City prepares for tunnelling under downtown
Construction for the next month will be loud, says city
By Derek Spalding, OTTAWA CITIZEN July 10, 2013 4:06 PM
OTTAWA — Crews began building one of the entrances to the underground portion of the city’s light-rail transit line this week in what is expected to be a noisy project for the next month.
The boring machine that will eventually drill east through rock beneath Queen Street is not expected to be operating until August, but a temporary wall is being built to support the ground around the future tunnel, according to a release issued by the city.
The notice cautions that preparation work, which started at the intersection of Albert and Commissioner streets, will be loud with long, steel beams being driven into the ground, creating “intermittent and repetitive banging noises.” Work will start before 6 p.m. on weekdays and will last about a month until the boring machines arrive.
Preparation work at the east entrance of the tunnel, just south of Laurier Avenue, is a few weeks behind because crews had to redesign two small stretches of road in order to clear the area. The contractor expanded a portion of Nicholas Street by two lanes, which allowed OC Transpo to redirect buses off of the transitway near Waller Street. Buses now detour around the future tunnel entrance by continuing on Nicholas, then turning onto Laurier before reconnecting with the transitway.
Digging under the downtown to create the 2.5-kilometre tunnel is anticipated to be the largest undertaking in the building of the $2.13-billion Confederation Line, but plenty of other LRT construction sites started this summer.
Some projects that kicked off in May have changed how people navigate through the city with the ongoing and new work expected to cause varying degrees of disruption during the next five years.
Expansion of Highway 417 between Blair Road and Nicholas began in June and was strategically linked to LRT construction in order to provide new bus lanes while the transitway is converted to a light-rail line. Construction of two new outside lanes, one in each direction, will be completed in 2015 and will cause minimal traffic disruption.
OC Transpo will then use the dedicated lanes until 2018 when the trains are running, the buses are removed and the road can be turned over to regular vehicle traffic.
Also related to both these projects, the city is in the middle of fixing the split where Highway 174 connects to the 417. Crews eliminated one lane of traffic on a short stretch of 174 just west of Blair Road. Barriers will eventually be put in place to stop traffic from criss-crossing with 417 traffic once construction wraps up in late August.
Other work also not expected to cause traffic disruption includes demolition of buildings at the Maintenance and Storage facility on Belfast Road to eventually make way for a train maintenance building, storage and some administration offices.
Some of the old buildings on the site are being torn down, but new construction will not be completed for a couple of more years.
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