Highway 125 near North Sydney being repaved... again

Just over a year after repairing a dangerous problem on a Cape Breton highway, work crews are back fixing it again.

A six kilometre section of Highway 125 outside North Sydney, N.S. was repaved in October 2015 following complaints that ruts in the asphalt were responsible for several serious accidents.

New ruts have appeared and the Department of Transportation started resurfacing work on Saturday, according to spokesman Brian Taylor.

In an email to CBC he said the road would be repaved this week, weather permitting.

Taylor added that more work is scheduled to be done in the spring.

Dangerous history

A 79-year-old man was killed last summer when, according to eyewitnesses, his truck appeared to hydroplane in heavy rain which had collected in the grooves in the pavement and flipped over several times.

Two weeks before that, a woman suffered broken bones in her neck in a similar accident which demolished her car.

In the past the Transportation Department has offered possible explanations for the ruts in the pavement: the weight of heavy quarry and coal trucks, as well as studded car tires.

Seal Island Bridge crash

Spokesman Brian Taylor also provided an email update on the state of the Seal Island Bridge, the site of a recent crash of a tractor trailer which flipped over on its side during a windstorm.

"Engineers have concluded no immediate safety issues," he said. "They are analyzing the results to determine if any work is required over the long-term for the area that was damaged by the truck."