Halifax residents near the MacKay Bridge are bracing for 24-hour-a-day construction this weekend as work to remove the “road to nowhere” steps up.
Things will start off gently enough for Feb. 20 to 23, said Jon Eppell, bridge engineer for the Halifax-Dartmouth Bridge Commission. “It’ll just be cranes lifting steal beams, generators for welding, and there might be a little bit of hammering.”
Next weekend, they’re cranking up the volume. “(Residents) can expect to hear concrete breaking, with excavators breaking away the concrete — that’s a ‘bang-bang-bang’ sound,” he said.
Eppell said the noise shouldn’t be any worse than what residents have been putting up with while the “K-ramp” comes down, except it will be around the clock. The Barrington Street entrance/exit ramps and the Windsor/Robie to Barrington ramp will be closed from 7 p.m. Friday until 5:30 a.m. Monday.
The two roads below the ramp are city-owned, and the city only gave the bridge commission permission to close the roads for two weekends.
“We have tried to be very sensitive to this and compress the schedule as much as we can to limit how many weekends, days and nights we’re going to be affecting people,” Eppell said.
He added the commission is trying to strike a balance between inconveniencing neighbours and causing problems for the motorists who use the bridge. “We’ll try to stay out of the way as much as possible.”
With snow on the way and freezing temperatures expected, it’s not going to be a fun weekend for the work crews, either. If weather shuts down operations, it will be bumped to the March 6 to 9 weekend.
