After years of delay and cost increases in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, the province has finally approved the city's plans to rebuild a road along Second Avenue.
Ward 11 Coun. Lynne Reynolds said the letter confirming the project can proceed arrived Friday from the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change.
Budgeted last year at $6.6 million, costs for the project have increased by about $800,000, Tony Cecutti, the city's GM of Infrastructure, said last spring.
Details of the project have been posted to the city's website. It would widen Second Avenue to five lanes from Donna Drive to Scarlett Road, and three lanes from Scarlett Road to Kenwood Street.
City staff have said the five lanes are needed because of heavy traffic counts along that stretch of Second — 15,000 vehicles a day — as well as the added traffic demands of future residential construction planned in Minnow Lake.
The project will combine the entrance to the Civic Memorial Cemetery and the Minnow Lake Dog Park, and align the new entrance across from Scarlett, where a traffic light will be installed.
The project was revised in 2014 to move up planned drainage work, allowing it to incorporate raised bike lanes along both sides of Second Avenue. The bike lanes will connect from Donna Drive to Bancroft Avenue.
But objections from area groups have delayed the project for the last three years. When a group or individual asks for the more stringent environmental review – as was the case with Second Avenue -- the project can't proceed until the province decides whether the request is warranted.
In an interview Friday, Reynolds said she was thrilled for people in her ward who have been waiting for the road to get done. The ministry has ruled that a more intensive environmental review isn't required, she said, but the city must take steps to limit the chances road salt will leach into Ramsey Lake, as well as file a traffic safety plan.
Not a problem, Reynolds said, because both are part of existing city policies anyway.
“It's going to be a beautiful road,” Reynolds said. “To me, this is regular road maintenance. It didn't require that sort of (environmental) process.”
The entrance to both the dog park and Civic Cemetery will be fixed, she said, there will be a bus bay, cycling infrastructure and drainage improvements. While she said “a small group of citizens” were able to hold up the project, she said that's how the process works and getting input from residents is important.
“Once they made those request, we were on a journey,” Reynolds said, one that took three years to complete.
“I just hope there's time to tender the work so it can start right away in the spring,” she said. “I'm looking forward to it.”
