Region pushes back dates for trio of major road construction projects in Woolwich Township
THE REGION HAS PUSHED back a few major road projects slated for Woolwich Township.
Reconstruction work on Hawkesville Road and Northside Drive in St. Jacobs, originally planned for this year, has been delayed until 2019. Likewise, regional plans for major construction on Church Street East and Arthur Street in Elmira have been put off until 2020 and 2021 respectively.
In St. Jacobs, the township needs more time to look at its pipes under the roadway, with an eye on replacing the infrastructure when the region has the pavement ripped up.
Video footage showed issues with a deep sanitary sewer below the road, so Woolwich wants to do more investigative work before moving forward, said Jared Puppe, the township’s acting manager of engineering.
The sanitary sewers could be replaced along with waterlines under Northside Drive and Hawkesville Road.
For its part, the region plans to do the design work this year as well as the relocation of any underground utilities as necessary.
“I am currently awaiting soils information, once it is received I expect the detailed design will continue,” said project manager Larry Van Wyck in an email.
Some of the work may be done in conjunction with construction plans along the stretch of Sawmill Road between the roundabout and King Street, he noted.
Work on Sawmill Road is one of the reasons for pushing back the Elmira projects, as the region predicts doing the work simultaneously would create problems with detour routes.
“The surrounding regional projects undertaken in 2019, particularly the Sawmill Road watermain installation, will use Church Street as the detour. Therefore for traffic management purposes, we have to keep Church St. open and accessible. We also bumped Arthur Street for the same reason. Doing work on Arthur St. in 2019 would increase the traffic congestion substantially as a lot of the traffic from the neighbouring projects will seek Arthur St. to get around the construction,” said regional project manager Boris Latkovic in an email.
While the delay of the Arthur Street project may be necessary, that doesn’t change the fact “Arthur Street is in awful shape,” said Puppe, who noted the work has been pushed back a few times since 2013.
Still, there will be more time for looking at options in Elmira, particularly at the intersection of Church and Arthur streets, he added.
Pushed by the township, the region is looking at adding turning lanes on Church Street on one or both the east and west side of the Arthur Street intersection. That would involve some additional work – lane widening and the potential loss of some parking spots on Church Street West – but would ease traffic congestion, Puppe suggested, adding that now is the time to do it, with the next reconstruction likely decades out.
“Something should happen now – if you don’t do it right with these two big projects, you’re likely 40 years out before the intersection gets done again.”
While the region has argued the intersection works fine as is, the township has begged to differ, prompting the upper tier to investigate options.