Delay for Third St. work proposed

By Collin Gallant on October 4, 2018.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com @CollinGallant

Planners are suggesting a one-year delay to the start of major work on Third Street downtown so other projects on nearby major routes can go ahead in 2019 without snarling traffic throughout the city’s core.

A 10-year plan was launched in 2012 for replacing road utility lines — in some cases reaching 100 years old — and improving roadways and curbs.

The final leg, involving two stretches of Third Street, was to be done in 2019 and 2021, but city council’s infrastructure committee heard Wednesday the schedule should be shuffled to accommodate work on nearby arterial roads and also complete major development plans.

“The plan itself focuses on downtown, but there have been a number of related projects over the years that have come to light that affect traffic patterns,” said commissioner Stan Schwartzenberger. “They warrant adjusting the schedule by pushing them out a year.”

Specifically, the plan calls for tackling water main and sanitary sewer line work on Third Street from Fifth Avenue to S. Railway Street next year, then the two blocks between Third and Fifth avenues in 2020. Roadways and street improvements, similar to earlier work on Second Street, would be done as well, but in 2020 and then 2022, respectively.

The shift is considered because water and sewer work is set to take place next year on First Street SW, (west of Division Avenue) as well as a two-year project to change out water valves on Division Avenue south of Third Street.

Both are major feeders into the downtown core, and a shutdown of Third Street as well would be a lot for motorists and business owners to handle, said municipal works general manager Dwight Brown.

“The (entire plan) has been very successful, but the concern we always had here is ‘don’t gridlock us in’,” said Brown. “So we’re saying, let’s take another year and get some of these other things in place first.”

Committee Chair, Coun.Robert Dumanowski said improvements along Second Street have been well-received despite complaints of disruption during work there in 2014. Third Street will be a major project as it’s considered “the main drag.”

“Doing those improvements has created some redevelopment and a lot of optimism,” he said, agreeing to the delay as long as it proceeds within the city’s incoming four-year budget.

Work on Third Street alone is budgeted to cost a combined $7.5 million.

Committee member Coun. Jim Turner said business owners are generally more concerned with start and end dates, rather than the particular year.

“If this is what we have to do to make it happen, then that’s what we have to do,” he said.

As well, said Brown, the city is updating its municipal development plan, which could tackle the issue of one- and two-way roads in the city centre.

The entire plan was staggered over a decade when it was proposed in 2012, with the general hope of spacing out effects of road closures on businesses and traffic flow year after year.

No work for the plan was slated to be complete in 2018, but sewer work did occur in Riverside, shutting Finlay Bridge for a period. In 2017, stretches of S. Railway Street saw larger water mains and sewer lines go in.

Changeover from gas-lighting for historic streetlights to electricity was added to the plan, along with installation of LED bulbs in 2014. That initiative, long called for by the business community, cost $3.1 million.

Furthermore, two of the 13 projects were completed without closing roads because pipe lining technology was employed rather than the physical replacement of pipes.

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