Camrose County will continue with its shoulder pulling program this year.

“I move that Camrose County council authorize the 2024 shoulder pulling program to include Township Road 450 from Highway 21 to Range Road 203, Township Road 452 from the east edge of New Norway (railway tracks) to Range Road 205, Township Road 452 (Hover Road) from Highway 21 to Range Road 215, Township Road 460 (Verdun Road) from Highway 21 to Range Road 220, Range Road 201 from Highway 609 to Township Road 444, Township Road 461 from Range Road 213 to Highway 21, for a total of 27 kilometres, which will be completed by Road to Rail Construction Group to a maximum of $600,000 using MSI Capital Grant funds,” said councillor Doug Lyseng.

“Shoulder pulling is a  part of Camrose County’s ongoing road maintenance program, an intricate and important part of the overall roadway rehabilitation and construction agenda,” said public works manager Zach Mazure in his report to council on February 13.

Shoulder pulling is a construction process to bring a previously constructed road back into Camrose County specifications or alternatively an effort to improve a black dirt road that was constructed by elevated grader or other means.

It is completed to the County specification so that regular road maintenance can occur in two grader passes and gravel contributed per mile of road can be limited to a smaller cross-section. Additionally, the shoulder pull restructuring of the road is a larger-scale version of the constant road maintenance that is trying to be achieved through regular blading of the roads, which is largely intended to maintain good road surface drainage.

The process involves ripping up the exposed road base so that material brought up from the shoulders will be able to bind to it.
Pulling material from the road shoulder back onto the top of the road where it has been ripped. Levelling and repacking this material to get good compaction and have a proper crown.

Once the road top is completed, the dozer will come through and clean up any locations in the ditch that need contouring or smoothing out and the County gravel crew will provide surface gravel to the finished product.

“The cost of shoulder pulling is a fraction of the cost of full road construction. It is a practice best performed on higher grade clay roads. It is not as effective on black dirt roads, shallow or non-ditched roads, but it does improve them to a certain extent; however, it will take longer to accomplish good results,” shared Mazure.

Gravel that has been deposited onto the shoulder by traffic is also recovered and put back into the road surface.

Roads which are to receive restoration/shoulder pulling are annually presented to council for their information/approval.
Road to Rail Construction Group was recently secured as the contractor to complete the shoulder pulling projects with a commitment for ongoing work through 2024 and 2025.

The 2024 budget allocated for this is $600,000. Depending on variances and unexpected conditions, it is anticipated the proposed projects will cost approximately $600,000.