Salt Spring’s “summer of road work” has stretched well into wintertime, and while hours-long traffic delays are a thing of the past, officials say crews remain busy at several projects across the island — both scheduled and otherwise.
While major work on Fulford-Ganges Road is at an end, according to Northridge Excavating Ltd. project manager Bob Mitchell, several small design flaws on Ganges Hill will need to be addressed — and his team was working with the Ministry of Transportation and Transit (MoTT) on solutions for Salt Spring’s busiest road.
“As everyone has noticed, there is a lot of water coming off the high side embankments and into the road,” said Mitchell in an update Friday, Nov. 28. “Some areas are easier to fix than others, but each needs to be addressed in various ways.”
Meanwhile, installation of permanent inlaid lane markings along the entire 1.6-kilometre project has been postponed until spring, when the pavement will be drier and a “superior product” can be provided. Mitchell said the temporary centre and fog lines will likely fade a little over the winter, but crews will return for one or two days of work to lay permanent lines, as warming weather permits.
Work on Alders Avenue will also continue for several weeks, Mitchell said, so road users can expect heavy truck activity at that intersection to continue.
Gaetz said emergency work launched there after a foreman discovered woody debris hung up in the culvert during a routine inspection. The debris heightened the risk for “catastrophic” failure at the crossing, where the existing circular steel culvert was already at or over its life expectancy.
“That kind of failure would impact all of Duck Creek with silt,” said Gaetz, “never mind the potential road washout or property damage.”
So under emergency works provisions — and under direction of an on-site environmental biologist, Gaetz said — the outlet was quickly excavated, the compromised piece of pipe was removed and, with coconut matting up the bank to prevent silt from entering the stream, the water is now flowing with enough capacity at the crossing to handle this winter’s storms. Drivers should detour via Sunset Drive to Channel Ridge Drive, according to MoTT.
Provincial regulations require in-stream work to take place during a window that causes the least disruption to the waterway’s salmon population, usually in the driest parts of summer; that means the closure will continue until at least Sept. 1. In the meantime, Gaetz said, the culvert’s replacement will be designed and prepped for a higher flood mitigation standard.
“The new one will also be a more environmentally friendly design,” said Gaetz. “Probably ‘bottomless’ with river gravel in the bottom, so fish can have a nice habitat within the crossing as well.”
Elsewhere, Gaetz said the washout at Blackburn Road remained on a similarly deliberative timeframe, given there is also alternate routing there via Cranberry Road. The earth beneath Blackburn Road washed out during heavy rain last December, leading to its closure just above the transfer station.
“With that viable detour, the ministry there also wants to take the time to do it properly,” he said. “We want to make sure the fix we put in is going to be both robust and beneficial to the environment.”
Cusheon Creek
At Cusheon Creek well south of Ganges Hill, Fulford-Ganges Road won’t remain a single-lane alternating affair there through the winter, as the ministry said islanders can soon expect a short respite from our only traffic light.
Bridge work will soon pause for the winter with two-way traffic resuming and expected until April, at which point final paving on the new bridge will be completed and revegetation planting efforts will begin. That $4.1-million project will have replaced another aging culvert, again with a passage more resilient to severe weather. The November 2021 atmospheric river event sent water in the creek across the road, leaving it impassable.
Roland Road
And in the south end, also in response to the effects of that atmospheric river, a new $2-million culvert replacement and outfall stabilization project around Isabella Point Road is underway at multiple locations, according to the ministry.
Work at Roland Road, about five kilometres from Fulford, includes stream channel enhancements beneath the road surface and installation of energy dissipation structures downslope, according to tender documents, which estimated the project would last three months. An earlier post-flood project strengthening Isabella Point Road was completed in 2023.
“Salt Spring has an amazing amount of work going on right now,” said Gaetz. “I will say, out of all the areas that I am responsible for, I hear many more ‘thank-yous’ from people here than I do in any other. That’s a kudos to Salt Spring.”
For information and updates on the ministry’s projects on-island, visit gov.bc.ca/saltspringislandprojects.