Changes have been announced by the Higgs government surrounding the construction of the Petitcodiac River Bridge between Moncton and Riverview.
Provincial transportation minister Bill Oliver says the completion date is being pushed back one year to the fall of 2021 due to financial pressures.
The four-to-six-month closure of the causeway it is replacing will now occur in 2021 instead of next year.
To prepare for the causeway closure, the Town of Riverview partnered with the province last summer for a $1.9 million upgrade of the Gunningsville Bridge intersection to allow for an increase in traffic.
The total cost of the Petitcodiac River Bridge project is more than $60 million – which is being split between the provincial and federal governments.
“For too long, governments have been careless with how taxpayer dollars are spent, and we have made a number of decisions that allowed us to table a budget with the first surplus in a decade,” said Oliver.
“Part of these decisions involved taking a more responsible approach to this project, which has resulted in an adjusted timeline,” he added.
The construction site has been idle recently but the Department of Transportation says work on the bridge deck will get underway early this summer.
