This won’t be much fun.
As of the end of the month, Monday, July 31, the city is shutting down the very busy Edinburgh Road bridge over the Speed River, south of Wellington Street. The Wellington/Edinburgh corridor is a vital one in the city, and Edinburgh provides north/south access to major shopping nods and residential neighbourhoods.
Working with Capital Paving, the city will close the bridge for three weeks while an overhaul is carried out. Concrete curbs and sidewalks will be removed and repaired. The bridge deck will be waterproofed, and the road surface repaved. The work is all on city property.
The city stresses in a press release that “absolutely no through traffic will be permitted” over the bridge. Local traffic will be maintained along Edinburgh Rd. S., and Water Street and McCrae Boulevard will form a pedestrian detour. There will be no pedestrian crossing over the Edinburgh bridge.
Drivers accustomed to turning south on Edinburgh at Wellington will have to take a fairly long detour. The detour route will follow Wellington to Gordon, then south on Gordon to Stone, west on Stone to Edinburgh, and north on Edinburgh.
Motorists are encouraged to follow the posted detour, as residential roads are not designated as detour routes, and using them for that purposes poses a safety hazard. Guelph Transit’s Route 8 will detour during the construction, and there will be no impact to city services like waste collection.
Any updates will be posted at guelph.ca/construction.
