Major construction projects starting in City of Greater Sudbury

Some major construction projects are about to start in the City of Greater Sudbury.

For 2019, the city has plans for morethan 30 roadwork contracts,whichincluderepairs on water mains, sanitary sewers and storm sewers.

All the projects will cost about $60 million.

"We got a large capital budget approved by council, so we're out implementing that capital budget. The more money we have the more projects we can do," said David Shelsted, the city's director of engineering.

Some of the major projects happening this year are widening Municipal Road35 from two to four lanes between both entrances of Azilda, bridge rehabilitation work on FalconbridgeHighway and areas of Elm St. will see road resurfacing and some water line repairs. Other streets in the city will see resurfacing and sidewalk additions.

Shelsted says arterial roadslike Elm St. are a priority for repairs in 2019.

"So there's more benefit to users if we work on arterial roads rather than local roads because paving one section of say Elm Street... that has 15,000 vehicles on it or so, 15,000 people use that a day. The most benefit comes out of improving your arterial road network," he said.

The Elm St. projects will be starting later in the summer and will continue untilthe end of the construction season, as long as the weather lasts.

Council also approved an significant amount for pothole patching and repairingthis year. Shelsted said that work has already started.

"We've started with some night work already, so we're doing significant patching all throughout the city to hit some of those high priority pothole areas," said Shelsted.

He says safety is a concern when it comes to traffic caused by road construction, so some roads will see traffic calming measures.

"The one thing on MR 35... we were concerned with by-pass traffic, trying to skip the construction and then using Notre Dame Ave. and we were worried about additional traffic volume and addition traffic speeds, so we've introduced some traffic calming measures on Notre Dame Ave, hopefully to mitigate the impact of anyone who's trying to by-pass the construction zone."