The city's $10.8 million plan to improve safety at the Beverly Street underpass will have to wait another year and could cost substantially more, staff is warning in a report headed to council next week.
Canadian Pacific railway has stalled on its response to the city around agreements that would have allowed the project to go to tender this spring.
Reconstruction of the street, which includes the addition of a pedestrian underpass was approved as part of this year's budget process.
The project includes full underground infrastructure, including renewal of a dual use watermain, sanitary and storm sewers, road renewal, intersection improvements, new multi-use trail and the installation of a new pedestrian trail underpass through the existing CP rail crossing.
Considering the high priority pedestrian safety concern, the city subsequently planned to initiate a two-stage construction project to complete the pedestrian underpass and multi-use trail installation in 2021 followed by the remaining road reconstruction and infrastructure renewal works in 2023.
The two-stage approach also allowed for the coordination of infrastructure renewal works with the region's adjacent Beverly/Dundas roundabout improvements in 2022. But since the procurement process results for the 2021 works closed at nearly 75 per cent over the available budget, it ultimately led to the decision to defer until 2023 as a single combined project.
As part of the 2023 budget process, council provided pre-approval to proceed with early 2023 tendering of the project with the hope it would be substantially complete in this year.
Staff resumed discussions with CP in October 2022 with meetings held throughout the fall and winter over the necessary construction and maintenance agreements.
Although CP initially committed to providing their turn of the agreements by mid-January, to allow for the project to proceed to tendering, staff say that despite continued and ongoing follow-up, response from CP remained outstanding at the end of April.
The installation of the new pedestrian trail underpass requires some CP rail track work and the rail company recently told the city there is now an eight month lead time for the specific track material required for the project.
This, coupled with the delay in finalizing the construction and maintenance agreements, have contributed to the city having to push the project schedule.
Staff is now looking to minimize some of the associated project risks by undertaking a two-stage tendering process.
The first stage of this process is to complete a pre-qualification screening of interested contractors to help ensure contractors with the appropriate qualifications and rail experience are retained.
The second stage of tendering would commence once the pre-qualification process is completed and the required construction and maintenance agreements have been finalized with CP.
Subject to receiving finalized agreements by end of July, staff now anticipate the project will be substantially complete by November 2024.
Staff also believe the delay will result in additional costs that won't be known until after it is tendered.
