Surrey council approved a contract of roughly $10.5 million for United Earth Contractors Corp. to improve 80 Avenue between 132 Street and King George Boulevard in Newton.
The contract is for $10,554,766.68 with a spending limit set at $11,600,000.
Scott Neuman, Surrey’s general manager of engineering, stated in a corporate report before council on May 6 that this represents the final phase of a “multi-phased program for congestion relief and goods movement in Newton and providing multimodal infrastructure on 80 Avenue from 120 Street to King George Boulevard.”
The scope of the work consists of widening that stretch of 80 Avenue from 132 Street to King George Boulevard to four lanes from two and building-in pedestrian and cycling infrastructure “to support growth and increased traffic volumes along this major road network (“MRN”) truck route.”
Besides the arterial widening, a new traffic signal is to be installed at 134 Street and 80 Avenue and 440 metres of 750-millimetre-diameter storm sewer is to be installed along 80 Avenue from 134 Street to King George. Construction will be from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday to Friday beginning this month, with completion expected by December 2025 “dependent on weather.”
READ ALSO: Surrey council awards $10M contract to improve 80 Avenue in Newton
In December 2022 council voted to award a contract of more than $10 million to B&B Heavy Civil Construction Ltd. for widening 80 Avenue in Newton from Scott Road to 128 Street.
That contract was for $10,174,600 with an authorized spending limit of $11,192,000.
Neuman stated in a corporate report in 2022 that the aim was to relieve traffic congestion in Newton.
Coun. Harry Bains noted that continuing this construction from 132 Street to King George “will effectively make that a four-lane road all the way through. It will assist with a lot of the traffic in that 80th/132nd/80th/128th area. I understand this to be a major road that will allow a lot of that traffic that would otherwise go north and south across 128 and 132 to exit onto King George Boulevard at 80 Avenue without causing major traffic, so I’m very excited for this.”
Coun. Doug Elford echoed Bains. “Any improvement to east-west inter-connectivity particularly in Surrey is vastly and desperately needed and I know that staff have identified this in the past so I’m really happy to see this moving forward because, again, it’s desperately needed in this community.”
Coun. Mandeep Nagra told council 76 Avenue should be “next on the list” for improvement. “It’s always packed,” he said, “every day, I mean any time of the day it’s busy, so maybe moving forward that’s something we need to look at.”
Mayor Brenda Locke noted it’s a “pretty large project for the City of Surrey to do. I’m also, as others, very excited about it.”