The City of Saint John is temporarily halting a long-awaited project after new-found requirements added significant challenges to the city’s planned overhaul of Main Street and the viaduct leading into the city’s uptown core.
Tim O’Reilly, director of public works and transportation for Saint John, said the intent is to still have the project completed next year.
The Main Street active transportation project is an effort to make the major thoroughfare more friendly for cyclists and pedestrians. Council approved the plan a year ago, but there has been a push to redesign Main Street for almost a decade.
Main Street North is under the authority of the provincial Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, but the viaduct is under the authority of a Crown corporation called the New Brunswick Highway Corp.
O’Reilly said while the city has had great conversations with the province it only recently found out it had to fill out a new highway usage permit for the viaduct section.
“[We] always knew we had to have discussions with a third-party operator,” he said. “But the extent of which the requirements were placed on us … only came to light within the last couple of months.”
O’Reilly said one of the New Brunswick Highway Corp.’s requirements is to allow first right-of-refusal to the corporation’s Highway 1 operator.
He said the plan was to have one contractor in place for the entire project. But now, if the corporation accepts its right, O’Reilly said the installation of the infrastructure across the viaduct would be at the corporation’s cost identification but still paid for by the city.
Future costs may also be a possibility, said O’Reilly.
He said the contract between the highway corporation and its operators ends in 2040, but the city is aware of at least two more rehabilitation projects on the viaduct, not including the current one, between now and 2040.
He said that if the new active transportation infrastructure from the city impacts the costs of the operator’s rehab projects in any way, the costs would be borne on the city.
O’Reilly said there are also separate insurance requirements that would have to be put in place.
“All these are costs and risks that we need to flesh out and make sure we understand and make sure that council’s supportive of,” he said.
Council voted Monday evening in favour of sending a letter to the Department of Transportation minister with a handful of requests including a request to forego the added requirements from the highway corporation and a request for the current viaduct rehab to be completed in 2023.
Although most councillors voiced their support for sending a letter, a few still expressed frustration with the delay.
Coun. Barry Ogden, among others, said seeing a third-party come out of nowhere at the last minute was “discouraging.”
He said the current setup splits the community in two, ostracizing the north end.
“The north end was never meant to be a six-lane highway, and nobody in the city knows why it was ever built that way. But here we have a chance to fix it,” said Ogden.
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Michael Hugenholtz, the commissioner of public works and transportation, said he shares the frustration of councillors that the city doesn’t have the power to implement projects like these.
But he said he’s confident that there is a solution.
“Unfortunately, … we’re at the end of the runway for what we can achieve at the staff level. And I think we need to have this letter signed and sent at the political level,” said Hugenholtz.
“Hopefully after that, staff can regroup and get aligned and we can be in a position to move forward with this project.”
This story was originally published in CBC News on May 16, 2023.
Hannah Rudderham Portfolio 