Road construction on key routes turns daily commute into crawl

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This article was published 15/06/2023 (856 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Clee Penner is frustrated.

The 47-year-old, who lives in Old St. Vital and works in the North End, can’t comprehend how the City of Winnipeg has planned its summer road construction work.

Her two main options to commute from the south end through downtown to work and back (without taking her far out of the way) are St. Mary’s Road to the Main Street and Norwood bridges or Fermor Avenue up to Dunkirk Drive and the St. Vital Bridge.

On the southbound Norwood Bridge, the median lane has been closed; on the Main Street Bridge, two of the southbound lanes are shuttered.

On Dunkirk Drive and the St. Vital Bridge, two north- and southbound lanes are under construction.

Both routes have become snarled with traffic as the roadworks set in.

Penner said it has drastically increased the length of her afternoon drive back south to between 90 minutes and two hours from its usual 15 to 30 minutes.

“I’m a reasonable person, I understand the roads need to get fixed — if they don’t get fixed, people complain, if they do get fixed, people complain,” she said.

“But my issue is with the lack of foresight in planning, that they would make it so the south end of the city has such a choke hold on it, with all these major access points being under major construction.

“You’d think they would at least stagger that to keep the flow of traffic.”

Coun. Janice Lukes (Waverley West), who chairs the public works committee, said she understands motorists’ frustrations.

“I had a scenario last year where the University Crescent construction started… before university was out. It was chaotic. It was horrible,” she said.

However, there’s a short window with lots of work required, Lukes added.

“The department does the best they can, but the fact of the matter remains: we have many major arteries that are falling apart…. We try to co-ordinate, but we’re a city with old infrastructure,” she said.

“It’s a matter of grin and bear it, unfortunately.… You want the roads fixed? We’ve got four months, five maybe, if we’re lucky.”

“It’s a matter of grin and bear it, unfortunately.… You want the roads fixed? We’ve got four months, five maybe, if we’re lucky.”

Public works department spokesman Ken Allen said there are more than 200 road construction projects planned for the year, billed at about $159 million.

Work ranges from reconstruction and rehabilitation to back lanes, sidewalks and active transport routes to about 30 major projects that are expected to cause delays.

“When planning roadwork renewals, we try to avoid closures on parallel routes but this isn’t always possible given the volume of scheduled renewal work required and taking place,” Allen said.

“There has been several two-year projects that are continuing from last year, including on Jubilee, Pembina and Stafford. Archibald (which is closed completely southbound from Kavanagh to Plinguet streets) was a 2022 project that was delayed a year as a result of active transportation planning/implementation with the project.”

The St. Vital and Main/Norwood bridges projects have been staged to accommodate some traffic throughout, Allen said. Other projects have restricted construction work during peak traffic hours and adjusted traffic-light timing to reduce congestion.

“There’s a couple of different types of work going on on both bridges, and both are relevant and due at the same time,” said city project management engineer Michelle Stainton.

“If those were the only two projects we were doing in the whole city, we may not be having this conversation. Every little piece feeds into the frustration that we all feel,” she said. “(Construction workers and city staff) drive the streets ourselves.”

Coun. Sherri Rollins, whose Fort Rouge-East Fort Garry ward includes part of the St. Vital Bridge and other major construction projects, said the work has to be done.

“This is construction season. There are things that are a bit more difficult in terms of the pile-on effect of the closures and the close proximity of those closures, but do we need to do it? Yes… in particular the St. Vital Bridge. Time is up, it needed to get done,” she said.

Penner’s employer allows her to work from home some days, and leave early and make up for the time in the evenings on others — but the spectre of delayed commutes is frequently on her mind.

“It’s imposed in the environmental waste in the gas. It’s imposed on my time, it’s imposed on my family time — that’s why I’m so frustrated,” she said.

erik.pindera@winnipegfreepress.com