Residents told Route 616 will be repaired by end of June, says LSD chair
Local service district is hoping this will be the beginning of many repairs on the Keswick Ridge road
A string of potholes along a major road in Keswick Ridge has brought the community together once again.
The severity of conditions on Route 616 dominated the local service district's annual general meeting Tuesday night, said David Coburn, the district chair.
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A contractor rebuilt a cracked and potholed stretch of Route 616 west of Fredericton last summer in a project overseen by the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure. The stretch has already broken up and is pocked with holes again.
"No one builds a road to fail, I think we all know that," Coburn said Wednesday. "Something obviously happened in this process and that's the biggest concern of the residents."
This was the second meeting in a month to draw residents angry about bad roads.
On Tuesday, more than 65 people attended the local service district meeting, a higher number than usual, and residents spent about an hour and a half discussing roads again.
"We had a lot of people who had never been to a local service district meeting before," Coburn said.
The government has promised to fix the road by the end of the June, and residents are hoping that this time the repairs will last. The same contractor will do the work.
Two engineers from the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure were also at the meeting to field questions about the deterioration of Route 616, which Coburn said needs work beyond the worst kilometre.
"They didn't necessarily have all the answers we wanted to hear but they're as concerned as we are about that collapsed piece of road," Coburn said.
Last week, Transportation Minister Bill Fraser blamed part of Route 616's problems on the weather.
Fraser suggested the contractor was also at fault and he blamed Progressive Conservative Leader Blaine Higgs for leaving the Liberals with problems to fix four years ago.
In the meantime, the department has been out repairing potholes with an asphalt cold-patch product and putting up signs warning drivers of potholes.
But with climate change and heavy rain, Coburn said drainage is more important than ever.
"If a road doesn't have a proper ditch to get this water away we're not going to have much of a road left."
In 2017, the road came in ninth place in CAA Atlantic's top 10 worst roads in Atlantic Canada, a drop from fifth place in 2015.
With files from Information Morning Fredericton