Construction means traffic congestion ahead for one of CBRM's busiest roads

Drivers in Sydney can expect traffic delays along one of the area's busiest thoroughfares this summer and fall.

Work is underway to install a roundabout at the intersection of Kings Road and Kenwood Drive.

The project comes with challenges.

"It is fairly congested, and there is a lot of traffic volume," said Paul Colton, acting district director for Eastern Zone with the Department of Public Works.

"So just managing the traffic and working within the limited area is probably the biggest challenge that we're faced with."

There are also a lot of utility lines in the area, both underground and on power poles, and a steep slope on Kenwood Drive.

"We did cut down some of the slope. But we are going to be installing a retaining wall at the bottom of the slope just to increase the stability," he said.

The roundabout will also sit about a meter higher than the existing intersection.

Nova Scotia Power is relocating utility poles and lines to accommodate the new footprint. That work will go on for another four or five weeks.

Once that's done, construction of the roundabout itself will continue.

Kenwood Drive will be closed from early July until the project is finished in late fall. And Kings Road will be reduced from four lanes to two lanes during much of that time.

"We stipulated in the contract that you have to keep two lanes of traffic open at all times during the construction. So as we move forward I expect we'll be down to one lane in each direction," said Colton.

The project coincides with another scheduled for the area. The Sydney River bridge on Keltic Drive will be resurfaced in July.

"That should happen fairly quickly," said Colton. "So that might be a couple of weeks' work. But yeah, we'll have to work with the contractors to ensure that the two traffic-control areas are not interfering with each other ... so that we don't have two major slowdowns in both locations at the same time."

The Kenwood Drive roundabout is a $4.5 million project. It's the second stage of a $12-million to $13-million project to install three roundabouts on Kings Road.

The first, located at the east end of Kings Road at Highway 125, was completed in 2020.

Work on the third roundabout, at the intersection with Keltic Drive, will start next summer.