There's a real magic to this new ring road
Paula Simons
The Edmonton Journal
Saturday, September 29, 2007
How can I explain my fascination with the Anthony Henday ring road?
After all, I'm officially opposed to urban sprawl, to paving over wildlands and farmlands, officially opposed to increasing green house gas emissions. So why do I get so excited about a new freeway system that facilitates sprawl and encourages people to drive their cars long distances?
Perhaps it has something to do with the romance of witnessing history unfold at the edge of a new frontier.
Imagine how cool it would be to go back in time to the moment the High Level Bridge opened. Or the day the first steam train puffed in to Strathcona.
Yet in a boom town as young as ours, we don't need time travel to see an urban space transformed and redefined. We can watch it out our car windows.
This week, construction on the southeast leg of the Henday came to its official conclusion. This newest part won't open to public traffic until late October; the official date has yet to be confirmed. But all the major construction is complete.
Crews are now just adding the finishing touches: painting the white and yellow lines, sandblasting the metal guard rails, landscaping the medians and verges.
But the bridges are built, the fly-ways are finished, the shiny black asphalt, still smelling of oil and ever-so-slightly soft underfoot, is poured and waiting.
When this 11-kilometre stretch of freeway opens, it will connect Calgary Trail and the Queen Elizabeth II with Highways 14 and 16 east, completing a ring linking the Yellowhead to the Yellowhead. With this part done, the province has two "legs" left to complete. First, the northwest corner, linking Highway 16 to St. Albert and the Manning Freeway, a project the province has out to tender right now. After that will come the final tricky bit, bridging the river at Clover Bar.
To me, there's a real magic to this burgeoning ring road. Sure, it will make it easier for heavy truck traffic to skirt the city, moving goods and industrial equipment more efficiently. Of course, it will make it easier for suburban commuters to scoot from Sherwood Park to West Edmonton Mall, from Beaumont to St. Albert or from Fort Saskatchewan to Nisku. It may reduce congestion on Calgary Trail and Whitemud Drive. And yes, it will make it faster to get to the airport or Jasper or Elk Island Park.
But beyond that, the Henday symbolizes the energy and power of a city evolving under our very noses. It promises a paradigm shift, a change in the way the people and communities of metro Edmonton relate to one another. Just as the Canadian Pacific Railway forged Canada into a nation, joined coast to coast, the Henday has the potential to bind this region into one cohesive economic and social unit.
Stephen King and Ron Kubsch, the PCL engineers who served as construction managers for the Henday's southeast leg, positively beam with pride as they tour me up and down "their" road.
We start at Calgary Trail, where a complex triple-decker bypass, the first of its kind in Edmonton, will soon shunt traffic east and west, north and south. But navigating three layers of bridge work might take a little getting used to.
"This is a free flow, fully integrated interchange, with no lights. It looks complicated, but it will work well," King says. "It has an incredible number of overhead guide signs. I don't think the driver is going to have a lot of trouble."
"It's probably going to take the public a day or two to figure it out," Kubsch says. "But I think people are going to be quite surprised when they see how fast they get to Highway 14 or 216."
The project was designed, built and financed by a seven company consortium called Access Roads Edmonton.
PCL oversaw the construction and built the bridges and overpasses. Sureway Construction was responsible for earthworks and drainage, while LaFarge was responsible for paving, signage and lights. At the peak of construction, there were at least 360 works on site.
"Workforce was tough to find," Kubsch says. "We had a skilled worker shortage, for sure."
That meant training lots of fresh apprentices on the job -- and importing more than two dozen skilled tradesmen from Germany.
Building down the middle of an established utility corridor wasn't easy, either. It meant excavating with extreme care near high-pressure pipelines, and relocating high-voltage, power lines and towers. It also meant building a special "high load" corridor -- a detour loop to allow trucks headed to Fort McMurray with super-tall cargo to avoid getting stuck under overpasses or taking down power lines.
To meet the need for tonnes of asphalt in the middle of nowhere, LaFarge actually built its own mini asphalt plant, on-site. On top of that, Access Roads was required to reclaim wetlands disrupted by construction near Mill Creek.
"We've created wetlands that we really hope are attractive to wildlife and waterfowl," says Kubsch, as we pass a pond filled with Canada geese, preparing to make their own commute south.
The fresh blacktop looks temptingly smooth, as it snakes behind the IKEA and the new Wal-Mart mega-store, around Mill Woods, past the new neighbourhood of Ellerslie Heights and through Strathcona County. But where commuters and trucks might see a high-speed short-cut, others see a legacy.
"There is a real, human side to this. A lot of people worked long, hard hours on this project," Ron Kubsch says. "For Stephen and me, it's been one of our most rewarding experiences. It was a challenge. You get into it and there's a certain fear factor. But in the end, there's the success of it. We did what we said we were going to do.
"You're part of something that will be there for a long, long time," he adds "These bridges have a design life of 75 years. This will outlast all of us -- and maybe our kids, too."
psimons@thejournal.canwest.com
BY THE NUMBERS
11 kilometres -- the length of the new southeast leg
1 metre -- how high the south east leg sits above grade
20 metres -- the height of the highest Calgary Trail overpasses
20 -- the number of bridges, overpasses and flyways
290,000 tonnes -- the weight of asphalt used on the project's southeast leg
1.6 million -- number of man-hours of labour that went into the project
360 -- number of people working on the construction at its peak
$493 million -- how much Access Roads Edmonton was paid by the province, in constant dollars, to build the road, and to operate and maintain the southeast and southwest legs for the next 30 years
$800 million -- what the province has spent on the total ring-road project so far
100 kilometres per hour -- the speed limit for the southeast leg
0 -- number of traffic lights along the southeast leg
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