Contractors got in early because of the good weather, and hopefully things are advancing nicely as far as the early stages go for the Highway 27 improvements in the Town of Sundre.
That is according to Stuart Richardson, Acting Regional Director for Alberta Transportation and Economic Corridors. He points out that if all things go well – weather permitting – it is all slated to be completed this construction season. Richardson says “we’re trying to get this done in one season. We realize this is going to be impactful to the locals and the traveling public but, yeah, we’re trying to get this done this season. Hopefully, you will see a big improvement in the corridor when we’re done.”
Richardson notes that the improvements include putting in three permanent mini-roundabouts, repairing as well as rebuilding the sidewalks in the downtown corridor to improve pedestrian safety, and more. He says “there is also going to be some improvements to Centre Street by improving the right turn – so your west bound to north bound we are going to provide a right turn lane there but also installing signals at the Highway 760 intersection, just to the east of the river there. The intention is to provide a safer, more efficient corridor through the Town of Sundre. It was the pedestrian safety that was the big improvement with the better sidewalks and the pedestrian crossing facilities.”
He adds, there has been a lot of thought into how this is going to work and the point of the detour is to try to minimize the disruption to Highway 27 traffic with this as much as possible. Richardson says “the west bound traffic will use a detour. East bound will use the existing corridor and it should work well. We are aware that this is a high load corridor, so our contractor has got in place plans to store the over sized loads either side of the construction zone and move them through at night time as and when required.”
For more details about the Highway 27 project and its current progress visit the Sundre.com website.
