Over the next three years, the City of Timmins is hoping to reconstruct the downtown stretch of Algonquin Boulevard.
Tuesday, Timmins council gave the go-ahead to revise how the Connecting Link is reconstructed.
The city is now tackling the downtown core first to allow for a multi-year contract. Work in the east end of town — from Crawford Street to the Porcupine bridge — will now take place after the downtown stretch.
The price tag for the three-year downtown project is estimated at $25.9 million. Director of public works and engineering Pat Seguin said the cost includes removing the overpass and putting in a snowmobile crossing with signal lights near Hollinger Park.
The city is applying for provincial funding to help with the cost. The maximum funding available is $3 million per year, or $5 million for work that involves bridges. In the past, the city has received Connecting Link funding every two years. As such, the city may debenture the project.
With the new work schedule, in 2022 work would be done from Theriault to Mountjoy, then Mountjoy to Cedar in 2023, and Cedar to Brunette in 2024.
When pitching the revised work plan to council, staff said one of the benefits would be being able to do extra work in a season if the weather allows. Alternatively, if the weather turns, work could be wrapped up and finished the following construction season by the same contractor.
“We would want a minimum amount of work to be done,” Seguin told council this week.
He noted the city was fortunate this year, with work starting early in the spring and having a much longer fall.
“In the event that we ran into that situation, we would bring something back to council maybe have him continue if budget allowed,” he said.
Next up would be Crawford Street to the Porcupine bridge.
This has changed to a two-year project, instead of the originally planned one-year contract, to allow for a new 300-millimetre distribution watermain.
Right now there is only one water line servicing the area east of Crawford Creek. When there's a break on it, all of the water is shut down.
In Timmins, the Connecting Link is a 21.35-kilometre stretch of Highway 101 running from Kamiskotia Road in the west to the old railway tracks in Porcupine.
The initial plan for the roadwork was to alternate between work in the downtown core one year and smaller segments such as culverts or a bridge in an outlying area.
The change was prompted after reconstructing Mattagami bridge to Theriault Boulevard this year in a $7.2-million project.
"Segment five reconstruction has progressed relatively well, considering it posed the biggest challenges with diverting watermains under the town creek culvert, installing long runs of sanitary sewer on flat grades, installing a new 1.2-metre storm sewer and a number of other unknown or foreseen challenges. It was the critical segment required to be done first as it contains the outlet for the main storm sewer that runs along Algonquin from the overpass east of Spruce to Town Creek," reads Seguin's report.
