Team Gushue Highway extension work stalls again, province can't provide completion date

Work to complete an often-delayed major highway project across St. John's has stalled again this year, and the province can't say when the road will actually open.

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The provincial government budgeted $23 million towards the Team Gushue Highway extension project this fiscal year.

But only $975,000 of that has been spent to date, most of it on an overpass at Blackmarsh Road.

According to the Department of Transportation and Works, the remaining funding will be carried forward into the 2017-18 and 2018-19 fiscal years.

In an email to CBC News, the province said a tender for the next phase of the project is expected to be issued "in the near future."

After that, "timelines for project completion can be determined."

'Designed to relieve traffic congestion'

The government has already blown through a number of estimated completion dates for the 7.3-kilometre stretch of highway.

"The highway is designed to relieve traffic congestion on major routes in the region," the province noted in a 2011 press release.

Work began on the extension that year. It was expected to be done in 2014.However, that estimated completion date got bumped back.

In the fall of 2013, then-transportation minister Nick McGrath held a media availability at the work site.

"We'll celebrate the opening of the extended Team Gushue Highway, from the Outer Ring Road to St. John's Harbour arterial Pitts Memorial Drive, in 2015," McGrath said at the time.

Work about 63 per cent complete

But that celebrationdidn't happen. And the highway isn't much closer to being finished today than it was a year ago.

According to a December 2015 provincial government briefing note, the work at that time was 63 per cent complete.

The province says that percentage "has increased only marginally to slightly more than 63 per cent" over the past year.

Since 2011, approximately $38.2 million has been spent in total onTeam Gushue Highway.