Strategic highway improvements to minimize environmental impacts within the Canadian Rocky Mountain National Parks

Abstract

This paper describes how strategic highway engineering improvements have been developed or adopted to mitigate the unique environmental impact highways and roads have within Canadian Rocky Mountain national parks, which are also World Heritage Sites. Three levels of strategic highway development are presented. The first is the recapitalization of existing park roads. Examples are presented from several national parks where parkways and low-volume roads were reconstructed or repaired in ways to reduce terrain impacts. The second is the development of the passing lane system on the Trans-Canada Highway in the Rocky Mountain national parks to defer twinning. The third example is the twinning of 18.6 km of the Trans-Canada Highway. Twinning represents a logical next step following the passing lane phase. This paper describes how highway engineering improvements were developed to address and mitigate numerous potential twinning impacts identified during environmental assessment. Included within the environmental mitigation measures are fencing and animal crossing structures, addressing wildlife movement, biodiversity, and mortality as well as stream, terrain, and vegetation disturbance minimization techniques. Research has found that the mitigation measures have been effective in reducing wildlife and vehicle collisions by 97%.Key words: highway, sustainable, national park, environment.