The maintenance work will continue until November. The TTC will operate buses to shuttle streetcar passengers through the construction zone. (CBC)

Road maintenance work along a stretch of Queen Street East is testing the patience of residents and merchants in the area.

This week city crews began working on Queen between Coxwell and Greenwood avenues.

Slated to continue until November, the work will repair sewer and water mains and replace sidewalks and streetcar tracks.

The work has already closed a section of Queen Street East to traffic. The TTC is running buses in place of streetcars along the route, slowing down service.

Residents and business owners who spoke to CBC News said the area’s rising popularity in recent years was causing traffic problems even before the maintenance work began.

“The Beach area has become very popular,” said Jan Hykamp, a 35-year resident of the neighbourhood. “The amount of traffic has grown. A lot of incoming traffic on weekends is from people who visit the neighbourhood. It's become very hard to take care of traffic and parking."

Dimitra Doufekas works at Chick-N-Joy at 1483 Queen St. E., near Woodfield Road. She said the maintenance work will hurt business.

"It's very difficult for cars to stop and customers to come in and get their food," she said. "It's been really inconvenient. We've been through this before. It really is a time that we have to toughen up and get through it."

Charmaine Brown is visiting Toronto from London, England. The road work forced her to step off a streetcar and board a bus shuttling TTC passengers through the construction zone.

"It's a little bit inconvenient," she said. "It's just adding extra time on your journey. These things happen. In London we've had worse."