One-way street will become two-way during summer construction phase
Two-way traffic is coming to a section of a major downtown route to help motorists circumvent difficult road construction on South Railway Street.
As well, a mobile tourism centre will set up on the site of an area business that will go on hiatus due to the road plan.
Starting Monday through late May, Second and Third streets east of Sixth Avenue will host traffic in both directions. That maintains general traffic flow and vehicle access to shops as crews replace water and sewer pipes at Second and South Railway streets.
After May, that intersection will reopen and construction will continue southward in phases to Fifth Street, but the timing is particularly bad or Rite Downtown garden centre, on Second Street, said owner Kelly Devine.
“The problem isn’t with customers getting to us, but our suppliers,” Devine told the News on Friday.
Large trucks that deliver saplings can’t navigate a deadend street or the narrow back lane becomes a “T”, she said.
Since about 80 per cent of her sales take place in May, when customers are planning their spring and summer planting, the business will not re-open until 2018.
“We’re well aware that the work needs to get done but we decided that it’s better for us to close this year and then reopen (next spring).”
Instead this year, a partnership between the city, its tourism service provider and the City Centre Development Agency will use the gazebo on the site as a temporary visitor information centre.
That will include tourism material, onsite visitor guides, and possibly bicycle rentals, and could become a staging area for other endeavours, said Jace Anderson of the Destination Marketing Organization.
“It will be a pop-up visitor centre,” said Anderson, who noted that previous city plans have called for tourism facilities in the city centre.
“It was something that was on our radar and we had been looking for an opportunity,” said Anderson.
“This is temporary but we’re looking at it as a learning experience.”
As for Rite’s, existing giftcards will be honoured in 2018 at 110 per cent of face value, or bought back at the same rate, said Devine.
Road projects always inconvenient for someone
It’s the latest in a complicated series of projects to replace aging underground infrastructure in the city centre that have usually been accompanied by complaints from local business owners.
Grayson Mauch, general manager of the city’s sewer and water utility, said that performing work on a key intersection is hard to accomplish without some disruption.
In this case U-turns at blocks that are dead-ended by construction is a good temporary solution, he said.
“It’s similar to what we’ve done on that block before, and for a short duration it does work,” said Mauch, who said each intersection takes about four weeks to complete.
Work will begin in the intersection of Second Street and South Railway according to the city’s contractor LBCO Contracting, and will include the 200 Block of the roadway.
After April 23, traffic signs will allow two-way traffic in the 600 block of Second Street to allow curbside access to businesses.
Similarly, the 600 block of Third Street will see traffic in both directions, but will be open at both ends. That allows northbound motorists to enter the core from South Railway, and vehicles in the core to continue south.
Both streets will remain as is (as one-way routes) west of Sixth Avenue.
Pedestrian access on South Railway will be open throughout construction. Additional free parking will be made available at the Transit Parkade on Fourth Street, according to LBCO.