Coun. Terry Whitehead has been beating a warning drum over rush-hour traffic snarls on Garth Street and the Queen Street hill for years.

Now, he's trying to get scientific about it.

The west Mountain rep wants city staff to study the congestion levels on both Garth and Scenic Drive, one of its feeder routes, and to provide options to alleviate the clogging.

He also wants staff to examine the feasibility of imposing a peak-hour control system on the northbound ramp of the Lincoln Alexander Parkway at Garth Street in order to stagger traffic flow when it becomes overcrowded.

"This is a legitimate issue and a constant complaint," he says.

Whitehead originally intended to seek council approval for both motions at Wednesday night's meeting. But he decided to hold fire until he can sit down with operations staff to discuss what role existing traffic management technology may be able to play in tackling his concerns.

"It sounds to me like we already have the ability to do this without making any huge investments."

As far as Whitehead is aware, the city does not have an accurate count of how many Mountain commuters a day use Garth Street, a two-way arterial road, to access Highway 403, the west end and downtown.

But he firmly believes rising congestion is resulting in longer trip times and more queuing for commuters to and from work, which is negatively impacting their "quality of life."

According to Whitehead, there are times during peak hours when traffic is so backed up on Garth that it can take drivers two or three traffic light changes to get through an intersection, while residents complain about being unable to get out of their driveways.

"As far as the eye can see, you can see cars queuing."

Garth Street is the border between Whitehead's Ward 14 and Coun. John-Paul Danko's Ward 8, which Whitehead formerly represented before the ward boundaries were changed for last year's municipal election.

Over the years, Whitehead has frequently raised concerns about bottlenecks on Garth, arguing that modifications to lower-city street designs — such as bike lanes on Herkimer Street — have an adverse upstream impact on Mountain traffic coming off the Queen Street hill.

After several years of debate, Whitehead supported two-waying Queen Street from Aberdeen Avenue (at the bottom of the Queen Street hill) to King Street to give mountain commuters alternative travel routes to the west end and downtown.

But work on that $1.1-million conversion, which was supposed to be completed this month, has been delayed until next spring and won't be finished until August 2020.

Additionally, the controversial plan to reduce busy Aberdeen Avenue from four traffic lanes to two in the name of traffic calming has also been delayed until next year because it was linked to the Queen Street conversion.

Though postponed, Whitehead says Aberdeen's eventual lane reduction has the "potential to exacerbate the problem" on Garth by backing up and slowing Mountain commuters who use the road to access Highway 403 and the west end.

"When we make unilateral decision about one road, in my humble opinion we don't do a good enough job to understand what the broader implications are."

Clearly, his push to study Garth is at least partially intended to get ahead of the curve caused by the looming changes to Aberdeen.

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Still, at a very basic level it would be good to know how many commuters currently do use Garth, both as a benchmark and to test the validity of Whitehead's frequent expressions of concern.

Andrew Dreschel's commentary appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. adreschel@thespec.com @AndrewDreschel

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