Construction on the Circle Drive bridge hit an important milestone Sunday.
The Circle Drive bridge rehabilitation has now reached its halfway point, and Saskatoon drivers will see a change to part of the construction project.
The city has completed work on the westbound lanes of the bridge, which included new interior barriers, scaffolding and concrete repairs.
Now work will shift to the eastbound lanes.
The engineering manager of the project says traffic patterns will be kept the same as work transitions to the other half of the bridge, and that they are expecting the same kinds of traffic patterns and flows.
“The only real difference is just because we’re moving on to the different side of the structure, instead of one lane going over the crossover, now there’s going to be two lanes going over the crossover, and they’re going to be going eastbound,” said Todd Grabowski.
The city will monitor intersections and flows as the project switches over and will give time for drivers to adjust before data is gathered.
Grabowski knows the struggle drivers have had with the project, but says work is necessary now to preserve the integrity of the bridge well into the future.
“This has been a lot of work and a lot of frustrations, but with this type of treatment and this rehabilitation that we’re doing, we’re hoping we don’t have such an extensive closure on the structure for another 25 years.”
Grabowski says crews are on track to complete the project by the original October deadline. Until then, the city continues to encourage drivers to utilize the zipper merge to lessen any traffic backups.
– with files from Gates Guarin
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