The cold weather has brought most highway construction projects to a halt and flood proofing work along Highway 75 northbound at St. Jean is no exception.

That project involved the construction of a new bridge in the northbound lanes which spans the Plum River and included raising the highway and pouring new concrete about 2.5 kilometres on either side of the bridge.

Larry Halayko with Manitoba Infrastructure says, while they were able to finish building the new bridge, they were unable to complete the concrete work leading up to the bridge.

"The intent was to get the approach work done around the bridge and new concrete poured. We were able to get the concrete poured north of the bridge, but unfortunately the weather closed in and we were not able to get the final concrete in south of the bridge."

That work, along with significant improvements to the access roads leading into St. Jean will have to wait until next year to be finished, which is disappointing news to Derek Sabourin, reeve for the RM of Montcalm.

"We were kind of anxious to have some normalcy around here when it comes to the entrances in town. We'll still have access to both entrances, but it means that there will be more work in town next year with more entrances being closed to accommodate this work."

Nevertheless, construction on the highway was completed and will open things up for traffic along Highway 75. The barriers on both the north and southbound lanes between St. Jean and Morris will finally come down, according to Halayko, once a temporary single lane of asphalt has been poured leading up to the bridge on the south side.

"So there will be a single lane up to and over the bridge and then you'll have two lanes going north from that point on. In the southbound direction, the barriers will come down, providing two lanes of traffic there as well."

Next year, crews will finish the concrete work south of the bridge including the entrances to St. Jean. However, according to Halayko, we won't likely see a brand new concrete highway along 75 northbound until 2019 at the earliest.