Residents near the area where the Maley Drive extension is being built have been invited to a public meeting Wednesday for an update on the project.
Staff and contractors working on the $80 million project will be on hand to give a presentation and answer questions. The meeting will be held at Ernie Checkeris Public School, 1570 Agincourt Ave., from 5-8 p.m. The presentation will take place at 6:30.
David Shelsted, the city's roads director who is heading up the Maley project, said in a recent interview that the project is on budget and on time. The first phase of the project was visible to Sudburians last winter, when a section of Notre Dame Avenue was moved east, running under bridges built as part of the extension.
"That contract will be wrapped up by this summer,” Shelsted said.
The main road-building contract for the project, worth $38.5 million, was awarded to Terra North. That involves connecting the rest of Maley Drive, from Barrydowne Road to Frood Road, laying down four lanes of asphalt.
"This is the big part of the job, right?” Shelsted said. “It connects that link that's not there going across the top of the community.”
When completed in 2019, drivers in Sudbury will be introduced to roundabouts -- one at College Boreal and one at Barrydowne. While many motorists have used them before in other cities, Shelsted said there will be a learning curve for the uninitiated.
"Obviously, the city will have to do a big media campaign in regards to communicating about the opening of the roundabouts,” he said. “They are two-lane roundabouts, so they are large-sized. So we're going to have to communicate to everybody how to use them, with videos, educating people on how to drive them."
Before then, there's a whole lot of rock blasting to get through. The land area, Shelsted said, is mostly rock formations and swampy areas, making for a challenging terrain for road building.
"Right now, step one is to do the cuts through the rock," he said. "We'll be blasting now pretty much until the end of the fall -- 2018 is when the majority of the blasting will occur."
Some of the cuts into rock formations go as deep as 20 metres, creating one million cubic metres of rock that will be used to build the road. That allows them to save some money, Shelsted said, since they don't have to haul the rock away or bring in aggregate for the road.
But that does mean a large amount of blasting, something that concerns residents in the area. While some are concerned about rocks hitting their homes – which has not happened, he said – most complaints so far are related to noise and vibrations
There was once instance of what's called fly rock – where rock escapes from underneath the rubber mats used to contain the blast. The contractor ceased operated at that point, Shelsted said, and reviewed their blasting process to ensure it didn't happen again.
“They've modified their process,” Shelsted said. “Right now they're doing some smaller blasting."
Blasting for Maley adheres to provincial specifications most job sites in the province follows, he said.
"In terms of the time frame -- when they can blast -- they can start half an hour after sunrise to half an hour prior to sunset," Shelsted said. "There's a whole bunch of things they have to do in terms of making sure that the site is free of people, it's properly covered, they have a blast design that's created by a blast consultant to ensure everything is done properly."
Several different procedures are in place, depending on the angle of the area of rock that's being blasted. The consultant looks at the area to be blasted and determines the safest way to proceed.
The last contract this summer will cover the area of Maley Drive between Barrydowne Road to Falconbridge Road – also known as the worst road in Sudbury.
It's the section that is riddled with potholes and has a big dip in it that makes vehicles feel like it's a small roller coaster.
"We'll get rid of that dip," Shelsted said.
But with any major project, he added there will be some inconvenience until the job wraps up at the end of next year.
"We appreciate residents' patience with the work,” Shelsted said. “We understand it's going to be a noisy time, there is a disturbance for that area. But it's for a limited duration and there's a major long-term benefit to the community after it's complete.
"To make this project a go, there is some short-term pain with the construction that's happening. But we're trying to do our best to mitigate that."
