Saint John Courtenay Bay Causeway to be raised 2 metres

The Saint John Causeway will be raised by two metres.

In their final common council meeting before the May 11 municipal election, Saint John City Council has approved a funding plan to see the Courtenay Bay Causeway raised around two metres.

Councillors unanimously passed the motion that will see 40 per cent of the costs covered by the federal government as part of the Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund. The total project is expected to cost $19.2 million.

It will bring the causeway to a final elevation of 7.15 metres Canadian Geodetic Vertical Datum, which is a measurement system that defines how elevations are measured in Canada by approximating sea level.

The funding was approved by Ottawa in 2022, when council at the time was looking at installing a pumping station as part of raising the causeway. The idea was scrapped following further review due to higher-than-expected costs.

At-large Councillor Gary Sullivan, who presented the motion at Monday’s council meeting on behalf of the city’s finance committee to accept funding agreement, pointed out how raising the causeway can’t be done by just going “straight up.”

“The engineers tell me that in order to build the causeway up, it needs to be tapered,” says Sullivan. “So, the top won’t have four lanes of access anymore, it’ll have about three lanes of access.”

That will mean traffic on the causeway will be reduced from two lanes of traffic going either direction to just one. Another smaller lane will be constructed to promote active transportation like biking between the uptown and east side of the city.

Sullivan says the project has been on council’s list for a number of years. CTV reached out to multiple engineering firms in Saint John to learn how a project like this would be done, but many declined to comment or have yet to respond.

Since the news of the causeway being raised, Sullivan says he has heard from some residents who aren’t the biggest fans of seeing another road reduced in lanes. He points out how when the city was built in the early 1970s, the plan was for 200,000 people to be living within the municipality.

He says present day, the city has about 78,000 residents.

“A lot of Saint John was overbuilt,” he says. “If you have [roads] overbuilt, it turns those big roadways into speedways and they’re dangerous.”

Sullivan says all the engineers that have been tasked with looking into the feasibility of the project in recent years have given no indication of traffic uses as a result of the reduced lanes.

The councillor also points out with less lanes of traffic, it is both easier and cheaper to maintain the quality.

“Because it’s going to be rebuilt, it’s going to start from the highest quality in standard right away,” Sullivan points out. “So, it’ll be much easier to maintain.”

As to how the city goes about raising the causeway, UNB Civil Engineering Professor Othman Nasir says the increase will be done in stages.

He says the first thing that will have to be done is a geo-technical investigation of the area to learn more about what type of backfill will be needed in the area for the best support. He says the investigation also shows what is beneath the existing road, and how much additional load it can support.

“Not more than 30 cm per layer depending, of course, on the type of compaction machine you have,” says Nasir when asked how quickly you raise a road this way. “We’re talking about six to seven layers of engineered backfill until you reach the final layers of backfill and the asphalt layer.”

He says the location of the site should make the work fairly simple with no significant infrastructure on either side of the causeway.

More planning is expected to happen over the next two years, with construction slated to happen in 2028. Sullivan says it’s too early to know how traffic will be impacted during construction, but he is hopeful to only have to close one side of the causeway at a time during work to keep traffic flowing smoothly between the uptown and east side.

CTV spoke with a number of residents Friday to get their thoughts on the causeway raising, which drew mixed reactions.

One resident told CTV it’s a project that needs to be done, citing the causeways rough shape in recent years.

“It’s below water level as you can see, the breakwater is right there,” one person said while looking out at the causeway. “It’ll be worth it when it’s done.”

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