THUNDER BAY — Red River Road could be open to traffic by the end of the week.
"We're going to pour a concrete ramp just so that we could open the road, probably as of Friday,” said project engineer Brian Newman.
Newman said the concrete ramps are a temporary solution until the weather warms up, and work is able to be resumed.
The majority of the work has now been done on the $13 million project, but it will need some time in spring 2025 to be officially completed.
“We were going to try to push for as long as we could, but with that bit of snow on Monday and just the colder temperatures, it's just not really worth it for the subcontractor to be putting down lockstone pavers," said Newman.
The ramps will be taken out in the early spring "as soon as it's warm enough to get back at it," he said. "They'll have that section of the road closed again, but it's going to move a lot quicker."
"The road process goes quicker than the sidewalks did," said Newman.
He anticipated that about a month next spring will be needed to finish the road itself and said work is on track to have the area usable by early June, in time for the patio season.
“We're not going to impact anybody because all the decorative pavers on the sidewalks are complete. The different restaurants and bars can set up their summer patios as soon as spring allows," he said.
“There are just some small moving parts, the key is just keeping traffic flowing next summer and the pedestrians flowing and everything else so that we're not impacting anybody down here another season.”
Newman said there have been issues with power distribution for the street lights.
“We had to re look for different feeds and we found one closer to Water Street.
“It's just a case of getting hydro hooked up to it. There's an option of running with a diesel generator or some sort of generator, but we'd rather just wait until we have the final hook up done,” Newman said.
By this time next year, said Newman, the project will be 100 per cent complete.
