Method to madness of road construction

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/09/2020 (984 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In 2020, the City of Winnipeg has invested more many than ever before in local and regional road infrastructure.

The 2020-2023 multi-year budget allocated over $130 million toward road infrastructure, setting a record for the third time in the last six years. Since 2014, council has directed over $600 million to road repair, making huge progress in cutting down our infrastructure deficit. We are on track, by the end of the multi-year budget period, to have invested over $1 billion in our roads, which is an amount forecast to virtually eliminate a backlog of road repair which took decades to accumulate.

In St. Boniface ward, this has meant numerous long-awaited projects — either full rehabilitations or modest preservation works —either already underway or beginning this year. These include:

• Fermor Avenue  —  between St. Anne’s Road/Rue Archibald;

• Fermor Avenue — Lagimodiere Boulevard/CN Overpass;

• Traverse Avenue — Dollard Boulevard/Marion Street;

• Lyndale Drive— Main Street Bridge/Walmer Street;

• Speers Road —Elizabeth Road /Winakwa Road;

• Fleury Pl ace(East leg) — Fontaine Crescent/De Bourmont Avenue;

• Fleury Place (West leg) — De Bourmont Avenue/Fontaine Crescent;

• Bertrand Street — Rue Des Meurons/Rue De La Morenie;

• Park Terrace Drive — Beaverhill Boulevard/Beaverhill Boulevard;

• Myles Robinson Way —Island Lakes Drive/Desjardins Drive;

• Tache Avenue — Darveau Street/Rue La Verendrye;

• Rue Archibald — Cottonwood Road/Elizabeth Road.
Some highlights are:

• Rue Archibald — Long a priority for the community, this street is being rehabilitated in three parts over three years, beginning with the stretch from Cottonwood to Elizabeth this year (underway now);

• Speers Road — The southern portion was completed two years ago, and Speers from Winakwa to Elizabeth is being completed now, including the addition of a multi-use active transportation trail alongside;

• Fermor Avenue — The three-year Fermor Bridge project is nearing completion, with drainage and landscaping elements underway until the end of season. The Hwy 1 component east of Lagimodiere is nearing completion as well;

• Eight more back lane asphalt local improvements are pending or underway.

Thank you to our federal partners who have been instrumental in funding for some of these projects, most notably the $21 million Archibald rehabilitation.

The multi-year budget promises continued growth of the local and regional road budget, with the addition of active transportation facilities where appropriate, as decided by Public Works.

If your street is awaiting or in need of work, rest assured that the City’s tremendous prioritization of infrastructure work in recent and upcoming years will continue to work its way through the list of waiting projects.