The City of Regina has a plan to alleviate road construction delays after many frustrated residents have been voicing their concerns to the mayor, city councillors and city administration.
“Victoria Avenue East for example, we have east bound and west bound, we’ll have two lanes each way, which will help alleviate the problem,” said Mayor Michael Fougere.
The mayor said city administration is going to look at the intersection light sequences on Arcola Ave. to see if changing the lights would help traffic flow more smoothly. The city is also going to look at having some crews work more overnight and weekend shifts. The city will be adding some signage to encourage residents to zipper merge. The Mayor said if more people zipper merge traffic will flow smoother.
“More signage for the Ring Road project about zipper merge,” said Fougere. “That is probably the most constricted area of all the projects that I’ve seen and the most frustrating.”
Regina’s mayor said a common complaint from many residents is about the two bridges being replaced on Ring Road. Residents want to know why the city did not wait for the bypass to be complete, before starting this construction. The Mayor said those bridges need to be replaced now.
"Members of the public have been saying ‘why didn't we wait for the bypass to be finished in October,’ well the fact is the work has to be done,” said Fougere. “The bridges are in a state where they must be done now and if we waited until October, we wait until the next year to actually do the project, that's a whole other year waiting for the bridges to be done so we have to do it this year. So we ask for the public's patients and understanding that we have the most aggressive infrastructure investment this year ever."
This is the largest construction season the City of Regina has ever taken on. The city will do more than 300 construction projects through the spring, summer and fall. All these projects will cost the City around $83 million.
