WEYBURN – The City of Weyburn will see a lot of construction work to upgrade and improve infrastructure around the city this year, as more projects were approved on Monday evening, a number of them going over budget and requiring the city to use reserves to pay for them.
One of the biggest projects will be the intersection of 16th Street and First Avenue, where the city conducted a geotechnical investigation and traffic study.
The intersection is currently controlled by a four-way stop, and the pavement has significant rutting damage related to slow-moving and stopping traffic.
The city determined that traffic signal lights will be more effective for traffic control at that intersection rather than the four-way stop signs, with turning lanes to be built along with an upgrade to the pavement.
After tenders were requested, the winning bid came from Torrent Energy Services in the amount of $600,027 for an asphalt concrete surface. The city had also requested bids for a Portland cement concrete and asphalt surface, but no bids were submitted for this option.
The bid by Torrent Energy exceeded the budget set by the city by about $171,900, so the city has made a request to the Ministry of Highways for additional funds to help cover 70 per cent of the increased costs.
Negotiations with the ministry are ongoing, and city engineer Jennifer Wilkinson said they have not yet heard back if the request will be granted. She also noted the ministry was not surprised that the city has asked for more funds with increased costs ongoing with many projects.
An option was suggested to eliminate one of the turning lanes, which would reduce the project costs to about $450,000, but the engineering department recommended that this not be done as it would affect the long-term planning for this intersection.
Asked what time-line there is for this project to be done, Wilkinson said they need to coordinate efforts with the RM of Weyburn, and the Ministry of Highways, as they will be getting a special design of asphalt, but the city expects the project will be done by the end of the road construction season this year.
The traffic lights will be installed at a future time, which was questioned by Mayor Marcel Roy, who asked why the lights aren’t going in first.
“Part of it is the lights won’t work as well without the turning lanes. This would create significant congestion at that intersection, unless we have turning lanes in place to ensure traffic flow,” said Wilkinson.
The bid by Torrent Energy was approved, with the overage of $171,902 to come out of the Infrastructure Revitalization Program reserves.
