By Cheryl Jahn

City sets roadworks plans

May 1, 2025 | 3:27 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – The line-painting crews have been out and about these past few days. It’s a sure sign that road works are right around the corner.

The City has identified 59 projects to see some work this year; some large, some not so large. Choosing which roads will attract attention is a science.

“So it’s kind of a three-phase approach,” explains Jordan Wiseman, Manager of Roads and Fleet. “So the first one would be is, we have a contractor come in for the arterials and collectors every 3 to 5 years, and we’ll do an assessment and will provide us a numerical value of that. Along with that, we will look at service requests, how many potholes we have filled, cracks, overlays, things like that. And then, of course, a visual inspection to ensure that we are doing the roads, that we should be doing it.”

Some of the majors projects are 15th Avenue from Ospika Boulevard to Ogilvie Street and 15th Avenue from Foothills Boulevard to Ospika Boulevard, Winnipeg Street from Third Avenue to 13th Avenue, Ferry Avenue from Westwood Drive to Rec Place Drive and Foothills Boulevard from the south end of Moore’s Meadow to the entrance of Rolling Mix Concrete.

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“We’re at roughly 1.5 million for rehabilitated sidewalks this year. And we’re right around that $450,00 to $470,000 mark for new sidewalks.”

In January, Council approved a seven-million-dollar budget for roadworks. That’s a slight increase of $300,000. But given the geographical size of this city, it’s the cost of doing business.

“We’re a very large, spread-out city with a population of what B.C. Division of Vital Statistics says is 84,000 people right now, and we’ve got an area that’s the size of what, 20 Victorias,” says Councillor Garth Frizzell. “So it’s really expensive to keep the roads maintained and to pay for new ones. But that’s what we’re here for.”

Road works are part of basic infrastructure; an expensive nightmare for every municipality. Take the massive sinkhole that happened on Winnipeg Street in 2018. And that is something no municipality can budget for.

“I’ve been worried for the last few years since that massive sinkhole that opened up on Massey, that was more than a million dollars just to fix that one,” recounts Frizzell. “And we’ve seen that all across Canada. So I’ve been watching and very concerned that we’d see more of those. Those are unpredictable, and the budget can’t withstand too many of those.”

And speaking of inconvenience, will the roadworks be done at night or will motorists have to be patient?

“We will speak with our contractor depending on traffic volumes, high-speed areas. Some of those can be done at night. We did a section of Ospika and we did Massey last year at night. So yeah, chances are those ones will be done at night to try to limit the disruptions to the motoring public,” says Wiseman.

The City says the contractor the city hires will be responsible for notifying residents and businesses in the affected areas when the work will be done in their neighbourhood.