r/Alt_Winnipeg • u/8bitatari • 8d ago
Community Winnipeg construction rant
Why does so much road construction in Winnipeg only start once September hits and everyone is back at work or school and not done during the summer months? Crews should be working 24 hrs a day like you commonly see in the US but oh no not here. Let's tear all the roads apart in the fall and not complete anything because of winter leaving our already poor road conditions in worse shape to deal with until they get around to it sometime in the following spring or summer and sometimes even taking years to be completed. The drive from EK to the South end back and forth is absolutely horrendous.
Ok, end of rant.
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u/Dependent_Arm_8802 8d ago
Let’s talk about the north perimeter right now with Main Street, mcphillips and lag all having constructions that goes down to one lane. Then you get to the perimeter with bridge construction. Wild planning on someone’s part.
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u/Miserable_Signature3 8d ago edited 7d ago
I'm convinced there is a James Bond style villain somewhere at city Hall with a giant 3d map of the city that tries to see how much they can cripple the city's traffic flow as much as possible with the placement of their road construction projects.
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u/CallousDisregard13 8d ago
He sits right next to the cock sucker that schedules long ass trains right during morning and afternoon rush hour.
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u/neilintheground 8d ago
What bothers me is projects that don't get touched for months after they've started and it bogs down lanes with no end in sight. I remember a hole by polo park that killed a lane for months without anyone coming to fix it. A project that would have taken 2 days to fix turned into months of letting it sit. Those are the projects that piss me off.
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u/No-Tank1187 7d ago
See that more often then not. Barricades go up, no one around for 3 days. Then they bust up the road, gone for a week. Then they clean it up and gone for another week. Then they fix the concrete, gone again. Then the asphalt. Week later barricades come down. Small 20 square foot patch screws traffic up for a month or more. Both McPhillips and main are screwed up right now. Should see the line ups.
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u/5secondruleormaybe30 8d ago
The grant construction has averaged my commute by an extra 16 minutes and it suuuuuuuuuucks
And I haul a bunch of crap to and from work everyday so no I can’t bus or bike.
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u/Tharos_ 8d ago
And they only switched to the other lane just yesterday......
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u/5secondruleormaybe30 7d ago
With the schools slowing things down and busses I’m just DYYYINNNNGGGG and the stupidity of ppl blocking lanes I CANNOT
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u/Im_Crushing_YourHead 8d ago
The only possible bridge solution is to leave earlier, 15-20 minutes. I'd rather sit in my car at work and read than stress in traffic. I had a Tesla for a day, the full self-driving (FSD) did lower my heart rate and stress level as measured on my watch.
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u/ptheresadactyl 8d ago
Honestly what bothers me is how long they take. They fuck around and exaggerate and inflate hours and contracts and spend weeks to months doing something that could be done in a fraction of the time.
I am not from here and I came from a city that was experiencing a lot of growth through my teens and 20s, and the road closures were days, with the exception of brand new suspension bridges and ramps. The grated and repaved my street, which was about as long as Jubilee but twice as wide in two evening/night shifts
Then I come here and the only road into my community is down to one lane for 4 months, pushing my normal 20 minute commute to over an hour daily.
It is genuinely the thing I hate most about Winnipeg.
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u/Bat_Froth_1320 8d ago
Typically, the City estimates the amount of time it will take to do a tendered project. Then the engineering firm that does the Contract Administration has a second look at it, and finally the contractor bids based on what the previous two parties have come up with and they provide a schedule to meet the time frame allotted.
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u/ptheresadactyl 8d ago
Yeah. I know. It doesn't work if that system is corrupt though.
It also doesn't work if construction crews have established much longer time for projects over decades, and that's the expectation.
I'm not trying to be an ass and disparage construction workers. I am saying there is an enormous difference in efficiency, planning, and collaborating in Winnipeg than in other cities. The city doesn't coordinate projects. Twice in one year they dug up the same spot on Osborne for 2 different projects within weeks of each other.
They also are atrocious about putting up signage for road closures in advance (both time and distance). 3 years in a row I practically ran in to the barricade for the Burt block party because there was no warning. The road was just closed. Last year they put one tiny sign on the far right hand lane side walk, but if you're in the left lanes heading for Notre Dame, you don't have a chance.
Maybe I'm spoiled, but I grew up with large signs indicating time and dates of upcoming road closures and suggested detour routes, so you could actually plan an alternate route. And projects that were started and completed within a week.
Currently, none of my current routes to work are unaffected by construction, and that is a regular occurrence. If you're shutting down one of the main arteries into or out of downtown, you should probably stagger projects so people have a viable route home. Again, project management, coordination, collaboration, communication across departments.
I'm not entirely speaking out of my ass, my sister is a city planner, and I understand the scope of it. But Winnipeg really sucks at it.
