Moncton plans to rebuild St. George Street, add bike lanes, cut on-street parking

The first step in a major multi-year plan to rebuild Moncton’s St. George Street starts next year, but on a street in the city’s west end. “We do have a lot of years before we can even get to St.

George and start the reconstruction itself,” René Lagacé, Moncton’s director of engineering, told councillors at a committee meeting Monday about how work would start with underground pipes farther from St. George. The reconstruction is planned for the downtown street that runs about two kilometres from Vaughan Harvey Boulevard to King Street.

It involves separating storm water from the sewer system, adding bike lanes, changes at several intersections and the loss of about 75 on-street parking spaces. Council voted in favour of the proposal outlined Monday. The vote will see the city begin to consult businesses along the street through downtown.

“Of course we realize this would have a great impact on the businesses along St. George and potentially some of the side streets,” Lagacé said. The vote calls for staff to look at whether more on-street parking could be added on side streets.

Patrick Richard, executive director of Downtown Moncton Centre-ville Inc. , says businesses are concerned about how years of construction work along St. George Street will impact them.

(Shane Magee/CBC) Patrick Richard, executive director of Downtown Moncton Centre-ville, said the St. George work is overdue. “St.

George for years has probably needed a bit of a facelift,” Richard said. “The business owners are concerned, of course, anytime you want to do major infrastructure projects in front of their livelihood. It’s definitely reason to be concerned.

” Richard said measures to address those concerns and regular communication will be important. Monday’s vote will see detailed design work start, which could result in changes to what was outlined Monday. Lagacé said each phase will likely be a multi-million dollar project.

The overall cost will depend on the design and whether the city opts to bury overhead utilities like power and communication lines. The city plans several phases for the St. George Street work, starting with storm water pipes in 2024 near Jones Lake and in 2025 along Main Street.

(City of Moncton) The first phase next year will be near Jones Lake, where the city will install a storm water outfall. Across most of the older portions of the city, rainfall collected by catch basins flows into sewer lines and on to the TransAqua sewage treatment plant in Riverview. Lagacé said heavy rainfall can result in releasing untreated wastewater into the Petitcodiac River so sewers don’t back up.

Newer neighbourhoods are built with a separate pipes to send storm water into nearby waterways instead of the sewer. The St. George Street work includes adding storm water pipes.

Lagacé said they will start with the portions closest to the waterways for the system that relies on gravity to drain. The 2025 phase will see another outflow and piping installed near the Chateau Moncton hotel on Main Street. The city only expects to start working on St.

George Street itself in 2026. Lagacé said the municipal budget will determine if they do more than one phase per year. Moncton delays plan to overhaul St.

George Street The plan to rebuild St. George Street was originally outlined in 2018, but work was paused as the city developed its active transportation plan. That plan approved last year calls for physically separated bike lanes along St.

George Street. Such lanes are proposed in the plan outlined Monday between Vaughan Harvey and Church Street. However, council was told the narrow right-of-way between Church and King streets means a sidewalk on one side of the street would be replaced with a wider multi-use path.

Coun. Daniel Bourgeois questioned why not the entire length of the street can’t have separated bike lanes, saying cities in Europe accommodate traffic and cycling lanes. Other proposed changes include new marked pedestrian crossings near Dominion and Robinson streets, and new traffic lights at the Church Street intersection where multiple crashes have been reported.

The plans call for separated bike lanes along St. George Street from Vaughan Harvey Boulevard to Church Street, where it would become a multi-use path on one side of the road. (City of Moncton/EXP) The plans would slash on-street parking from 134 spaces to 59.

“I personally think the loss of parking will be one of the major challenges of this project,” Lagacé told council. Several council members said they supported the plans to make the street safer. “It’s very exciting,” Moncton Mayor Dawn Arnold said of the plans.

“It’s really awesome to see the incorporation of active transportation. … And of course, anything that we do, we want to make sure that we mitigate the impact it has on our businesses there too. “.