If Riverside Dr. E between Lauzon Rd. and Riverdale is part of your daily commute, you will have to change things up as of Monday morning.
That section of the road is expected to be closed until at least the end of the year for the next phase of the Riverside Drive Vista Improvement Project.
"Once we start digging, we'll find out hopefully fairly soon whether the [soil] conditions are better or worse than we expect. That would be one of the main drivers on schedule," says City Engineer Mark Winterton. "The other, of course, is the weather. We're already on a fairly aggressive schedule, so if the winter comes early, we'll definitely slide into next year."
Winterton says while new bike lanes and sidewalks are put in, traffic will be diverted onto Wyandotte St. E.
"One of the things that we're going to be looking at is the signal timings. We'll adjust for any of the lights so there will be more right turns, left turns at the two corners where we are detouring traffic," he says, noting that the first couple weeks of any major construction project are usually the most painful until the change becomes routine.
Riverside Dr. will be rebuilt with features intended to slow traffic, new curbs and gutters will be installed along with storm and sanitary sewers.
"The project is fairly significant for us. The contract is about $6.3-million," says Winterton. "Full relocation of utilities, new sewers and water mains, a rebuild of the road which include barrier curbs as opposed to the existing mountable curb and a new bike lane."
Phase one, stage one of the project finished up in the fall of 2017. Traffic slowing measures were installed from Riverdale to just east of Solidarity Towers.
The next phase is expected to start in two years and will stretch from Lauzon Rd. to Ford Blvd.
Eventually, the Vista Project will transform Riverside from the border Windsor shares with the Town of Tecumseh to the Ambassador Bridge.
-With files from Paul Pedro