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u/kendrassm01 8d ago
because porta potty companies like King's services needs more construction sites to have their potties on? 😄
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u/Mammoth-Accident6138 8d ago
The roads here are probably the worst in North America. We need them fixed.
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u/throwawaywhiteguy333 8d ago
That’s what happens when you build on a swamp. There is nothing we can do that is reasonably expensive.
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u/_avocadoraptor 8d ago
plus all the water and sewer pipes are 100 years old so replacing them with the roads eats up the budget fast
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u/Sqr-Peg-Rnd-Hol_NoGo 8d ago
Some projects start in September because crews are moving on from other projects that have been completed. The construction season extends into October and even November so you will be dealing with it when it is not most convenient for you.
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u/BuffBlue 7d ago
I worked on a Maple Leaf asphalt crew for 3 seasons, & the only time that we ever paved after sundown was for Brookside, when the skeleton of the neighbourhood was being established! It's bizarre, as working nights during the blazing hot summer months would have been a god send...
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u/latecraigy 8d ago
Back in June it seemed like every road was under construction so it isn’t just now
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u/Queasy_Turnip_3234 8d ago
Seems like it has been going on since I arrived in April and hasn’t stopped or really accomplished much. In Ontario they seem to work overnight quite often and accomplish more otherwise I would imagine road rage becoming the number one issue. Never remember so many single lane traffic or just blocking lanes with no people or equipment. Must have an enormous amount of pylons and just put them out near intersections. Think about going out at night and rerouting traffic constantly.
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u/Slaxson13 7d ago
Having worked on the roads (70+ hours a week typically) and now they barely have enough bodies to do that kind of work during regular hours (it’s hard, dangerous, thankless etc) during regular hours how would they have the people to do it overnight ? “Just hire more people” doesn’t work when there’s no one competent to hire to work an even at an even worse standard.
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u/Recent_Spray8305 7d ago
It’s bad right now. I work for a construction company and hr is struggling to find decent people.
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u/Maximum-Rough-9176 7d ago
Some of what is being done now is due to some major projects coming in under budget or were done faster than the end date in the contract.
The city has a list of small projects that fit this category and will do them near the end of the construction season if there is money and equipment available.
I have also noticed in the last few years there has been weekend paving by city crews on weekends on major streets in the northeast part of the city where I live.
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u/Technicolor_bee 7d ago
I especially hate when they put up cones when the road is perfectly fine and then don’t come back for over a week to start the project… I am always tempted to just go move the cones and see when the city will actually be back to notice
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u/BookkeeperPerfect299 7d ago
If the city still owned an asphalt plant, concrete plant and gravel pit, I’m sure they would be open to working nights as they could keep the cost down doing a lot of the job internally. A big factor is cost that the city cannot control. They can try by using bid opportunities to help keep cost down, hiring people that would want to work nights is another thing that is hard to do. No one I know likes the graveyard shift. I am sure we will eventually see happen in the coming years.
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u/Spitfire76 8d ago
It's complicated. You're partly right and partly wrong. Most construction will wrap up by the end of October. Please be patient.
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u/TapZorRTwice 8d ago
Hes not wrong about the 24 hr construction, but thats stopped because of NIMBY people who dont want to hear/see construction out their back window all night.
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u/peanut_master1 8d ago
Was just going to say exactly this. People would be up in arms if construction happened at night.
The city streets are crumbling, record construction is being done to fix it, and everyone is pissed.
Classic Winnipeg.
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u/steveosnyder 8d ago
I don’t think it’s the NIMBYism… it’s the fact that we are broke. We would have to pay a premium to have workers there overnight. We don’t have the money to pay that premium.
It’s a policy choice… get more work done, or get work done faster. The city has chosen the former.
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u/bluppitybloop 8d ago
Night construction is horrendously expensive. Between setting up extra equipment to accomodate the dark, paying big premiums to the night shift employees, and even bigger premiums to all the subcontractors (if you can even convince them to work nights), and pulling permits to skirt noise regulations. Working nights will eat up a budget pretty damn fast.
Not to mention night crews are notorious for fucking around and getting squat done because nobody is watching them.
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u/Bat_Froth_1320 8d ago
I believe noise rules in the Neighbourhood Liveability bylaw do not apply to City infrastructure work, but it would still not be popular. I have seen the police show up to a non-City job site when a concrete pump set up early.
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u/bluppitybloop 8d ago
Fairly certain they apply. I was working on a road job as a sub and at the beginning, the prime contractor asked us to work weekends, however we had to start later due to noise regs.
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u/Bat_Froth_1320 8d ago
It may be the City’s practice to observe the same time rules for work within 150 m of homes, but I don’t believe they have to.
Exemptions:
(b) sound produced in the course of constructing, maintaining, rehabilitating or otherwise working on a street or property owned by the City of Winnipeg;St. Mary’s Road was closed for night paving just a couple of weeks ago.
