Construction on the Regina Bypass is now around 90 per cent complete, as crews prepare to wind down field work as the winter months approach.
The secondary layer of paving is around 95 per cent complete on the $1.88 billion mega-project, and the final layer of asphalt will be applied starting next spring.
“We’ve moved over 13 million cubes of dirt since we started on the bypass. All our bridge decks poured, so we only have a variety of finishing work that you can see behind me on the bridge decks,” Regina Bypass project director Garrett Doyle said.
“We’ve placed over 300,000 tonnes of asphalt this year, so again, a very busy year at the bypass.”
Since the project began in August 2015, nearly five million man-hours have gone into the project, Doyle expects to pass the five million hour mark by the project’s completion next October.
In that time, he said there was only one work site incident that resulted in lost man-hours due to injury.
During its peak time, the Regina Bypass had over 400 field workers and 100 office staff. Currently, there are around 200 field workers on top of office staff.
During the winter months, field work will mostly include installing street lights, signage, guard rails and fences on bridges.
A number of interchanges are expected to open in the coming weeks, including Dewdney Ave west, Hill Avenue and Highway 6 south. The on and off ramps on the Highway 6 interchange will not be open until the bypass is complete, but the four lane overpass will be open.
The bypass will also include six “weigh-in-motion” (WIM) stations. There will be two on Highway 11 on the way to Saskatoon, two on Highway 1 on the Moose Jaw access route and two will be placed on the future Highway 1 south of Regina.
These concrete pads will have a variety of sensors that will be able to track vehicle weight, speed and space between vehicles along with determining the type of vehicle. Cameras will also take photos of license plates and vehicles.
“All this information will then be sent to our data management hub so that our highway patrol people can take a look at companies that may be overweight and do targeted enforcement,” Ministry of Highways major projects specialist for the bypass Brent Miller said.
The cameras will not be like photo radars, and cannot issue speeding tickets. Miller said at this point, all data gathered is for information purposes only.
“Some of the data collected such as the speeds, the types of vehicles, helps our engineers and planners see how the flow of traffic is flowing and look at different safety measures,” Miller said.
Phase one of the Regina Bypass opened earlier this year between Highway 33 and Tower Road. The remainder of the project, looping up to Highway 11 in the northwest end of Regina, will be open in October 2019.
The project includes 12 overpasses, 45 kilometres of new four-lane highway, 21 kilometres of resurfaced highway, 54 kilometres of new surface roads and twinning about five kilometres of Highway 6 immediately south of Regina.