Summer road work projects nearing completion in Kamloops
Aug 31, 2021 | 5:07 PM
Adam Donnelly
KAMLOOPS — On Monday (Aug. 31), the City of Kamloops reached a milestone on the Tranquille Road Sanitary Main Upgrade project.
Phase Two of the project stretched from Southhill Street to 12th Avenue. Monday marked the opening of the new and improved stretch of Tranquille Road, from Singh Street to 12th Avenue, to traffic.
However, Capital Projects Manager Darren Crundwell says the real value of the project lies under that road after the city replaced the late-1960s sewer main that served close to half the city’s population.
“We replaced that main and that main serves the whole North Shore – a population of around 50,000 people, so a pretty critical piece of infrastructure,” Crundwell says. “This is the second of three phases. The third phase will go in 2025-26.”
Along with the infrastructure improvements, Crundwell says the city wanted to make some aesthetic improvements to the corridor. It’s also hoped those improvements will slow down traffic and improve safety.
“There were big asphalt medians before. We replaced those with treed medians and plantings. Hopefully, that slows down or helps with the speeds as well. With those big, wide-open corridors, people do tend to travel a little faster. Again, tried to make as many improvements as we could.”
The Columbia Street Corridor project is close to completion as well. However, Crundwell says there will be some delays in painting, as supply chain issues have made road paint scarce.
After the long weekend, paving crews will start another re-surfacing project, this time in the city’s downtown core.
“We’re calling it the East Downtown Core Improvement,” Crundwell says. “Lansdowne, East Victoria, and Battle [Streets]. All of those are getting repaved. It’s purely a resurfacing project, so we should be pretty quick. There’s no utility work like there was on Tranquille and Columbia. Still a pretty big impact on the downtown core, so we’ll be communicating that as best we can here starting after the long weekend.”
