Hammonds Plains road widening a go

A section of Hammonds Plains Road is about to get a little bit wider.
City council last night approved a $2 million tender for Brycon Construction Ltd. to go ahead with widening the road to four lanes between Highway 102 to Innovation Drive.
The widening is an attempt to ease traffic going to the Bedford-based Research in Motion office.
People living on the road were originally against the idea when they thought their land would be expropriated for the widening.
But council assured residents last September the city would complete the project without cutting into their yards.
After the tender was approved last night, Mayor Peter Kelly said there are still some residents concerned about the plan.
“Twenty-one of the 26 property owners have signed off on the overall process, so we’re still dealing with five property owners,” he said.
“We’ve spoken to them and it appears that most of them will be able to sign off once we clarify a few other components for them.”
Research in Motion purchased about 19 hectares of land from the city in June of 2006 and as a condition of the agreement of purchase, HRM agreed to complete improvements to Hammonds Plains Road by no later than Dec. 1, 2008.
The work is expected to begin in about three weeks and will take over five months to complete.
Improvements include bicycle lanes and sidewalks on both sides of the road.
–robyn.young@metronews.ca