Saskatoon bids farewell to $64 million construction season

The City of Saskatoon is ready to put another construction season behind it after extensive work to some of the city's busiest roads.

The brunt of the summer construction happened along Circle Drive North, where part of the overall $64 million budget rebuilt deteriorated curbs and medians, as well as resurfacing the eastbound lanes between Alberta Avenue and Millar Avenue.

Terry Schmidt, the city’s general manager of transportation and construction, said the project was carefully planned to limit disruption to businesses in the area.

"A lot of that work was undertaken at night," he said. "So that it would a not impact traffic as much because it's also a very busy corridor for traffic, and as well it would minimize the impacts to the businesses and allow the accesses to stay open as much as they could."

That's not what Mike Petterson experienced as a server at Humpty's Family Restaurant. With only one access point the business along Circle Drive, Petterson said the whole summer was slow with very little traffic coming into the restaurant because of construction

"Some days we'd have the west side traffic coming, the next time it'd be the east -- but you'd lose one half of the city all the time," he said. "Even today, now they're doing a little more [construction]. This is the slowest day we've had in months."

While Schmidt praised the city's collaboration and planning with businesses along the east side of Circle Drive, Petterson is still wondering why things were done the way they were.

"Like, why didn't you just finish certain areas and then have them open up and then maybe not three or four different things all at the same time," he said.

He said he was the only server most of the summer instead of the usual two or three servers that are scheduled. He's warning businesses on the other side of the street to staff their stores appropriately, especially if they can't be accessed from a side street.

Petterson also would have liked to see more work done at night.

"Until the end when they started to rush because it was getting cool. If they would have done that from the beginning, it probably would have cut [the construction time] in half," he said.

There’s no indication yet if this year’s work will bump that stretch of road from its number six spot on CAA's top 10 worst roads in the province.

Next year, the westbound lanes will be resurfaced in a similar fashion to this year's work.

The city is also continuing to replace all lead service lines by 2027, pushed back from its original goal of 2026. Schmidt said roughly 300 lead services lines were replaced this year with the remaining work expected to wrap up by the end of the week.

"There are still are a few temporary water lines out there. We're working away on them. We anticipate here in the next few days they should be no longer required," Schmidt said.

That's welcome news for Sylvia Krawchuk. With temporary water lines running across the King George neighbourhood in front of her home, her worries started to subside as she watched crews begin their final cleanup Tuesday morning with winter quickly approaching.

"I was very concerned. They shut my water off and I didn't know. I had to go to the store to get my water. I had to boil water for a couple weeks," she said.

With all the major work done for another Saskatoon summer construction season, Schmidt and his team are turning their attention towards next spring.

"Some of the major projects we are already planning for is rehabilitation of the Circle Drive North bridges. Both bridges are planned for rehabilitation next year," he said.

With the budget yet to be finalized for 2023, Schmidt is optimistic that inflation, fuel costs and other budget constraints won't affect upcoming plans.

"We have seen fluctuations in not only fuel but asphalt products that are a major component of a lot of resurfacing in and rehabilitation projects as well. So we're continuing to monitor those," Schmidt said.

"The earlier you can get the projects out typically the better pricing that you will get."