r/kelowna • u/Imaginary_Cookie4966 • 3d ago
What's the fastest way to get through Kelowna from the bridge to the north end?
As the question asks, what's the fastest route to take for a driver to get through the city on the 97C? I drove through this city last weekend at 2:30pm on a Thursday afternoon and that was a long god awful stop and go traffic the entire way from Lake Country to Peachland. I didn't think it was any of special day, but it was a lot of waiting at every intersection, sometimes two cycles to get through. It was like that the entire way. Is that normal now? I've grown up visiting family in Okanagan for decades and I know that route has always been a little sluggish getting through to West Bank--most people just kind of deal with it. It's been a while since I visited but it can't really be like that all the time now, can it?
26
u/th3goonmobile 3d ago
I like glenmore because it’s longer between stops. Feels much less stop and go. If you’re going lake country/airport that’s where I’d go. Anywhere before that worth the glenmore way unless your right off John hinder at the other end.
24
u/PixelFool99 2d ago
Good luck on Glenmore once school starts next week. There's still construction in front of North Glenmore elementary with both directions sharing one side of the road. Those heading south in the morning are probably gonna be backed up and in the afternoon the reverse will be true. And on Valley they're still constructing the roundabout on Kane so that's closed.
8
u/dfoxtails 3d ago
Pretty much always like that. Used to drive from Kelowna to Ok Falls twice a week. Could leave the office at 930 Tuesday and breeze through. Then Thursday would be a crawl through town and Westbank. Then the next week, the total opposite.
6
13
u/N9n 3d ago
June to early September, the highway sucks. In Kelowna, if you need to pass through, Springfield is a bit faster than the highway. The highway intersection by Dilworth is horrible but the other intersections aren't much better. Even Springfield slows down as you approach the Dilworth-Benvoulin transition. For passing through West Kelowna on these days, you can save time dodging the highway and taking Boucherie to Gellatly or vice versa, which has slow downs but no lights.
3
u/Forward-Land-5006 2d ago
Welcome to okanagan where almost every town the highway goes through the middle of town. Penticton has a bypass but on a Friday, drive from Peachland to Enderby then Salmon Arm to Chase and you will be pulling your hair out by the time you get there.
4
u/Heavy_Arm_7060 2d ago
BC in general, I swear we're the worst about highways having traffic lights. The TCH lights in Revelstoke always boggle me.
3
3
u/PuckPanther 2d ago
I recommend Glenmore to Clement, through downtown, down water street, and back on Harvey. This should avoid most of the Harvey afternoon crawl to the bridge.
1
2
u/Sourdough85 2d ago
Yah there's not a whole lot of options.
I used to commute from just N of the airport to the one-way section of West Kelowna/Westbank
Going home (west) I'd often sneak through the industrial area (Adams&AppaloosaRd), end up on Sexsmith, up Longhill, L at the Greenery to go over Dilworth. Then, depending on conditions id take another R on Summit to go right over Dilworth, cross glenmore, come out on Clement and, if it wasn't summertime, all the way to downtown and sneak onto the bridge at Abbott. If its summer, avoid downtown and meet the highway at Gordon.
Once in West K there were times id go up to Rose Valley from Westside Rd (Bear Cr Rd, ParkinsonRd Westlake Rd OR Scott Cresc) this wasn't necessarily faster, just more enjoyable. West K has a lot of those options - not faster but more enjoyable; Boucherie Rd to Gellatly, Shannon Lake Rd, etc
2
u/Traq_r 2d ago
TL;DR - mid-afternoon a week before Labour Day isn't a good indicator of "rest-of-the-year" traffic. This weekend will be worse, then it'll get better.
FWIW I check Google Maps when I'm heading through. There are enough other people using Android location services that Google has a good handle on current traffic patterns & time estimates, as well as alternate routes that might save you some headaches.
Just be careful if the highway is closed since it seems to like routing people through Chute Lake towards Penticton and that's not a 2WD-safe road...
2
1
u/SufferingIdiots 2d ago
Barring some kind of accident the highway is usually the quickest. Not the answer you were looking for, I'm sure, but it is.
1
1
u/Luckylou62 2d ago
You could try hitting Richter North to clement then North on Glenmore to Winfield but it is also busy from 3 to 5 other times it’s hit
1
u/GeekBhoy 2d ago
This weekend is the IPE (Armstrong fair) which is super popular so that will add at east a few minutes extra on a weekend or just before. Labour Day weekend is stupid crazy anywhere in the Okanagan. Kelowna is always busy though, as you have said.
1
2
1
u/ChanceofCream 3d ago
Simple answer - Don’t drive during rush hour. Don’t have a normal job. Don’t have a car cause the condo code is .6 of a car per apartment.
Society is so wack:
“We need more roads!” - everyone goes to work at the same time and goes home at the same time.
“The earth is getting fucked up from green house gases” - yet we still reward overworking ourselves and burn out culture. We could work less and we would pollute less.
However, your government virtue signals by telling working people that they are destroying the earth while simultaneously enjoying the benefits of taxed work hours and thus - money. So, now you gotta work more cause you get taxed more due to the fact that as you work…you destroy the earth - allegedly.
/endrant
After rush hour, Kelowna is pretty easy to drive through. Takes like 11 mins.
1
u/rekabis 2d ago
I have been advocating for a ring road of some kind for years, now.
Take 97C where it hits 97 between West Kelowna and Peachland. Leap across the lake with a bigg-ass suspension bridge, and then punch the highway through Okanagan Mt Park and across the ridgeline up the east side of the valley. This can have several connectors in several places like Upper Mission, HW33 in Black Mountain, McCurdy, and Beaver Lake Road where it ends up in the hills. Ideally it would continue up the ridgeline into the Vernon area, skipping over Coldstream via another suspension bridge, and finally going down the hill to hook up into 97 where 97A begins.
And even within kelowna, we could have used an elevated highway with Harvey beneath it. Have the bridge in-line with Harvey (instead of offset, no more bridge hill or hump because the high section would be where the highway leaps off of the top of bridge hill and descends down over the water to the floating section) such that it hops over city park (with parking beneath it, dramatically increasing usable park space), and with it having a handful of on/off ramps at critical streets like Water, Gordon, Spall, Dilworth and HW33, before finally dropping back down to ground level at Reid’s Corner. No stops anywhere - just clear sailing straight through on the elevated portion.
Frankly, we need investments like this before our infrastructure gets built up any more than it already is. We already have large apartment buildings crowding close to the highway, and several of them would already have to be torn down for those on/off ramps. Think of how bad things will get with skyscrapers getting in the way.
0
15
u/Okanaganwinefan 2d ago
Uber driver here….. good luck. In the summer there is just more traffic, and no consistency. Safe travels.