A report looking into the possibility of building a bus or passenger rail line to service the Bow Valley says the project does hold some promise.
The study, conducted with the participation of the towns of Banff, Canmore and Cochrane, the City of Calgary and Improvement District 9, says the proposal could help reduce the amount of highway traffic significantly.
Officials say at certain times of the year, particularly in the summer, highways can become very congested because of the sheer volume of private vehicles.
“Mass transit by passenger rail or bus coach has long been identified as a potential solution to reduce congestion caused by low-occupant personal vehicles in the Bow Valley corridor,” said Banff mayor Karen Sorensen in a release.
According to the report, the proposal could see an estimated 200,000 to 490,000 riders on a bus service and between 220,000 and 620,000 riders on a rail service in its first year alone.
It would only cost between $10 and $15 per trip for an adult using either line.
The document also laid out the costs of building each proposal. It would be somewhere between $8.1M and $19.6M in capital costs for the bus service and $660-$680M in capital costs to build the rail service.
Those costs are likely too heavy to be shouldered by the municipalities, the report says, so the plan is to consult with other levels of government about the plan in the hopes they could help with costs.
Officials says Banff National Park has seen a 2.6 percent increase in visitors per year since 2007. Statistics show that over 93 percent of visitors to the park use their personal vehicles, leading to significant traffic congestion.
Further information on the proposals can be found on the Town of Banff’s website.
