Businesses dealing with impact
South Regina Bypass project forces relocation of road behind businesses
Turn around and look south.
That’s what a number of businesses along the Trans-Canada Highway east of Regina are facing as construction workers set to work on the new service road that’s part of the South Regina Bypass project.
“Is it going to be an inconvenience? Absolutely. Are we concerned about it? Yes, we are,” said Mitchell Huber, reeve of the Rural Municipality of Edenwold. “We’re doing our best to make the inconvenience as small as possible.”
But greater safety in the bypass/ interchange project is what counts, he added.
To this point, many of these businesses, located between Emerald Park and Tower Road, had “looked north” because they’d been built facing a service road parallel to the highway mere metres south of its southern edge.
But as part of the bypass project, this service road eventually will be abandoned; a new one is being built south of these businesses.
Reaction from landowners “is a mixed bag,” conceded highways ministry spokesman Doug Wakabayashi.
“It will represent, obviously, an inconvenience for some people that have to re-establish approaches and driveways and things like that. With anything like that, I think there’s varying degrees and levels of satisfaction. But we do have a process in place to ensure there are adequate levels of compensation, first and foremost.”
Paralleling the highway and then the South Regina Bypass, the new service road will go east-west, then north-south and eventually meet Highway 33/Arcola Avenue.
“I think it’s a good thing, from my point of view,” said Wade Sandoff, customer support manager at Redhead Equipment, adding that with construction of the bypass, “you need a way of servicing the businesses in behind Highway No. 1.”
People can debate the merits of an interchange at Tower Road, but “it is what is and we’ve got to have a way of getting customers in and out of our business. And the only way we can do this is with a rear service road,” he said.
The new service road will funnel all that traffic to access roads at the interchanges and also opens up more land on its southern side for commercial development.
As construction of the interchanges proceeds, Wakabayashi said the new service road also will give residents of White City and Emerald Park a way to get into Regina without either making a high-speed dash across the highway at the existing crossing on the west side of Emerald Park or going a kilometre east to the highway’s intersection with Highway 48, then making a U-turn.
Huber said the RM is particularly concerned about the planned closing of the “right off,” or right-hand exit, from the eastbound highway into Emerald Park.
If the service road is finished and paved when this happens, that’s fine.
If it not, then “we’re going to have a lot of trouble.
“The timing there is going to be somewhat crucial. And right now, I haven’t got a clear answer to the timeline there.”
Cost of the bypass/interchange project is given as $1.2 billion for construction and another $688 million for a 30-year maintenance contract. A government “valuefor-money” assessment is to be released Tuesday.