The Ministry of Public Works and Baha Mix are working diligently to reconstruct Farrington Road.
The road project, which begins at the six-legged round-about and ends at Boyd Road, started on March 5th.
Director of Public Works, Melanie Roach, said the project would take about 10 week days before completion.
She explained the process of getting the road to its proper state.
“In order to prepare the old surface to receive new asphalt, we go through a process called milling where the top inch and half is scraped off, which creates a rough surface that will then allow a new layer of asphalt to be laid and bond with the old surface.”
“The mill material is taken away and stored and can then be used for various purposes, such as a fill for holes, trenches, or to surface walking tracks on parks.”
According to Roach, the cost of repairing the road is approximately $730,000. However, $10 million per year is allocated to road work.
“What we look to do is to spend at least 10 million dollars a year on road work, and so we just keep going until that 10 million is exhausted, sometimes we ask for more,” she said.
When asked, why the road work had to completed in the day rather than at night, Roach said that working at night is extremely expensive.
“We try to be as careful with the government’s money as we possibly can, because the extra money we would spend to do over time work, we can use that to pave another road,” she said.
General Manager of BahaMix, Ryan Rahming, further explained why it was best to complete the project during the day.
“Ideally it would be perfect to deal with this sort of work at night when it’s off peak times, but one of the things we have to keep in mind is paving, the lighting situation is different at night, illumination tends to put different shades on the ground at night and you want to be able to see perfectly when laying asphalt so we can maintain levels.”
Next on the ministry’s agenda for repairing, are the areas of Culbert’s Hill, Sea Breeze, Lynden Pindling Estates and Palmdale, once utility companies – BEC and Water and Sewerage give the clear.
The Farrington Road project is expected to be completed by Friday March 16, weather permitting.
Until then, The Ministry of Public Works advised that road users avoid using Farrington Road between the hours of 9am and 2pm.
