once you embark on actually constructing something like this, you can’t go back,” he said. “I’d rather get it right now.”

One issue pointed out by Tarasoff was capacity concerns with the city growing and Saskatchewan Polytechnic centralizing its 11 campuses on to University of Saskatchewan grounds in the coming years.

During the committee meeting earlier in the month, administration couldn’t say how many people could be on a transit platform at a time. Tarasoff said with events at Merlis Belsher Place, the Saskatoon Field House and Griffiths Stadium drawing capacity crowds of 2,700 people to 6,100, will Link be able to move crowds effectively?

“To simple questions, simple answers should be given. And we’ve got complicated issues that are we’re not even talking about yet.” Tarasoff said.

Terry Schmidt, the city’s general manager of transportation and construction, later said the platforms have a capacity limit of 200 people. The original concept council approved in 2019 says platforms “will comfortably accommodate 12 to 20 waiting passengers.”

“We believe there’s sufficient capacity at these platforms to accommodate the trips that are being generated,” Schmidt said. “And we can also accommodate that through increased frequency and the larger busses.”

Administration says the proposed changes would slow traffic on College Drive by approximately three minutes.

Council will vote on the matter when it’s back at council’s next meeting at the end of June.