Council approves Beverly Street pedestrian underpass plans

The Beverly Street pedestrian underpass construction will be going ahead at a cost of $2.72 million.

That is being done as part of phase two, however, phase three will see twinning of the existing structure with an additional lane added to the tunnel.

That satisfied Coun. Jan Liggett, who had grave concerns about the build up of the traffic at the tight tunnel space through which cars have to cautiously squeeze through. 

"Already it's very very narrow and there are many accidents there," she said. "We're looking at the property at the old Joy Manufacturing at some point will have major residential commercial development happening there, plus we have the 92 townhouses going into Elgin Street at the vineyard property."

The decision around the project was made at council Tuesday evening after a staff report recommending that staff be authorized to execute the project agreements with Canadian Pacific Railway was discussed. Staff, in the report, also requested council's permission to go ahead and approach preferred vendors as allowed by the procurement bylaw if no bids are received to a tender. 

The report outlines the primary reasons for the lack of bids as constrained project timelines, strict CP track closure windows and overall project workloads and volume of work currently out for tender.

Liggett, who had request the item be withdrawn from the consent agenda to be discussed, said she was unclear on what was being proposed and sought clarification from staff.

"The recommendation is not really clear as to what was going to be done," she said. "Are we doing this in two phases or have we removed the stop lights, what's going on here?"

Kevin De Leebeek, director of engineering, explained.

"My understanding is the preferred alternative was to move forward with phase two, which was the mid-term solution of implementing a pedestrian tunnel through the Canadian Pacific (CP) Railway corridor," he said.

The implementation of the traffic signal, added De Leebeek, was the short-term alternative, wasn't preferred by the stakeholders.

He referred to the detail design that was part of a recommended plan brought forward after the completion of an environmental assessment. The design shares the details for a three-metre multi-use trail to be build behind the existing south abutment at the CP Rail crossing.  

Liggett said she was happy to hear the use of the stop lights would be discontinued.

"I like the fact that there's a separate underpass for pedestrians and cyclists," she added.