The City of Prince Rupert is dealing with a couple of Construction projects at the moment and while the replacing of their long outdated water and sewage distribution systems has understandably taken up much most of the attention and headlines, another major bit of work that is set to come to fruition before long is the creation of a Roundabout in the middle of the intersection at 2nd Avenue and McBride Street on Highway 16.
But as it turns out, not quite everyone in the area is on board with this particular project and Prince Rupert’s Mayor, Herb Pond, spoke about why that might be the case in addition to highlighting some benefits from the project that people wouldn’t expect to get from it on the surface.
“People are obviously of divided minds, both about the Roundabout itself, y’know some people think they’re great and some people don’t like them at all and that’s fine, there’s also some misunderstanding around y’know why when water and pipes and all those things have been such a high priority for the City, people think why would the City spend that kind of money on a Roundabout and the reality is the City’s not spending any money on a Roundabout but the process of doing the Roundabout is actually giving us about $8 Million worth of water pipes work, when they do the Roundabout, they have to dig down and do the pipes that lie underneath and those are very deep pipes, very very expensive to reach and so one of the bonuses for the people of Prince Rupert, whether you like a Roundabout or not, is that the Provincial taxpayers, so shared amongst 5 Million people instead of 12 Thousand people, is gonna be $8 Million worth of work there that advances the water project”
Pond also expressed his belief that the Roundabout will be a great addition to the area although the actual construction of the Roundabout will be handled by the Department of Highways.
The Mayor then went onto list some other good things that should come out of the creation of this project.
“It’s going to create a real sense of central focus, whether you’re coming down McBride, whether you’re coming up from the waterfront, whether you’re coming down 2nd Avenue, we have the potential to do a really amazing piece of art in the middle of that, it’ll give a better view of the courthouse and it will absolutely improve pedestrian safety, instead having to cross four lanes of traffic as you do today and there’s been a lot of near misses in that intersection, it will provide much better opportunity for pedestrians to make their way through that area”
While work on the project has officially began, it’s not that noticeable at the moment as it’s mostly of the surveying variety, but as for when it might be properly completed, the Province of BC has estimated that it should be finished by the Fall of 2026.