Eleven roads earmarked for a ‘life cycle extension’ by city
Eleven different stretches of road across the city have been earmarked for this year’s life cycle extension.
These roads have been chosen by the public works department for either/or local asphalt paving, local surface treatment, micro-resurfacing, slurry sealing or crack sealing.
The belief is that if these roads receive this time sensitive maintenance now, their complete tear down and replacement can be put off for many years.
Supervisor of technical services, Mike Farquhar, describes the work as follows, “The scope of the work for these road sections involve spot repair by resurfacing with an overlay of hot mix asphalt in spot segments on the road, but it is not limited and can include pulverizing, adding gravel and paving.”
Farquhar continues, “The majority of the work will be done on segments with the exception of Shamrock Road where the intention is to pulverize this section and grade it for Public Works to maintain as a gravel road section until it is proposed for resurfacing in the Road’s Five Year Plan. This proposed date is 2021.”
Roads chosen for repairs by Public Works are:
- The Glen in Eldon from Eldon Road to 1.1 km west of their start spot
- Cameron Road in Norland beginning at Highway 35
- Richmond Street East and West in Coboconk starting at CKL 35
- Ramsey Road in Oakwood from property number 1169 to property number 1127
- Bowen Road in Oakwood from Washburn Island Road to Rosies Road
- Chambers Road in Fenelon from Mark Road to CKL 121
- Shamrock Road in Emily from CentreLine Road to Sturgeon Road
- John Street in Manvers starting at property number 266 and ending at Hooper
- Homestead Road in Manvers starting at CKL 12 and ending at John Street
- Cedar Glen in Bobcaygeon starting at Sturgeon Road and ending at Loghouse
- Northline Road in Burnt River
The tender for these road renewal projects has already been released by the town. Bids are expected within two weeks. The city hopes all the work will be done in July and August.
Councillors Doug Elmslie and Ron Ashmore wanted to know if at a future opportunity there would be a chance to include more roads to this project.
Public works director Juan Rojas said, “These projects exhaust the budget line within the Life Cycle Extension project for this year. The only way more roads could be done is if the tender comes in lower and money is not spent on the initial eleven roads.”
Deputy Mayor Pat O’Reilly wondered if on such short notice the city expects to get the minimum number of bids necessary for a project of this size.
Rojas shared, “I expect it to be a competitive bidding process.”
Mayor Andy Letham suggested that council revisit the issue of roads in June when senior staff will present a list with some of the roads that did not make the initial cut.
This second set of roads will be costed by senior staff and discussions can be made about taking on more road repair projects with hard numbers in front of the councillors.
Letham believes by June the city “will have a better idea what their finances are going to be.”
Finally they are doing some work on The Glen in Eldon. That road alone has been responsible for more ball joint repairs on our car than all others put together. And the alternative routes going that way aren’t much better.