Winnipeg road work frustrating businesses, residents

Winnipeg businesses are feeling the effects of road work this summer, with orange construction cones, barriers or street closure signs seemingly at every block.

Businesses tell CityNews the construction is impacting their bottom line.

“We’ve definitely been receiving less customers compared to previous years I would say,” said Kengnan Wodajo, an employee at BDI on Jubilee Avenue. “We’ve been over prepping compared to the customers we’ve been receiving.”

The manager of Crown Nails and Spa on Pembina says their customers are havng difficulty driving into the parking lot.

“Customers don’t know how to come in,” said Jon Tran. “Actually we have another way around the traffic over there, but it’s hard for them if they don’t know much about this area.

“Winnipeg, we have two seasons, right? Construction and winter.”

The construction work is giving headaches to Winnipeggers who want to move around the city with ease.

“Difficult, it’s hard to get around,” said a customer at BDI on Saturday. “It’s hard to get to all of the places, but necessary to fix the roads because the roads are not the best here. I just wish that they would do it in areas or different spots instead of everywhere all at once, because it just makes it difficult to get anywhere some days.

“So all of Salter is ripped up all the way down. I can’t even get to the one end of my alley right now because it’s the same as what’s happening right out front here.”

While major routes have been affected, residents tell CityNews they’ve been dealing with road work on smaller streets as well.

“So it’s Osborne Street towards, if you go to Dakota Street, it has construction too, over the bridge. Yeah that’s also under construction.

“It takes a lot of time. Usually, it’s a 20-minute route but it takes 40. Which is giving me a tough time to manage my time.

“So I would like to construction to be over as soon as possible. I don’t like it.”

The city budgeted $155.8 million for road work in 2023 – a $9.9 million drop from last year’s $164.7 million budget. To some, it appears more is going on this season than previous years.

“Much more this year than in the past,” one man said. “Definitely much more this year. This year just seems like there’s a lot of detours. There’s a lot of changes. There’s a lot of ‘gotta go around here, zipper merge here, to the left here,’ and all those kinds of things.”

Others say it’s business as usual.

“I’d say it’s pretty much the same,” one woman told CityNews. “‘Cause I mean we have winters so for so many months so it’s understandable why they have construction.”