A brief update for the construction on Park Extension streets—as it stands right now & when will it all end?
As we’ve been reporting for the last few weeks, Park Extension is certainly in a state of borough-wide bouts of construction and at various intervals. But despite some sections moving forward, so many other sites seem to be popping up and staying for the proverbial long haul, as it were, creating serious blockages at rush hour and at other intervals throughout the day.
On the way in or out
On the way into Park Extension, construction has sure been obscuring the clear pathway, especially on Jean Talon Street. Of course, the work on Saint Denis Street hasn’t helped and that has certainly uncovered a whole other can of worms and sack of problems for the city and the citizens alike. Therefore, getting in or out of the borough has certainly been an uphill battle most days and for quite some time as it turns out.
Bike paths
A lot of this is due to the bike paths being set up around the city, especially on Saint Denis Street—a nightmare for locals—and with the city backpedaling (pardon the pun), now spending money to remove the bike paths they just laid out, returning streets back to two-way throughways all over the city, specifically in the East End, we wonder what the fate will be for other streets newly turned into one-way streets enabling more space for bikes.
The ratio in Park Extension is pretty interesting when comparing number of cyclists and the number of cars. As I was observing traffic over a pretty long period of time in the borough this past Monday during rush hour, the cars and trucks outnumbered the cyclists going through by at least 50 to 1. Now if you’re not a gambler, those aren’t very good odds (and that’s putting it mildly) specifically if you’re on the cycling side of things. So in the end, we certainly hope that there are no plans to make one-way streets in Park Extension to facilitate cycling in the area. Nothing against cycling … it’s just that it would obviously create more problems for traffic flow in the area, and we don’t need that … a sentiment felt by most.
Work at construction sites moving slowly because of Covid-19?
Of course, for so many months, this was certainly the case, or so it seemed to most, the pandemic having a direct result on all the work being done, but since the end of summer, many would have deduced that work would be resuming although with safety precautions set in place to protect against the spread of Covid-19. But many construction sites in Park Extension were lagging in terms of moving forward to completion.
Regardless, the work was getting done, slow and steady. And even in Park Extension and other places in the city, some sites were closed during the height of the pandemic, jobs not being able to be completed because of the constraints brought on by the pandemic. But of course, this isn’t exactly the overall case as it stands now, nor as it has stood over the last few months. Work has been moving forward. It’s just that there is certainly a lot of it in Park Ex right now.
As we previously reported …
A few weeks back, we reported on several of these spots around the borough, specifically the L’Acadie/Jean Talon intersection and even updated info on that site last week, but the sidewalk at that intersection has been filled in with concrete at press time. There are still barricades blocking access to the sidewalk there, but the area should be cleared up soon, state workers on-site.
The work needed to be done, as City Councilor Mary Deros told us in a statement a few weeks back, and she also said that work should have finished at certain areas in what would have been the following weeks, and that certainly was as it turned out at some intervals, but only the Querbes site seems to be lagging considerably as it stands now.
A massive stretch of construction on Querbes
It is on Querbes that the most amount of work seems to be under way, with a massive gash in the road, the work goes on for quite a few blocks and traffic has been considerably slowed down. No word yet on how long that project will last, and will it be affected by the new red alert status the city will be entering on Thursday? Nothing but questions for now, but we’ll stay on this and keep you posted, if not in the print version of the paper, then on the website, so check it out: http://px-news.com/
