Watch the video above: Commuters stuck with closed lanes as construction continues at River St. and Gerrard St. Cindy Pom reports.
TORONTO – A construction project less than 300 metres from the Don Valley Parkway has been blocking two lanes of traffic for close to two years.
A city project to replace a 100-year-old water main in the east-end has clogged traffic near River Street and Gerrard Street for close to two years. The water main stretches four kilometres from Regent Park to Spadina Avenue and D’Arcy Street in Chinatown.
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“We’re trying to complete the work as quickly as we can. We don’t want to disrupt the public. We’re working as quickly as we can to complete it,” said Mike Brannon, a manager in the city’s water department.
The work is scheduled to be completed by April 2014. The entire project will wrap up just before the Pan Am Games in 2015.
The reason for the extended construction? It’s the city most complex water main.
The city is replacing a “trunk line” at River Street and Gerrard Street which supports the city’s smaller water mains across the city. Two years to complete this project is “reasonable,” Brenda McCabe, an associate professor in the University of Toronto’s Department of Civil Engineering said.
“You’ve got this main trunk which is huge. It supports all of the large limbs and then the smaller ones that go off,” she said. “And if that trunk fails, everything fails.”
– With files from Cindy Pom
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