Roadworks wrapping up

“If you just look at the inflation rate and what hit us last year when we were looking at 7% inflation, that’s for consumer goods. And when you look at municipal costs, that’s not bread and cell phones. That’s oil, that’s heavy aggregate,” says Councillor Garth Frizzell. “So we knew that the costs were going to go up substantially higher and had to be prepared.”

And the city used economies of scale taking the aggregate or millions they pulled up from the northbound lane of a Speaker boulevard to resurface what was once the gravel parking lot at the CN Center.

“So Massey was done on night shift to try to limit impacts to the motoring public. Ospika, unfortunately, was done on the day shift. However, the contractors and city crews have been doing a great job this year as far as getting in and getting out as quickly as they can and limiting the impacts to the traveling public.,” says Wiseman.

“It’s always a balance between whether you want to get more lanes paved, whether you want the quality. We want to have quality and we want to have this will last for as long as we can. But at the same time, we’ve got 773 kilometers of road in the city. We’re not going to pave every section every year,” says Frizzell.”

One thing that was done differently this year, was a different kind of paint for the lines.

“We’re just experimenting with a few other things to see if we can get a little bit more life out of some of the paint. And we’ll have some information probably later on in the spring as how that work holds up over the winter season.” “

Wiseman says, weather-permitting, there will be a few more sections redone, but if not, any financial surplus will go into a reserve fund.

by Cheryl Jahn

Roadworks wrapping up

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