Construction crews are a couple of weeks away from finishing the project to demolish the Timmins overpass, says the city.
As of today, half of the historic concrete structure has been removed, with the west side of the overpass still intact.
Work on the project started three weeks ago. At that point, the City of Timmins says there were some staging conflicts due to road closures for the Empire Complex fire. That means crews are finishing up their second full week of work to cut up and demolish the structure.
The city expects there is one more week of demolition and one week of clean up for the overpass part of this year's Connecting Link work, which includes levelling out the road where the overpass is.
This year's main Connecting Link work is from Balsam to Brunette.
The Algonquin Boulevard road closure now starts at Balsam and extends to Brunette Road.
Crews are removing asphalt through the downtown section, but there is a pedestrian crossing at Pine Street.
The sidewalks on Algonquin will be open and safely blocked from the active construction area.
The construction work means detours for traffic.
The detour around the work is Brunette Road, Second Avenue and Mountjoy Street. The four-way stop intersections on Second Avenue at Balsam and Spruce are staying as is this year. There are also temporary stop lights that are flashing at Second and Brunette, which means it's working as a three-way stop.
For heavy truck traffic, the detour goes around the downtown core.
The route is Highway 655, Laforest Road, Airport Road, Lafleur and Shirley.
The other Connecting Link projects this year are on the bridges at Porcupine River and Mattagami River.
For this work, the city expects there will be temporary lane reductions starting sometime in May.
