Regina streets cited as examples of urban design after ‘wavy’ White City road goes viral

The “wavy” design on display in a viral photo of a newly paved road in White City may be more common than people think.

At the town’s request, an engineer from Stantec provided an explanation for the design and the work done so far on the Betteridge Road project, which is part of White City’s town centre concept plan.

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Stantec’s Jeff Blyth said the road is intended to serve as a main east-west corridor, with portions designed based on a rural cross-section and others designed to serve drivers in an urban environment.

“The urban section specifically was deliberately designed to reflect that town centre vision,” Blyth told White City’s committee of the whole at a meeting on Monday evening.

“It includes on-street parking, urban-style sidewalks and streetscape elements. It’ll include controlled intersections and pedestrian crossings, and intended to have active street frontages with properties right up to property line, fronting on onto the road itself.”

The hills and valleys built into the road’s design are meant to help with drainage, he explained, with storm drains placed at the low points of the road.

Blyth showed the committee images of Gordon Road and Chuka Boulevard in Regina as examples of how Betteridge Road might look once development is complete.

Jeff Blyth, an engineer from Stantec, used this photo of Gordon Road in Regina as an example of the urban cross section that Betteridge Road is being built to. (Stantec/Town of White City)

“You can see kind of the up and down within the road there,” he said of the photo of Gordon Road. “Those low points representing where the catch basins are typically located, and the high point representing where the drainage will then move from one catchment to the other.”

He explained that the project was planned in phases, which is why a road with an urban design is now running through an otherwise open area.

“We recognize that in the current stage kind of condition there, the urban section feels, or can feel, out of place,” he said. “But really, what we’re seeing today is that temporary condition within a longer-term transition.”

The results of the community’s advance planning is seen in other infrastructure, such as hydrants that stick up well above ground level, but Blyth said as the area is developed, the property will be filled to street level.

White City Mayor Mitchell Simpson said he appreciated the clarity provided by the presentation.

“When I drove down there and I looked directly down there, yeah, it looked pretty wavy,” he said, “but then I went to the side profile of it and I looked at it. I’m like, ‘OK, it’s less wavy. It’s still wavy.’”

He added when he viewed the road from a farmer’s field, looking at it from the side rather than head on, the effect wasn’t as pronounced.

“Hopefully when it comes into phase, I think it will look a lot less out of place,” Simpson said.

Betteridge Road will eventually connect Highway 48 and the Pilot Butte overpass, according to a memo presented to town council earlier this year.