By Curtis Galbraith

Traffic lights coming for main entrance to Evergreen Park

Apr 18, 2018 | 5:30 AM

Traffic lights will soon be installed at the main entrance to Evergreen Park.
 
County of Grande Prairie Council approved a tender of worth $1,194,252.90 from Knelson Sand & Gravel Ltd. at Monday’s meeting.
 
Director of Public Works Dale VanVolkingburgh says this should help with moving day-to-day traffic.
 
“The Weyerhaeuser traffic, all of the industrial traffic in that area (coming) into Grande Prairie. As for the event circumstance, it maybe won’t accommodate all event traffic, but it’ll assist in making the intersection safe.”
 
He adds County officials will work with event staff to ensure safety.
 
“It’s very hard to design an intersection that has (a) flash flood of traffic just on event circumstances and the rest of the year, it’s not required to accommodate that volume of traffic, so (we’re) trying to find a balance between the two (circumstances).”
 
VanVolkingburgh says construction will not start until after Stompede.
 
“We have to work with the contractor to find out what his schedule is, but in the contract, we had stated that they couldn’t have any road closures or road obstructions during Stompede because (there are) large traffic volumes moving in that area at that time.” 
 
Besides lights, there will also be concrete lane separators added and some road expansion to allow for northbound traffic turning right into Evergreen Park.
 
The total project cost, construction, engineering and contingency money included, came in at $1,499,518.19. That is $500,481.81 under budget.