Castlegar drivers take heart — the city’s civic works director Lucas Pitts reports that paving of the first phase of the Columbia Avenue Complete Street project will start next week.
Anyone driving through Castlegar’s Columbia Avenue over the last couple months has experienced the bumps and detours of a major construction project, but Pitts says at least part of the road will be smoothed out soon.
The project is coming along with only a few minor complications, which have set the project about eight days behind schedule.
Pitts and Castlegar CAO Chris Barlow talked about the project with city council at a committee meeting Tuesday afternoon. They addressed the question that several of the councillors are repeatedly being asked — is there still room for three driving lanes?
The answer was yes. Pitts and Barlow explained that the narrowing of Columbia is mostly one of perception, based on the fact that the bike lane was previously right on the side of the road. The lane is now now separated by a barrier — so the bike lane is what is missing from that main roadway.
Each of the three lanes will be narrower than the previous lanes by about 10 centimetres, but Barlow explained that they are still wider than the minimum width requirements for standard traffic lanes.
As progress continues to be made on the sidewalks and bike lanes, and once the first round of paving is complete, residents should finally be able to get a vision of what the completed project will look like.
