Saskatchewan Drive in Melfort is being paved from the railway tracks north of the Canalta Hotel to the Highway 41A intersection on the west side. (Mat Barrett/northeastNOW Staff)

By Mat Barrett

Sask Drive Paving

Paving project on Melfort’s Saskatchewan Drive entering last leg

Aug 29, 2019 | 2:01 PM

Drivers travelling along Saskatchewan Drive in Melfort can soon expect a smooth ride.

Throughout the summer, the City of Melfort and their contractors have been working on preparing Saskatchewan Drive to be repaved. Now it’s finally ready. So far, sidewalks along the road have been replaced, water and sewer lines have also been replaced, as well as gutters and curbs being fixed or replaced.

According to Melfort’s Director of Development, Planning and Community Relations Brent Lutz, the contractor for the paving is expected to show up “late next week.” At that point, things will get going.

“The first part of the process will be milling the existing pavement where they remove a portion of that pavement before they apply the new pavement,” Lutz told northeastNOW. “That way they can kind of reshape the street so that it maintains the proper crown and drains properly.”

Lutz added that the timeline for the paving portion is only slated for a few weeks, meaning by the end of September, things should be wrapped up. Meanwhile, during the paving, Lutz said they don’t expect a ton of disruptions when it comes to traffic on Saskatchewan Drive.

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“Through traffic will be able to travel along Saskatchewan Drive,” he said. “And we will have the streets that intersect on to Saskatchewan Drive, they will be open and only will have to be closed if there is work being done in the immediate vicinity of that access approach.”

According to Lutz, the contractor will work on one side of the road at a time, leaving two-lane traffic on the opposite side of the street.

The Saskatchewan Drive repaving has been on the minds of the City for a while now, since they entered the agreement with the Saskatchewan Urban Highway Connector Program ten years ago. Lutz said they are happy to finally be able to see this come to fruition.

“We’ve gotten a little used to how the street is there,” Lutz said. “So I think we’ll all be a little surprised what a nice new paved street is going to be like as you drive through the city here.”

The City of Melfort and the province is to share the cost of the project that extends from the Highway 41A intersection on the west side of the street all the way to the railway tracks on the east side, just north of the Canalta Hotel.

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mat.barrett@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @matbarrett6