A series of road work is being scheduled for this spring as both the weather and construction season begins to heat up.

The Swift Current City Council voted on Monday to approve the 2020 Asphalt and Concrete Program Contract.

The yearly project utilizes a series of field inspections, condition assessments and customer inquiries to identify the roads, sidewalks, curbs, and gutters to be revamped.

Council also voted in their 2020 Asphalt Maintenance Contract on Monday.

City of Swift Current General Manager of Infrastructure and Operations, Mitch Minken, said that while the lifespan of a typical road is around 20 to 30 years, the best time to do the work of the contract is while the roads are still in fairly good conditions.

The surface of the roads are removed in the process, milling it down, and replacing it with a 50-millimetre thick layer of pavement.

While the benefits to repaving roads can be clear to both motorists, and their suspensions, benefits to replacing sidewalks can help ensure safety, as well as good water drainage.

Sidewalks are removed while being replaced by a new sidewalk and in some cases a new sidewalk, curb and gutter.

A request for proposal (RFP) was issued by the City, to which they had two applicants.

Originally, the City had budgeted $4,100,000 but that was reduced by $1,500,000 for a final budget of $2,600,000.

All of those amounts included PST and excluded GST.

The removed funds are said to have been deferred to 2021.

The reason given for the reductions was complications due to COVID-19. 

Minken shared some of the considerations they made when deciding to not allocate the full amount of funding.

“When we’ll be able to get started in terms of scheduling, and also, with all the issues around the financial aspects, we had to take another good hard look at what we were going to accomplish in 2020.”

“Probably the biggest aspect is one of schedule. It’s work that we’re not going to get done this year which just differs often to the future so that just puts us a bit behind.”

He mentioned that physical distancing measures would add to project length, but wasn’t sure if delays would be significant.

Mobile Paving won the contract based on unit price. Workers will be held responsible for obeying distancing requirements by the City of Swift Current as well as Public Health.

Disbursement of allocated funds is as follows

  • Paving and sidewalk rehabilitation in various areas throughout the City - $550,000
  • Repaving and reconfiguring medians for improved traffic flow on 11th Ave NW from Chaplin St W to North Service Road - $1,550,000
  • Downtown sidewalk rehabilitation - $350,000
  • Paving lanes - $150,000

Road work is hoped to be started around the middle of May, starting with a previously approved altering of the intersection of Battleford Trail West and Central Avenue North.

That project will take an estimated four to six weeks to complete. Work in other areas will also be completed during that time.

Minken said that the items approved are a high priority, and hopes to accomplish the remaining tasks next year, or if conditions improve, later this year.

In terms of further coronavirus delays, the City believes that they should be in the clear unless the situation changes.

“We can’t foresee what might happen with further COVID restrictions that might impact concrete availability or even the ability to produce asphalt,” Minken said. “If things continue the way they’re looking right now, we should have no issues whatsoever.”

Detours will be implemented during a portion of the work.