Two single lane roundabouts now open on Ottawa Street
Posted Aug 25, 2017 05:07:25 PM.
Last Updated Aug 27, 2017 08:40:29 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
After months of construction for the installation of two roundabouts on Ottawa Street, drivers are finally seeing some relief.
Starting Friday, new roundabouts on Ottawa and Homer Watson, and Ottawa and Alpine are open to a single lane of traffic.
However Marcus Kroker, head of transportation expansion with the Region, says traffic is still expected to be heavy through the area.
“There is full access, but there will be congestion because it is only a single-lane operation roundabout,” Kroker says. “There’s still a fair bit of construction that needs to occur, we just wanted to have the ability to have access at this point in time when we could.”
A Cambridge man told 570 NEWS he will probably still avoid Ottawa Street. “They have more pylons than concrete right now,” he says. “They have two of them right next to each other, so people will be driving figure eights. It makes no sense.”
Doris Papazotos, Manager of the Chicago Pub on Ottawa Street, says she’s excited the roundabouts are opening, but businesses were impacted during the closure. “A lot of our lunch regulars work on the other side of the Expressway, and they found it very difficult to get over here,” Papazotos says. “But our nighttime business didn’t really suffer too badly.”
Meantime, a Kitchener man tells us the new roundabouts have been a longtime coming. “I used to live on one side of town,” he says, “but I moved away right before the construction started, because I knew it would be havoc.”
Kroker says he hopes final touches of asphalt will be laid by mid-October.
Two-way traffic as well as pedestrian traffic is being maintained through the area.
