Sault Ste. Marie-One of the single largest road construction projects in Sault Ste. Marie’s history is underway as demolition work is set to begin on the city’s new truck route.
The city received federal environmental approval April 15 that paves the way for crews to demolish homes around the Sault’s International Bridge plaza. The bulldozers are making way for a new $18.5 million transportation corridor, part of a $22 million project to improve the traffic flow of heavy trucks to and from the American border.
About 60 properties acquired by the city will be razed to make way for the three-kilometre transportation corridor.
The city was finalizing contracts in April with Avery Construction and Stone Construction to handle the demolition work where there will be a new road alignment installed.
Most of the route will run adjacent to existing CN Rail tracks to minimize its impact on other residential neighbourhoods.
“I would expect the demolition, in which contracts have already been awarded, can probably begin anytime with construction shortly afterward,” says Joe Fratesi, the city’s chief administrative officer.
A direct truck route alleviates a 40-year-old problem of heavy trucks moving through the city’s downtown core.
Two other Sault construction firms won contracts to build the two phases of the route.
Palmer Construction won the contract to build a short leg of the route from the International Bridge to Wellington Street while Rainone Construction will build their section north from Wellington West to Second Line.
Four lanes will be constructed from Wellington to Second Line, and reduced to two lanes to the bridge. Some sidestreet accesses will be terminated and some main street intersections will be modified to provide connecting links to the route.
“It’s fairly straight construction. We’re not talking a lot of infrastructure in terms of sewer and water.” says Jerry Dolcetti, the city’s Commissioner of Engineering and Planning.
Major reconstruction work will continue this summer along Second Line, a collector road for the route, to widen the road and add a turning lane. Tenders were called in early April with the contract to be awarded by month’s end.
The truck route’s completion date is set for spring 2006.
Since first announced in 2002, the project has been dogged by higher-than-projected property acquisition costs, which boosted the truck route’s price tag from $15.1 million to $18.5 million.
Last May, the federal and provincial governments contributed their share of $11.2 million for the project through the Strategic Highways Infrastructure Program (SHIP) for border crossing locations in Canada.
Escalating construction and property acquisition costs boosted the city’s share from $3.9 million to $6.3 million.
“The best estimates that people had at the time of scheduling this project were assessed values,” explains Fratesi, “and when you’re acquiring properties from people who aren’t anxious to sell, you’re not paying assessed values, you’re paying premium prices.”
Dolcetti says the city will make up the difference by postponing other capital works projects in their usual $5 million to $6 million road construction program.
Fratesi says past reluctance on the part of senior levels of government to subsidize road programs with municipalities is starting to show.
He says the federal gas tax is probably going to be the biggest boost to help municipalities get back onto a reasonable program.
“If every community dedicates their portion of gas tax, they will all have good handle on outstanding road work,” he says. “The city likely will dedicate its gas tax toward road improvements and with the feds New Deal (for municipalities), this long-term issue will go away for the city. “
