The Highway 1A hill has new signage this week, signalling a change in speed limit for motorists driving into Cochrane – after two separate motor vehicle accidents involving large trucks descending the hill in recent weeks.
The speed limit at the top of the down-grade remains 80 kilometres-an-hour (km/h) and just around the first curve, reduces to 60 km/h. It then drops to 50 km/h near the run-away ramp to meet the current speed set for the construction zone approaching the bottom of the hill.
The Town of Cochrane announced the changes on May 28 and put up new signage on June 1 in an effort to ensure the safety of both drivers and the construction crews working on improvements to the highway through town.
“[Recent] incidents were part of the reasoning for reducing the speed earlier on the hill,” reads an email from the Town. “Lowering the speed limit at the top of the hill decreases the likelihood of brake failure and/or loss of control of a vehicle as it descends the hill.”
On May 20, a truck full of dairy products came barrelling down the bottom of the hill, having reportedly lost the use of its brakes. The driver managed to avoid traffic and made a quick, sharp turn onto 4 Ave. where the truck careened and fell onto its side. No one – including the driver – was injured in the incident, and RCMP is not investigating the incident.
Four days later, a dump truck descending the hill collided with a car off Centre Ave. before it met a concrete barricade and came to a crashing halt. Both drivers sustained serious injuries and had to be taken to hospital, according to RCMP media relations officer Cpl. Gina Slaney.
The truck is currently undergoing a mechanical inspection to determine whether the cause of the collision was brake failure or something else, Slaney said.
The nature of the incidents happening only days apart has many people in the community questioning whether more could be done to improve safety measures on the hill, especially in the case of larger trucks and semis travelling westbound.
There is no brake check or a spot for large trucks to pull over for an inspection before the highway begins descending, but Ryan Loewen, a resident of Cochrane who hauls heavy equipment for the railway, says the hill would certainly benefit from one – especially for semis that carry two or three times the weight of that of the dump truck.
“Those trucks are cresting the hill at 80 km/h,” he said. “A brake check would ensure they would be slowed down and doing 50 km/h when they crest the hill, and not running that risk of losing control, in addition to being able to perform a brake inspection.”
Loewen believes the speed limit change will help reduce the risk of an accident, but says it might not be a bad idea to take it a step further and adjust the speed to 50 km/h for heavy trucks all the way down.
“Doing 80 km/h then rounding the corner and all of a sudden, boom, it’s 50 km/h, and also boom – the hill’s backed up. That’s where you run the risk of an accident,” he said. “If a commercial truck was already doing 50 [km/h], you’ve mitigated a lot of that.”
Loewen has been driving trucks for over 15 years and believes education is key when it comes to operating any large commercial vehicle. Knowing how and when to downshift so as not to wear on the brakes of the vehicle is critical to preventing a mechanical failure and a potential accident.
Brake checks can be especially helpful to new truck drivers or to those that are just new to the area, Loewen added, because they include informational boards that tell the driver what to expect of the hill ahead. He has driven the hill countless times and knows what he’s getting into – especially now, with construction at the bottom – but many don’t.
Staff from the Town told the Eagle in an email that they have requested Alberta Transportation to investigate the feasibility of establishing a brake check pull-out at the top of the hill.
The decision to adjust the speed limit, according to the Town, was made by the “Highway 1A team, including the contractor, the Town, and the design engineers for the project in consultation with Alberta Transportation.”
The reduction will remain in place until the work is complete on the highway and Alberta Transportation is reviewing the change in the longer term.
Cochrane resident Dion Kedian said he has no problem with the speed limit change, but under the condition that it wasn’t an action taken purely out of emotion in the days following two seemingly similar incidents.
In his experience working in traffic enforcement and emergency response, and now as the owner of a local law enforcement training and consultation service, Kedian said he has seen other municipalities create speed limit changes without first consulting local experts – which can be problematic.
“When a significant change is to be made to legislation (which a speed limit would be), the requesting parties should normally be consulting with experts in the realm of that change,” wrote Kedian in an email.
In this case, he argues Cochrane RCMP and peace officers, along with local or provincial traffic engineers, should be involved.
“As I have had no consultation with the Town, I would only hope that speed studies, public safety surveys, and collision data were collected prior to changing the speed limit,” said Kedian.
According to the Town, a run-away ramp modification is also planned as part of the widening of Highway 1A from Gleneagles Drive down the hill.
