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City road work ongoing

With Riverboat Days in Terrace quickly approaching, road crews will be working to finish the downtown.
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City workers are installing drainage on Apsley St.

With Riverboat Days fast approaching, Terrace's roads foreman says road painting and downtown cleanup is a top priority for the city.

It's full steam,” said Henry Craveiro. “There's no rest here right now.”

There is still some roadwork left to do in Terrace's downtown core, which earlier this month saw some roads stripped of a top layer of asphalt before paving machines laid on a fresh top-coat.

The city is awaiting a paving machine from Terrace Paving to arrive in order to patch an area by the entrance to Shoppers Drug Mart on Lakelse Ave.

I was told tomorrow I was going to see them,” said Craveiro of the paving company, adding that painting in the downtown area is also slated to be finished before the week's end.

The downtown should be painted before Riverboat Days,” he said.

That work will mark the finishing touches on the downtown-core area, where road work happened at night time July 6 and 7 after a milling machine arrived from Salmon Arm to start the job.

That machine worked to strip a top-layer of asphalt off of Lakelse from Eby St. to Emerson St., Sparks St. from Lazelle Ave. to Lakelse Ave. and Kalum St. from Lakelse Ave. to Park Ave.

Afterwards, a fibreglass-like grid was laid on the roads before Terrace Paving arrived July 21st to lay fresh asphalt overtop.

Paving took four days,” said Craveiro, adding pavers worked through the nights of July 12, 22 and 23.

Then Terrace Paving ran out of oil,” he said, which is why on July 25th Sparks St. was paved during the day.

Craveiro said the biggest challenge this summer was organizing different work crews and machines that had commitments elsewhere, too.

Logistically it's been a challenge,” said Craveiro.

We piggybacked with a milling machine from Kitimat,” he said. “The paving machines, we piggybacked with Rupert.”

But luckily, he added, the weather seemed to favour everyone's schedules.

Weather has been fantastic for this, that's the one variable we can't control,” he said. “You can't pave over asphalt in the rain.”

But the downtown core is far from the end of the city's road to-do list this season.

Still left is paving on Apsley St. and eastern blocks of Greig Ave., which are currently closed as city crews are doing drainage work there.

We get that ready for re-pavement and then we move over to Scott Ave.,” he said, adding there is still some patching at the end of driveways left to do too.

One block of Scott Ave. is slated for a full road rebuild before the end of the summer, and regular patch-work maintenance is also on the list.

I'm expecting mid-August ... once things start settling down a little bit that they'll come in and do patching,” said Craveiro.