Town councillor Patrick Wilson is determined to find short and medium-term traffic solutions and has been working quietly behind the scenes with Cochrane Infrastructure personnel on pursuing some ideas.

Wilson wants to see immediate actions taken to help reduce traffic congestion, especially along the Hwy. 1A-Centre Ave. corridor. About three weeks ago, he presented about 10 of his ideas and they're now being analyzing to determine if they are feasible.

"We're trying to brainstorm some ideas that might be short and medium term fixes for traffic," says Wilson. "I think everyone is kind of satisfied with a lot of the capital projects in the 10-year strategy, but personally, I'm not at all satisfied with what we're doing right now for making things better to address immediate traffic concerns."

"It's the thing I'm most passionate about probably, other than maybe two other agenda items."

The ideas are being punched into specialized software designed to predict how they will impact traffic flow. While he's not sure if any will work, he's hopeful some will bear fruit.

Ideas of potential one-way streets and traffic light optimization along interior downtown core routes were also discussed but lineups on the Hwy. 1A hill dominated discussions.

"I'm very concerned about the 1A and Centre Ave; there are no solutions coming there so far. That's where we spent most of our time."

"What can we do better here? This can't be the best we can do with cars piling up come down the hill every weekday from 5 to 7 p.m. We are pursuing any idea that can try to get pulled cars down that hill faster and keep people moving."

While he's well versed in traffic flow in the community as the co-owner of Taxi4U, he doesn't pretend to be a traffic expert and hopes his gut feelings will pay off.

"I think it's important for people to know we care and we're doing something about it."