Highway Improvements to Minimize Environmental Impacts within the Canadian Rocky Mountain National Parks

摘要

This paper describes two highway engineering techniques that 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. The first is the development of the passing lane system on the Trans Canada Highway in the Rocky Mountain Parks to defer four-laning (twinning). The second example is the twinning of 18.6 km of the Trans Canada Highway within Banff National Park. Twinning represents a logical next step following the passing lane phase. The paper describes how highway improvements were developed to address and mitigate numerous potential twinning impacts identified during environmental assessment. Included within the environmental mitigation were a series of measures, such as fencing and animal crossing structures, to address 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/vehicle collisions by 97% for some species.