hwy 101The city spent a pretty penny to learn about their options on fixing the Connecting Link running through town.

Now, that $380,000 is being seen on city streets as officials with Tatry Environmental Drilling are taking soil samples along the 21 kilometre stretch.

Operations Manager Mark Bednarz says they’re drilling five foot deep holes every 900 metres.

He adds there aren’t many traffic delays either, as the drilling takes about an hour in each location and they close one lane to do the work.

AECOM is collecting the samples.  They were hired in March to do the study, to make recommendations to improve traffic flow, add bike lanes, improve bus stop configurations where possible and recommend other additional improvements/upgrades.

Replacing the road itself could be around $60-70 million, and including infrastructure could top it over the $100-million mark.