Residents can expect difficult driving conditions at St. Albert’s second busiest intersection this winter, as the completion of major intersection improvements has been pushed to spring 2020, following excessive summer rain.
Winter is coming and laying down pavement at Boudreau Road/Giroux Road and St. Albert Trail – the final stage of multi-year improvements – has been deferred to spring. The city said logistically temperatures and high traffic volume do not allow paving to be laid before then.
About 60,000 vehicles stream through the intersection per day, and as a result paving would need to be done at night. Paving would require about a week of consecutive work, in temperatures of 4 C and rising. When night-time temperatures dropped at the end of September, St. Albert decided the work would not be feasible before winter.
“There’s a level of aggravation from residents, because they see there is paving going on in many other locations,” said St. Albert senior project manager Aleks Cieply. “We just weren’t in a position (where) we could divert all of those vehicles into residential mid roads, because we would just create chaos.”
Cieply said construction crews lost 22 workdays to rain, and by the time they completed scheduled work up to milling and paving, temperatures had dropped too low for paving.
Instead, city staff went out to the location and winterized the intersection “to the best ability (they) could at this time,”Cieply said. That includes milling the edge by hand where a new lane is and patching the gutter, to encourage drainage.
When asked about impact on winter driving of leaving the intersection unpaved, Cieply said public works has been to the site and looked at it from a driver’s perspective and said it “looks like there will be troubles.”
“We have made the decision, and looking at it, snow removal won’t be impacted,” he said. “When it comes to reviewing the status of the intersection during winter months, if additional measures such as salting or sanding are required, then we will do so accordingly.”
The $3-million project began in 2016 and was aimed at accommodating larger volumes of traffic and improving turning capacity. Some of that work involved installing additional third lanes on St. Albert Trail northbound and southbound, and lengthening existing or installing new turn bays.
“Previously, there were no dedicated right-hand turn bays, and so vehicular traffic that would line up, trying to go straight through the intersection, would in essence block vehicles trying to make right hand turns,” said Cieply.
Other major work on the intersection included moving existing traffic signals and red light cameras, improvements to storm drainage, relocating business accesses and landscaping improvements. Every component of the intersection improvement project has now been completed, except for paving.
Drivers should be aware yield signs are now on each corner of the intersection for rights turns, Cieply added, and the free-flow right-hand turn from Giroux onto St. Albert Trail has been removed.
