MONCTON, N.B. – Construction in Moncton has been causing traffic woes for drivers and disruptions for business owners.
On Monday, a closure began on the north end of Mountain Road, while construction on the south end of Mountain Road goes into its second month.
Construction of storm drains is responsible for the latest closure along Mountain Road, between Bulman and Sunshine Drives. It will be closed for four weeks.
Isabelle LeBlanc, director of communications for the city of Moncton, said the construction is to improve the drainage in the system.
“There will be one lane that will be open, but we do advise motorists to perhaps take a detour or an alternate route to get to their destination,” she said.
Meanwhile, the other section of Mountain Road between Robinson and Archibald Streets has been completely closed for more than a month, as the city undertakes a project to upgrade the sewer system in the area.
On this section of the road, no cars are allowed to drive through and it’s having a negative impact on local businesses.
“Technically the month of August is our biggest month,” said Gilles Ratté, owner of Café Archibald and part-owner of Guacamole, which sit on the north-east corner of Mountain Road and Université Avenue.
“We have our regular clientele, plus a lot of tourists. So far, we didn’t see any tourists because there’s no cars going by. We are losing right now between 15 and 18 per cent.”
- ‘Shock and disbelief’ after Manitoba school trustee’s Indigenous comments
- Canadian man dies during Texas Ironman event. His widow wants answers as to why
- Several baby products have been recalled by Health Canada. Here’s the list
- ‘Sciatica was gone’: hospital performs robot-assisted spinal surgery in Canadian first
Ratté says in the summer he usually needs to bring in extra servers and regular servers can work a lot of extra hours, which means more money for them. This hasn’t been the case this year.
The situation is even worse for Frosty’s ice cream shop across the street.
“We’re extremely down,” said Lyndon Ayre, manager at Frosty’s. “We’re closing about two weeks early. Two to three weeks early.”
The shop is seasonal, which means they won’t be able to recoup the losses later in the year.
On a hot, sunny day, Ayre said he would usually have a deck-full of clients. Only a handful people stop by now, but Ayre is trying to stay positive.
“This year, we’re going to take a loss. Hopefully with all the improvements, it’ll make the road a whole lot better and easily accessible and it will be better next year,” he said. “That’s the way you have to look at it.”
The city said Monday that construction is now expected to last until mid-October, with the closure slowly moving it’s way along Mountain Road to Bonaccord Street.
Comments