This summer, if you are in Yorkton, you are going to be inconvenienced by construction. This is especially true for me, as my standard routes to find food and toiletries have been blocked by big construction projects and roads that have been completely dug up. It is somewhat inconvenient, and it’s tempting to get irate at the sheer amount of construction I am confronted with on a daily basis. I will, as a result, use this column to tell everyone else the things I tell myself when I have to take a complicated path just to buy myself the ingredients for dinner.
One, it needed to be done. The streets that are currently no longer streets were often rough, they often required creative paths to get to the place you needed to be. They had underlying infrastructure that was going to either burst or implode, and they were not able to sustain the traffic that frequently used those streets. Every street being dug up right now is a street that was under heavy use, which we know because all of them are near businesses and commercial development. It might have been nice if we didn’t have Dracup and Mayhew simultaneously under the backhoe, especially for me since I live on the north end of the city, but Mayhew was a workout for a car’s suspension and turning off Dracup onto Smith tended to result in me double checking to see that I didn’t crack a wheel. They were not going to get better if they didn’t get pretty thoroughly redone.
I’ll also give credit to the city for actually giving clear instructions for motorists who might want to use the different businesses which are on the torn up streets. It’s not a perfect system by any means, it often requires going down alleys or making unorthodox turns, but at least they’re all well marked and easy to understand. I know that it’s still not a great time for any of the businesses affected, anything that might prevent a customer from coming into your store is something you very much do not want, but at least they’re trying to account for this and are giving a clear indication of where people need to go in order to access the goods and services on offer. The giant signs are quite handy at least, and might even be a good reminder that these businesses exist and are still ready to serve, even if the road to get there is torn up.
Besides, honestly, it could be worse. My mother lives in a very small town and the curve where her house lives has been torn up and down several times in the past year, without that clear indication of the best way to even get to her house, which is kind of a problem when you’re trying to reach an elderly woman who can’t exactly walk down the block. Even in terms of Yorkton itself the city is getting a bit better at actually communicating when and where they are doing things and what exactly they are doing. I remember a few years ago where my street was torn up to replace a water main, and I didn’t know until I narrowly avoided having my car trapped in my driveway by leaving the house at the right time. This go around there seemed to be much better communication around exactly what was going on – at a bare minimum, I knew there was a construction project starting before it happened, which is a big improvement and should be applauded. We might not like the construction, but I do like that communication has been significantly improved. The city has learned from some of its mistakes in my eyes, and I appreciate that.
The project isn’t perfect, this will see millions of dollars spent, but if it has to be done in order to avoid spending a much larger number of millions – not to mention the damage to vehicles caused by unmaintained roadways – it’s something that I can get behind in theory. I hope it finishes on schedule, though the scale of the work and a past littered with other overdue construction makes me suspect it’ll go over. But if it’s necessary, and this construction means it’ll be a very long time before it has to happen again, I’m all for the construction actually happening now. This is what I tell myself in order to stop swearing at things every time I have to take a circuitous route to get the essentials of life. Even if I’m not entirely sure I agree with myself some days, especially days on which I’m significantly inconvenienced, I am going to stay aggressively positive in order to maintain sanity.
In theory, this is going to mean that once these streets are done we are going to have much nicer, happier roads that don’t illustrate every flaw in our cars’ suspension design. That’s something I think is going to be quite nice for all of us, so I’m all for it. That we have to wait a few months to actually see this happen is not really comforting, whether you’re a commuter like myself or a business owner who would prefer it if their customers had an easier time actually accessing their business, but at least there is a light at the end of the tunnel, one that isn’t completely blocked by construction equipment.
