No, my blog isn’t under construction, although people have told me it’s a piece of work. Our street has been enjoying periodic construction throughout the summer and fall.

First they did the water pipes. They replaced all the old pipes up to the City shut-off in the middle of our lawns. We were able to arrange for the same outfit to torpedo new pipes into the house at the same time, and I’m glad to have that work done. The crew did a nice job all around. It created a messy situation on the street for a while but they cleaned up well, and they even sodded my lawn. Where they had broken through cement sidewalks or pavement they simply patched it.

Some time later, a crew came to redo those sidewalks that were patched, taking the patch off and cementing them properly.
Next a crew showed up with some heavy equipment that ripped a few inches of paving off our street, leaving the manholes and sewers to stick up and turning the road into a bit of an obstacle course. It only took a day or two for this phase, after which they did nothing for weeks. Finally, the guys came along and did the first level paving. This looked close to being a finished job. It just needed an inch or two more on the surface. They left this for a couple weeks, but it was pretty good all around. I thought, great, a day or two more paving and they’ll be done with our street.

Nope. A new crew showed up and and removed a 4 foot wide trench on our side of the street, new paving and all. They were replacing all the curbs all the way down our street. It’s amazing how quickly they can dig a trench and pour all the curbs. Then they put a paving patch between the curbs and the road.

It turned out this was only part of the job. The yellow front-end loader in the photo is ripping our sidewalks out, all the way down the street, including the sidewalks they poured this year. The configuration of our sidewalks in the past has been curb then two feet of grass then a standard sidewalk. The City has decided to replace that with extra wide sidewalks going right to the curb.

I like the wide sidewalks and the new curbs. It refreshes the street and it will look good for sure. I’m just surprised they did it, given we just had a municipal election that turned on fiscal restraint. I’m also surprised that they went to the trouble of taking patches off sidewalks and re-cementing them, only to replace them again just a couple months later. It seems strange too that they did first level paving then cut a chunk of that away for the curbing and sidewalk job. Why not do the curbs and the sidewalks first, and pave later? I wonder if there are multiple departments involved who don’t talk to one another? Who knows.

They should be finished with the sidewalks in a few days and then it looks like they’re going to recurb the other side of the street, and then there’s paving and then, hopefully it will all be done before the arrival of snow.