Saint John warns of disruptions as busy construction season gets underway
Street reconstruction projects expected to cause the most traffic challenges
Construction season is underway in Saint John, and like those in past years, this one is expected to be busy and disruptive, with projects all over the city.
The city released an extensive list of projects for summer at a recent council meeting, and residents were urged to be ready for the impact.
"We do ask for patience," said Michael Baker, the city's director of engineering.
"We understand that it is very disruptive to people."
He asks residents to take alternative routes in high construction areas where possible.
According to a staff report, the season's projects fall under a few major categories:
- Asphalt maintenance resurfacing
- Street reconstruction
- Water and sewer construction
- Quality of life projects
The projects that will cause the greatest disruption "would be the street reconstruction projects as we have to dig up the entire street," Baker said.
Since these projects normally involve underground infrastructure and new curb, sidewalk and asphalt installations, street reconstruction projects generally require road closures.
Quality of life projects — such as playgrounds and bike trails — are also major projects.
"Normally [quality of life projects] are quite disruptive because we tend to barricade off that area where we're doing the work if we're working on a playground," Baker said.
Water and sewer projects involve digging a hole to install a sanitary sewer and filling it back in.
These are smaller scale and less intrusive than full street reconstruction.
Asphalt resurfacing projects generally vary in project duration but typically still allow two way traffic.
Major road projects and city's first roundabout
Some of this year's larger projects will include "quality of life" improvements to Main Street, between Union Street uptown and Lansdowne Avenue in the north end.
The city is adding biking and walking trails, and making some other improvements.
The city will also be seeing its first roundabout on Sandy Point Road and Foster Thurston Drive, and the work is planned for July to October.
Work will continue on other large projects such as the north end school near Millidgeville, the south end school at Rainbow Park, and the condo project at the top of King Street, and the New Brunswick Museum.
Another major project is street realignment between Retail Drive and Ashburn Lake Road.
This is one of the city's largest street construction projects and causing significant traffic delays and detours, will not be completed until October, Baker says.
The staff report says that the provincially led Harbour Bridge project will continue with lane reductions as it has in previous years.
The project is slated for completion in 2028. The Harbour Passage trail under the bridge will be closed and rerouted to avoid the overhead work area.
There will also be several street reconstruction and asphalt maintenance projects all over the city.
Old infrastructure and business impacts
Baker said many projects aim to improve the city's aging infrastructure, which includes water systems that are over a century old.
He said that staff plan for repairs and upgrades every season to avoid potential unexpected emergencies because of infrastructure failures, which would cause larger inconveniences.
"If we didn't do things like that we could have failures of those pipes, which is more of an emergency repair and that can cause more of an issue because the staff don't have time to plan out traffic patterns," Baker said.
Last year some businesses pushed back against city communication about construction work, saying the impact of the work could be damaging to business.
Baker said there is less construction in the uptown core this year, and there will be performance clauses in contracts to encourage contractors to complete projects earlier in areas with potential business impacts.
"So if they complete before the completion date, we're actually incentivizing them financially up to a certain point per day that they complete the work earlier," he said.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
