High Country Drive to get a full safety review

High River drivers may not like the bump outs at High Country Drive and High View Gate, but they have been effective in slowing traffic.

"As everybody's aware it's been an interesting exercise when you're wanting to make improvements to an existing transportation corridor, when you start monkeying with people's day-to-day habits of how they drive you'll hear about it," Mayor Craig Snodgrass says.

He says they've looked at a lot of different ways to redesign the intersection to make it safer for golfers to cross, whether walking or in carts, from one part of the Highwood Golf Course to another.

"As you get going down, trying to make that crossing work with the pedestrian crossing, we want to slow traffic down on High Country Drive but it's a very wide road so you can't just put up four-way stop signs on the corners because they're too far away from the actual traffic lanes and that's why the bump outs came into play and as well as bump outs work in High River a lot of people hate them," he says.

They heard from officials at Notre Dame Collegiate who liked what they saw at that intersection and asked if something similar could be done near the school.

High Country Drive at Notre Dame Collegiate

Snodgrass says that also shed light on problems near the Spray Park and Pump Track and playground.

"I've seen it first hand with my own kids up there with kids just absolutely running out between vehicles on that corner and people are driving fast on that corner and even if you're doing 30 kilometres per hour it isn't going to go well, so that's where council discussed it Monday, if we're spending money, let's figure out where the highest priority safety concern actually is first, so council's directed administration to bring back options as far as looking at a full corridor study for all of High Country Drive from one end to the other."

He says the bump outs will remain in place at High View Gate because they do know it's working.