Tourist route works delays

One of Albany’s busiest tourist routes, Marine Drive, will reopen in time for Christmas after minor delays in roadworks.

Marine Drive, from the lookout to Flinders Parade, has been closed since October 3 as part of the Middleton Beach redevelopment.

Tricoast Civil has been carrying out significant roadworks to realign Adelaide Terrace and Finders Parade.

Tricoast operations manager Damon Lawrence said the project was originally expected to take eight weeks but it would be delayed by two weeks because of unforeseen issues.

“We aren’t quite at the halfway mark due to some unforeseen issues causing delays, including the ground conditions under the old road and a few minor things that had to be changed. But we are still on track to have it finished in the near future,” he said. “Our main aim at the moment is to get the road reopened by Christmas.

“We are about five weeks in and initially looked at reopening the roads on November 27.

“But at the moment, we are looking at an extra two weeks.”

Mr Lawrence said the works had been going well despite some early delays.

Mr Lawrence said he had received mostly positive feedback from the public. “If we didn’t close the roads, it would have taken longer trying to negotiate with traffic,” he said.

“We are happy to see the job progressing and looking forward to getting it finished. Unfort-unately, it won’t be as soon as we hoped but we are still doing everything we can to get it done in the shortest time possible.”