The NB11 Caraquet Bypass opened Friday, October 14th.
It's shown on Google, but not yet on OSM. Updated GIS shapefiles are not yet available.
The only real info I was able to find was in a local French language newspaper:
La voie de contournement de Caraquet ouverte à la circulationVoie de contournement: des élus grincent des dentsAs seems to be the case in NB, what becomes of the old route will take a little detective work.
The second article linked above suggests that Boulevard Saint-Pierre Ouest was to become NB325. However, there was some dissatisfaction with this in the municipality, as a NB3xx designation (vice a NB1xx designation) would result in less money for maintenance from the province.
The second paragraph of the first article, well... after I run it thru Google Translate:
13 kilometers long, the bypass is somehow missing the section of Highway 11. Although it connects North and South communities of the east coast of the province, she sectionnait the roundabout Bertrand, forcing motorists to navigate downtown Caraquet before taking the long road to Miramichi and Moncton.
Not terribly clear, but one possible takeaway is that NB11 is still on the old route, and not on the new bypass. I don't know, man.
Wikipedia:
The articles for
New Brunswick Route 11,
145 &
325 were all recently edited by the same IP address. Not by a registered user, so sadly I can't contact the author for more info & clarification. NB145 is now listed as terminating at NB325 in Caraquet, and NB325 is listed (sans citation) as "extended continuing where the former Route 11 used to be." (It should be noted that the length of none of the affected highways has been updated to reflect these changes.)
It could well be that the author made some assumptions, based on incomplete info, that will turn out to be incorrect.
If in fact NB325 takes over *all* of the former NB11, as Wikipedia implies, this would make for
the strange case of NB145:Of the other 48 NB1xx Collector routes (blue background shield), 44 connect to the rest of the highway network via a 2-digit Arterial route (green background shield). The remaining four
(NB104, 135, 161 & 170) connect via another blue NB1xx route. There are no other cases of a Collector only connecting via a NB200+ Local (black background shield) route; this would be completely unprecedented.
The second newspaper article above only explicitly mentions Boulevard Saint-Pierre Ouest becoming NB325. It's possible that Rue du Portage could become an extension of NB145, thereby allowing NB145 to connect to the rest of the highway network at a green Arterial route, NB11 proper. This seems to me the more sensible option.
The new bypass has a diamond interchange, which I presume gets a distance-based exit number, as with the other interchanges on NB11. I don't know what that number is at this time. Google labels the cross road as Leger St (I'd go with the French RueLeg in this case), but
Wikipedia calls it Chemin Alexis.
I'll give this all some time and wait for the dust to settle.
