There's still no word whether a long-delayed road construction project on Second Avenue will proceed this year.
City of Greater Sudbury communications officer Shannon Dowling said the province has asked the city for more information after several groups filed objections to the project for the third year in a row.
The city has provided the information, Dowling said, and hopes to get a response within the next couple of weeks.
Objections in the last two years have stopped the project. 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 in late March.
After handling the notices of completion themselves in 2014 and 2015, the city hired a consultant to do the work this time around, at a cost of $50,000.
Details of the project have been posted to the city's website (http://greatersudbury.ca/living/roads/second-avenue/). 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.
This year, several groups have formally requested the province impose a more stringent environmental review before it proceed.
Once such a request is received, the project can't proceed until the province decides whether the request is warranted. In an email, a spokesperson for the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change said that process is still ongoing.
“As you know, concerns have been raised about the impacts of the road expansion,” Garry Wheeler wrote Monday. “The ministry is continuing to review those concerns and liaise with the city. No final decision has been made.”
