Province says it's trying to do its part to cut down on Hillsborough Bridge traffic tie-ups
'A couple of rough days, but we have the contractor working in a better manner'
With two levels of government both plugging away on a major roadwork project in Charlottetown, it's been what one official calls "a balancing act" to keep traffic moving as smoothly as possible.
The city has been working for months to complete a realignment of Water Street to cut through the Charlottetown Event Grounds and onto Grafton Street.
Meanwhile, the province recently started work to reconfigure the right-turn ramp onto Riverside Drive from the end of the Hillsborough Bridge.
It's all led to kilometres-long traffic backups on the Stratford side of the bridge on recent mornings, something the province said it's working to solve.
"There was a couple of rough days, but we have the contractor working in a better manner that doesn't stop traffic. [Thursday] morning it flowed quite well," said Stephen Yeo, chief engineer with P.E.I.'s Department of Transportation.
"It is a construction site. We have the speed lowered, traffic is moving slower, so it is going to take people 10 to 15 minutes to get across [the bridge] so … leave a little bit earlier."
The department waited until after Old Home Week in late August to start reconstructing the off-ramp in order to minimize traffic jams while the city crews continued their work.
The ramp coming off the bridge onto Riverside Drive and then the Charlottetown bypass highway will be realigned, improving the radius of its curve and leading to better traffic flow. Yeo expects that portion of the work to be completed in the next three to four weeks.
The province will not close the ramp to through traffic at any point during the construction, Yeo said.
"We have a lot of traffic flowing there every day," he said. "We never want to block that off or close it up because we know that backs up traffic for kilometres."
Staff test-drove bridge
He said two department staff drove across the Hillsborough Bridge from Stratford to Charlottetown on Thursday to test the traffic flow after the contractor made some adjustments to how they were getting trucks in and out of the site. The staffers were able to get across the bridge within 12 to 15 minutes, he said.
That may be little relief for those drivers who've been faced with inconsistent rush-hour travel times for months while commuting between Stratford and Charlottetown.
"This construction, it could've been done in the evening. It doesn't make sense they're doing construction on the three major arteries in the town, which slows down everybody," said Summerside resident Ken Smith, whose Charlottetown-based job often requires him to travel to visit clients in Stratford.
"I'm trying to find a way to rearrange my schedule with my clients now, just to make it easier for us all to get around."
Night work ruled out
Both the province and the city have said that contractors aren't equipped to work at night, and that the construction is happening too close to residential areas to make that feasible because of the noise generated.
There will also be no lane-direction switches on the Hillsborough Bridge in the mornings or evenings to allow for more incoming or outgoing traffic flow between Stratford and Charlottetown during peak hours. That's a tactic used daily on the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge between Halifax and Dartmouth in Nova Scotia.
"We've looked at it, but we really don't have the infrastructure like the Macdonald Bridge in Halifax where they can do that quite easily," Yeo said.
More Grafton work lies ahead
The province's work doesn't end after the Riverside Drive off-ramp is completed, Yeo said.
The department is also creating two new through lanes from the foot of the bridge onto Grafton Street.
As well, it plans a dedicated left-turn lane onto Water Street further west on Grafton, past Wendy's and Tim Hortons.
Yeo said the entire project is expected to be finished by the end of October.
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With files from Tony Davis and Julien Lecacheur