By Thia James

‘Big dig’ to take 3 months to finish

May 26, 2015 | 6:31 AM

Construction work on Prince Albert’s Second Avenue West ‘big dig’ could begin as early as the week of June 8, and is expected to last for 12 weeks.

On Monday, city council approved a close to $1.5 million tender for the project to Mi-Sask Industries. The City plans to meet with the contractor to discuss detours as well as lane restrictions.

Capital projects manager Wes Hicks told members of council that Second Avenue West will always be open and traffic will be limited to one lane in each direction between 12th Street West and 15th Street West.

He said the contractor plans to have crews work 10-hour days over the course of six days per week, with no work taking place on long weekends. Crews will work from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and they will work longer hours if the weather causes the project to fall behind schedule.

Mayor Greg Dionne said that the City will be training some of its staff to be flagmen to help direct long-weekend traffic in an effort to get it to flow quicker.

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“So, it’s going to be painful, but we are going to work on trying to get it done.”

After the meeting, Dionne explained that crews will not be working on long weekends so that as much space can be opened up to traffic as possible. Ideally, Dionne said he’d like to have two lanes going northward at the beginning of the long weekend (with one lane going southbound), then at the end of the holiday there would be two lanes going southbound (and one northbound lane).

“So, stay tuned. Now that we have the approval, we have the contractor, now we can put our plans together.”

The overall plan is to replace the 115-year-old water and sewer pipes under Second Avenue West over the course of the summer. Throughout the last few years, the City has been replacing its older water and sewer infrastructure – some of it dating back to 1900.

This year, the City is looking to double the rate of replacement established over the last three years. This includes the 296 metres (m) of sewer, 508 m of water and 473 m of storm mains along Second Avenue West, between the Diefenbaker Bridge and 15th Street West.

Mi-Sask plans to start at the railway crossings, where directional drilling has to take place so the alignments will be correct.

Work on the project will then move to 12th Street West, then crews will move southward. There will also be no cross-traffic at 12th Street West and 13th and 14th Streets West will be completely closed to Second Avenue West. Pedestrians and traffic will not be able to pass through the construction zone – Hicks said they will have to go around to 12th Street West or to 15th Street West.

“There’s just no ways around that because all the water, sewer and storm [mains] are in the southbound lanes and it’s a continuous dig,” he explained.

Additionally, the City will be meeting with the five businesses that will be directly affected by the road construction project. Hicks said the work will be in front of their businesses and their water and sewer systems will be replaced, and the City will discuss the business owners’ concerns.

“We’ll try to accommodate them the best we can, of course there’s some things we won’t be able to do because we will be digging up the street.

In April, the City sent out notices to 52 residences and businesses that will be affected by the construction project. The City plans to send out updated information to those property owners.

More information will also be provided at a press conference at yet-to-be-determined date.

tjames@panow.com

On Twitter: @thiajames