Despite setbacks due to the COVID-19 pandemic, roadwork will continue in Saint John.
Micheal Hugenholtz, the commissioner of transportation and environment services, says it has been a challenge to plan roadwork around COVID-19 requirements.
“We scaled back considerably to an essential services model for a number of weeks but more recently we have scaled back up,” he said.
Hugenholtz said the requirement of personal protective equipment was hard to fulfill in the city when most of its residents are also purchasing PPE, but they made it happen.
“For the most part we’ve still been able to tender out our main construction projects and a lot of those have already been ordered and we’ll see some construction activity start to ramp up in the upcoming weeks,” he said.
Hugenholtz said it has also been difficult to safely move crews and workers around due to physical distancing.
“We did delay a number of construction projects, we’ve pushed out some tender dates, we’ve made some extensions to tender closings, just so we could try and get a better sense of how or what the impact was going to be,” he said.
Hugenholtz said there’s less traffic on the streets but residents still need to be careful around job sites.
He said street cleaning will be proceeding as normal as well as the asphalt resurfacing contract and the water main replacement on Gault Road. The substantial reconstruction work on Waterloo Street will also continue.
Hugenholtz says residents can go to the City of Saint John website to view the interactive map of roadwork.
