Welcome to Detourtober — a month of roadwork
Keep your maps handy, Kamloops.
The city is asking motorists to find alternate routes as major road-construction projects begin or continue on Summit Drive, Victoria Street, Columbia Street and Grandview Terrace from now until the end of October.
On Columbia Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues, workers will be replacing the box culvert running under the road, with both road and sidewalk closures expected.
"The concrete box culvert that's under the ground there had just deteriorated over the years and needs to be replaced," said Jim McNeely, the city's streets and internal services manager.
"There's going to be some disruption to traffic, but it's one of those things where it's better to do it in a proactive way than have it actually collapse and create a much bigger problem."
On Victoria Street and Summit Drive, road crews will mill off the top couple of inches of asphalt before repaving the routes.
On Victoria, work will stretch between First and Fifth avenues. On Summit, work will run from Columbia Street to Springhill Drive.
In both cases, McNeely said, the roads have outlived their lifespan and are now patchy, potholed and rutted.
"You drive down Victoria Street and you'll notice. I think that Victoria Street was upgraded almost 30 years ago, when they did the beautification downtown, he said.
"So, that road is that old. Generally, you like to think you get about 25 years out of an asphalt road."
McNeely said the construction will cause delays on both routes, but it will likely be more significant on Victoria, since contractors have more traffic-routing options on the four-lane Summit Drive.
"Victoria Street's pretty tight. The most expedient way may be to actually close it for a period of time while they go through and mill it," he said.
Residents on Grandview Terrace are also facing another month of street closures as the city continues a major road reconstruction.
Capital-projects manager Kristen Meersman said the project — which will see new sidewalks, gutters and a new roadway put in — was originally due to wrap up at the beginning of October but, when the city discovered the water line in the area was set much deeper than it should have been, it elected to install a new one.
That decision pushed the project's end date to late October.
"We've run into a number of things," said Meersman. "It is one of the older streets, so we do tend to run into some things that we don't expect all the time."
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