Four-week street repair project in East Vancouver turns into 8-month ordeal

Short-term street repairs in an East Vancouver neighbourhoodhave turned into a long and windy road of endless construction.

Back in August, Cherisse Miranda received a letter from the City of Vancouver about a road closure on Charles Street, where she lives.

"It said, 'we're going to do some water main work on your street, it'll be closed for three to four weeks," she said.

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But instead, the five-block stretch of Charles Street was closed for six months.

Miranda saidin the past eight months, the road has been closed for all but four weeks.

'Intersection looked like a traffic circle'

First, there was the water main work the road was dug up and repaved.

Then there was sewer work,and the road was again dug up and repaved.

"The sewer finished about the middle of April, and, this morning, there's work out here again and I come out and ask them and they're like, 'oh, there's a leak," Miranda said.

She says she's had it with the long-running work and its impact on the neighbourhood.

"From September until the beginning of March the street was in various states of closed and open but there was always either equipment or open excavations somewhere on the street," Miranda said.

"This intersection looked like a traffic circle because there was a backhoe in it for months with people just going around the backhoe."

Bad winter

The city says the project started in October and was supposed to be finished by the end of December, but crews ran into some unexpected issues.

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All of the snow and ice of a brutal winter brought the work to a standstill, which is why the job had to be extended into May.

The city now anticipates the construction work will be finishedby the end of the month.

With files from Belle Puri