A group of Burnaby residents who have suffered through years of construction in front of their homes are celebrating today after the city reversed its plans to delay current road work.
The city has completed about 70% of 2.2 kilometres in upgrades to Broadway Street, with work completed from Underhill to Phillips. But the city recently told residents via email that it was halting the rest of the project from Phillips west to Bainbridge, citing issues involving third party utilities.
The city told residents that it was terminating a contract for the rest of the work so it could “redesign” the project and then undertake it at a later date – with no timeline provided.
That frustrated the residents, who had to go through a year of work by FortisBC first, and then months and months of work by the city.
Broadway resident Sam Clark called the delay “ridiculous” and the city eventually set up a July 29 meeting so the residents could air their grievances. Many of them want the project completed so they can finish their own work to their properties and be done with the endless construction.
But on Thursday morning, Clark received an email from the city saying the project would now go ahead and be completed.
“We won,” Clark told the NOW. “They came up with all of these excuses, but we made our case. We’ll be glad when this is all over.”
Clark said he was told the work would likely be finished by spring 2022.
The City of Burnaby wrote to Clark previously to say that the portion of the project from Phillips to Bainbridge had to be delayed due to issues involving utilities.
“Unfortunately, through the course of construction, we discovered that some third party utilities are not installed as per their as-built record drawings, which has caused extensive delays for the contractor and an inconvenience to the local residents and travelling public,” wrote an engineering project manager with the city. “Construction of the Broadway upgrades cannot continue without significant re-design of the utilities.”
