The number of private vehicles driving to Banff continued to increase this summer, surpassing the pre-pandemic 2019 numbers for the very first time.
The national park townsite’s overall main entrance vehicle volumes in July and August were up two per cent from last year, averaging 27,323 per day versus 26,862 in 2023, and up one per cent from 2019 from 27,176.
Officials say the good news, however, is that the total number of vehicles crossing the Bow River bridge – a chokepoint in the road network – is down one per cent from last summer and 18 per cent lower than 2019 even though town-wide traffic is up.
As for Mountain Avenue specifically, vehicle volumes were down four per cent from last year and 19 per cent from 2019, which is largely being attributed to marketing campaigns to get people on Roam transit and shuttles operated by the Banff gondola and Rimrock Resort Hotel.
Mayor Corrie DiManno said sustainable solutions “continue to save our summer from complete and utter traffic chaos,” but one of the municipality’s main goals is to deter more people from driving their cars up to the tourist attractions on Sulphur Mountain.
“The problem is we have one bridge and one road up the mountain to the main attractions like the gondola and the hot pools, just outside of the town boundary.
“When these parking lots are full around 10 a.m., we are guaranteed to have traffic jams on the south side,” she said.
“We also learned vehicle volumes increased over the bridge by 12 per cent after Banff Avenue reopened to traffic this summer on Sept. 5. We don’t need a crystal ball to know what that’s going to look like in July and August 2025.”
Parks Canada sent the Town of Banff notifications that the gondola and hot pools parking lots were full 61 out of 62 days in July and August, and according to the municipality’s data, the earliest the parking lot filled was at 10 a.m. and it was full by noon 89 per cent of the time.
The turnarounds ranged from three per cent to 35 per cent of the hourly northbound volume, according to the Town of Banff, which in turn contributed to the northbound volume heading back down the mountain approaching the 200-vehicle per hour congestion threshold on Mountain Avenue.
While signs encouraging visitors to park and take transit to the gondola helped, officials say up to 29 per cent of vehicles travelling up to Sulphur Mountain were immediately turned away even when the signs had cautionary messaging.
“This unnecessarily added to congestion over the bridge,” said Sarah O’Leary, transportation data analyst for the Town of Banff.
Pursuit – a subsidiary of American-based Viad – won’t release visitation numbers or the number of visitors taking its shuttles, though an approximate average shuttle ridership number given to the Town is 400 a day in July and August.
“As a private business but a publicly traded company, we have to be careful what information we share with the public,” said Stuart Back, chief operating officer for Pursuit’s Banff and Jasper tourist attractions.
Back, however, disputed the turnaround figures provided by the municipality, saying the company has a more systems-based method of calculating that shows an average of less than one per cent of vehicles needing to turn around and return to the townsite.
He said proactive traffic and parking management at the gondola has been a success story, noting traffic on Mountain Avenue during peak summer months is lower than it has been at any time since 2006, with a 19 per cent reduction since 2019.
“In addition to that 19 per cent though, I think a really interesting metric for us is how many people were actually getting out of personal vehicles and into mass transportation … 50 per cent of our visitors were in mass translation, that’s up from 40 per cent last year,” he said.
Back said it is common for the media to focus on “sensational stories”, such as reporting a 30 per cent increase in traffic to Banff since 2014, rather than actual success borne through collective effort of Pursuit, Parks Canada, Banff Lake Louise Tourism and the Town of Banff and other partners.
“For example, that 30 per cent increase largely occurred between 2014 and 2019. We know that in 2017 there was complementary access to the national park for visitors, so that created a big spike, whereas in the last few years visitation increases have really dropped to single digits,” he said.
Back was put in hot seat with Coun. Barb Pelham and Coun. Kaylee Ram requesting the company share its visitation and shuttle data in order to help the municipality better manage and get a full picture of congestion.
Pelham pressed Back on the one per cent figure on turnaround traffic at the top of the mountain, compared to the Town of Banff statistics that demonstrated a turnaround rate of three to 35 per cent, peaking at 46 per cent.
“You might look at the one per cent and be really proud of that, but I think the community looks at the 46 per cent and that brings a lot of concern; even if it is not consistently 46 per cent, it does swell to 46 per cent,” she said.
“So I am curious how you will address this challenge further and please do know the community really wants to hear how you are you are going to address those ballooning percentage numbers when they do occur?”
Back again disputed the numbers, noting Pursuit uses a different metric, measuring how many cars are coming up and parking versus coming back to town, and alluding to the cars also parking at the Rimrock Resort Hotel or Parks Canada hot pools or taking a scenic drive.
“The misuse of that information to reflect the number of cars coming back into Banff is highly misleading and inaccurate,” he said. “I am concerned with the continual use of bad data in the mix when there’s so much good data.”
Pelham said there is broad resident understanding that the majority of vehicles travelling up Mountain Avenue are visiting the gondola, noting Pursuit’s website states the gondola can handle 650 people per hour.
“I’m pretty sure there aren’t 650 people per hour that are visiting the hotel or the hot springs, so I am just curious if you could either dispel or confirm this broadly accepted theory,” she said.
“I realize that you’re focusing on that 19 per cent drop and I’m just focusing on what the volume actually is.”
Back said the 650 per hour is technical data based on the gondola’s maximum capacity, not the number of actual gondola riders.
“Yes, we’ll continue to work hard, but I think to try and indicate that there’s this gross impact being had, which I think is what you’re going with that statement, the facts differ from the perspective that may get you there.”
Adam Waterous, who with his wife Jan is behind a push for a car-free Banff and redevelopment of the railways lands into a multi-modal hub, owns Mount Norquay and long pushed for a gondola from the townsite to the ski and summer sightseeing attraction, provided Banff town council with some numbers.
Waterous said that since the expansion of Viad’s Sulphur Mountain visitor centre in 2015, visitation to the gondola increased by 52 per cent by 2019, or about 250,000 people per year, to 736,000 per year based on publicly available data he found.
He said over the same time period, traffic on the access road to the gondola also increased by a quarter of a million vehicles, up 24 per cent, and therefore a similar amount at the Bow River Bridge, the choke point for traffic through town.
“Both gondola riders and vehicles to the gondola increased by a quarter of a million/year,” he said.
Waterous said Pursuit’s Oct. 7 letter to council states traffic on Mountain Avenue from 2014-19 decreased by 15 per cent, but he said the company’s own table in the information indicates traffic increased by five per cent.
“I assume this is a simple computational error,” he said.
While the figures provided by Pursuit cover July and August, Waterous said traffic congestion is expanding beyond the peak two months.
“Given the Sulphur Mountain gondola is operating at close to full capacity in July and August, what’s happened is the expansion of the ridership has gone into other months, which is effectively lengthening our traffic congestion season,” he said.
Mayor DiManno said unless the municipality can make major progress with Parks Canada in the next six months on disincentives to driving to the Sulphur Mountain parking lots, then residents can expect an increase in traffic congestion during peak times next summer.
“We know this worsens quality of life for residents and it is a negative visitor experience, so we will do all we can to proactively manage and mitigate traffic congestion, but some of the solutions are out of the municipality’s jurisdiction,” she said.
“I’m referring to ideas we’ve heard such as closing Mountain Avenue after Middle Springs and limiting access to transit or hotel guests only. I’m referring to pay parking or reserved parking, or even removing parking, in the Sulphur Mountain lots. These are all decisions the municipality does not have the authority to make.”
