I want to keep my eyes open for one report to Prince George city council in a few months.
That will be the annual report describing how much work was done on local streets and sidewalks over the past year, especially repaving of streets.
There has been a lot of it over the last few months, all over the city (or at least those parts I travel in). Most of the time, the city lets people know in advance what streets will be closed, between what dates and whether or not a detour will be needed.
Knowing this, I can take advantage of one of the nice things I have found out about driving in Prince George. It seems like if you need to get from Point A to Point B in the city, there are usually about a half-dozen ways to do it.
So, if your usual route is closed for a couple of days for repaving or water-main replacement (OK, usually more than a couple of days for water-main work), you can almost always find a different way to get there. Sometimes it’s a little bit longer, but you just adjust your schedule to accommodate that and everything is good.
I have, on a few occasions, actually found the second route to be better than my original one. Sometimes it’s because it takes me through a nice-looking area I don’t normally see; other times, it’s a less-travelled route which actually makes it faster to get from Point A to Point B.
As I said earlier, I really appreciate the signs the city puts up to let you know what streets they will be working on at a particular time and what that means for traffic.
However, there is one set of signs that has me wondering. In early July, the city put up some signs downtown indicating that Third Avenue between Vancouver and Victoria Streets would be closed from mid-July to September for roadwork.
As I write this column, it is July 28, and there is no sign of any work being started in that area. To my way of thinking, July 28 is definitely not ‘mid-July’, which also has me wondering how close the ‘September’ completion date will be to reality as well. Of course, just saying it will be completed by September gives a fair bit of leeway.
I guess we’ll find out, and then it will be added to the already extensive list of roads worked on this year by city crews.