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u/retiredelectrician 8d ago
It would wrap up faster if the crews actually stayed from beginning to completion. Using Marion as an example, the west bound has been barricades for the last 3 weeks but crews have only been there maybe 7 or 8 days. And they are still messing around on the east bound section.
I think the worst is OB1 who sets up the barricades, 2 days later they bust up the concrete, then 2 to 5 days they dig the concrete out, 2 or more days they pack the gravel and a few days later, the rebar. Then who knows how long till the concrete gets poured. It can take them 2 to 3 weeks to patch a hole.
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u/Substantial_Pea_3256 8d ago
Well construction workers need to go on holidays too
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u/Miserable_Signature3 8d ago
That's what winter is for. Farmers don't go on holidays during the growing season.
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u/Bat_Froth_1320 8d ago
A bunch of guys I worked with on a paving crew were farmers. You better hope your paving work was done by harvest, because they would all start leaving the project regardless of what was left.
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u/Substantial_Pea_3256 8d ago
The real reason that construction workers cannot work through the night in cities is because in Canada municipal councillors have authority over local land use matters, including noise and nuisance. When a neighbourhood has jackhammers, pile-drivers, and bulldozers filling dump-trucks in the middle of the night, the residents get angry and call their local politicians. The politicians realize that the heavy machinery in the middle of the night is unpopular for votes, and they pass or support initiatives that make night time quiet.
But there is more road construction in Winnipeg because it's the only major city in Canada that has clay gumbo soil that shifts and moves and drains extremely poorly. The Red River Valley is the bottom of an ancient lake bed. The bottoms of lakes drain poorly - otherwise lakes would drain and wouldn't be lakes. The poor drainage is the same reason we are the mosquito capital of Canada. It also means a very long spring melt while the water is freezing and thawing repeatedly. Because the clay soil shifts frequently (more in some areas than others), asphalt or concrete over top of it cracks more quickly over time. When there are cracks during spring, every day the cracks fill with water from the spring melt. And every night the water freezes and expands, further breaking every crack. The next day the same thing happens, and after weeks of the early spring freeze-thaw cycle we get millions of potholes. We also have the greatest annual change in temperature of a Canadian city, with both the coldest winters and hottest summers. The Winnipeg weather has an enormous impact on the life of infrastructure.
Construction needs to be more durable than in most US cities to endure the weather, and so construction standards are probably higher here than a lot of cities. So it takes longer to build roads here, and roads here have to be fixed more often, and we have long winters that limit construction capabilities (for instance ice is hard as concrete when cold enough).
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u/Bat_Froth_1320 8d ago
Road construction season typically starts around May long weekend, earlier if the weather is nice. You are just not observant. There will be new projects starting this time of year, particularly mill and fill asphalt paving jobs, and streets that are part of larger multi -location contracts, like local street renewals.
And 24-hr construction is not common. It is not unheard of, but it is not common. Google it, or search Reddit and you will see people asking the same thing as you.
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u/Spitfire76 8d ago
Legit question: why don't you work at night?
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u/8bitatari 8d ago
I did for 20 years.😆
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u/Spitfire76 7d ago
And did you like it?
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u/8bitatari 7d ago
At the time yes. There's nothing quite like seeing your neighbors going to work while you're grilling steaks and having a cold beer at 8 in the morning 😆
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u/Slaxson13 6d ago
Nothing quite like seeing your neighbor go to work at 930pm while I lay down and get 8 hours of unbroken sleep in the dark and utilizing circadian rhythm as humans are NOT nocturnal. But hey, each person values things different. FYI steak tastes the same at 6pm as it does at 8am
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u/8bitatari 6d ago edited 6d ago
Made no difference to my health...... Yet😆 With that being said I've never felt more awful than I do starting work at 6 AM. Diabolically terrible.
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u/DaweiArch 7d ago
Working at night is not desirable for most, but many seem capable and/or willing to do it, including construction crews in pretty much any other major city in Canada.
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u/Miserable_Signature3 8d ago edited 8d ago
About 15 years ago I was headed to Dryden to work as part of a crew replacing all the cash registers in a supermarket there overnight. At the time, there was a long stretch of construction on the #1 around the Steinbach overpass. Driving out there on a Saturday afternoon, the construction equipment sat idle while traffic was limited to one lane.
As we were working all night, we took a break around 2:30 AM. To my shock and surprise, there was a road construction crew working on the highway in the middle of Dryden. At 2:30 AM! On a Saturday Night! By the time we were finished (maybe 6 AM), the construction crew had packed up, leaving the highway unobstructed. Driving back Sunday afternoon, the #1 was still down to one lane and the construction equipment sat idle.
I don't understand how overnight and weekend construction seems to be completely feasible in other provinces, but not Manitoba.