There are still quite a few road barricades out on Edmonton’s streets and the scramble is on to get the work done before one of Edmonton’s two seasons is over – construction season.
The man who’s watching all of the projects for the city is confident they’ll be able to get done what they need to, even if the snowflakes fly.
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It’s not the snow crews are worried about, said Nathan Stelmach, the general supervisor for arterial road construction.
“What it is, is what appears to be persistent low temperatures, for the next couple of weeks.”
“Usually the first bit of snow falls in mid or early October and everyone starts to panic,” he said in an interview. “Then it turns around and we get normal weather, and keep working until the last week of October. But here it doesn’t appear to be looking like it’s going to be very nice.”
“Let me put it to you this way, it’s fortunate that we didn’t have as big of a year in terms of locations as we did in 2015.”
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What is still out there is a loss of a lane on the Yellowhead in east Edmonton between 66 Street and 82 Street.
“At some point we have to make a decision. We’re going to have to try to get all of the paving done and I expect we will but it’ll be touch and go. (There’s) four solid days of paving left to do there.”
“On some other locations, for example, that aren’t yet ground, we just won’t grind them. For example, 178 Street, we have all of the concrete work done north of Whitemud, but we won’t proceed with a full out reclamation because we know we won’t be able to complete it, and pave it, so we’ll just do it in the spring.”
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The call city staff will have to make is, will the paving hold up, or is it better to wait? Stelmach said they don’t want to do anything half way.
“If for some reason it doesn’t appear to perform, then we might have to redo it. We don’t want to intentionally put any kind of sacrificial asphalt in or anything like that because you know you’re wasting your money.”
Other locations that have them watching the forecasts are 82 Avenue between 75 Street and 71 Street, 106 Avenue – where there is some streetscape enhancement going on in the McCauley neighborhood – and unrelated to the weather but being held up by some Atco gas work, Rowland Road, which Stelmach said will have to wait until the spring.