PORT HAWKESBURY: The accumulation of work that’s been done on the Destination Reeves Street project over the past few years was put on display as Nova Scotia Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal (NSTIR) showcased the final road design during an information session last Tuesday.
“There has been a significant amount of work completed on this project and we really hit a high spike through the winter working with council,” Dwayne Cross, a senior engineer with NSTIR told The Reporter. “We had quite an intense process going on then, we wanted to get the message out to the public and say here’s the final decision, here’s what’s being done, here’s what the plans look like, just to wrap up that process.”
Speaking on the scope of the project, Cross said it’s not just a paving job or micro-surfacing. The road re-design is prescribing changes to the location and sizes of some of the driveways along Reeves Street, changes to the road surface itself, and changes at the traffic lights.
“We just wanted to let everybody know what the end goal looks like and how Reeves Street is going to function differently,” he said. “I think overall it went pretty good, I heard a lot of positive comments on the presentation.”
The two two-hour information sessions were attended by only 40 people.
“Going back to all that work and quite an intense session with council, which was standing-room only in the Shannon Studio – everyone left with a clear understanding of the project,” he said. “I’ve been at this 22-years and I’ve never had that experience with that level of intense interest and involvement from the community, which is awesome.”
After finishing up the awarding of the tender for the project, Cross said contractors will be on the ground sometime in June to begin the three-month transition and their goal is to have construction wrapped up by the end of August.
As part of NSTIR’s agreement with the Town of Port Hawkesbury, for the next year, they will be collecting travel pattern data along Reeves and Granville Streets, which Cross said involves monitoring the number of cars, their speed and vehicle classification.