Ontario Construction News staff writer
The City of Ottawa says it’s taking steps to make sure pressures from the COVID-19 pandemic and other construction delays don’t set back the delivery its second stage Light Rail Transit (LRT) projects.
Global News reports that Ottawa’s director of rail construction Michael Morgan sent city councillors a memo in late April saying that city staff are taking “proactive steps” to ensure the east-west extension to Ottawa LRT doesn’t face any schedule impacts like the ones already noted by the team building the Trillium Line expansion to the south.
These steps are mainly in the form of construction schedule shifts and traffic detours, Morgan said.
In the memo, he says, in the west, the closure of the Woodroffe Avenue and Richmond Road intersection is being extended through May and westbound traffic on Ambleside Drive will soon be detoured, according to the memo.
On the east side of Ottawa, Morgan said the city is providing “flexibility” on the timing of lane closures on Montreal Road, a location he noted is on the project’s “critical path.”
The closures began in early April and are expected to last to mid-July, according to construction updates on the city’s LRT website, as part of construction of a new bridge within the median of the Highway 174 interchange.
“In addition to adding float to the schedule, these adjustments reduce the duration of construction in these specific neighbourhoods,” Morgan wrote in the memo.
The team building the Trillium Line extension, a subsidiary of SNC-Lavalin, advised the city earlier this year that there , though reports from the estimate the delays at 116 days.
The city said it would work with the contractor to see if impacts could be mitigated or avoided altogether.
Morgan said construction on this part of the extension remains on track for the second quarter of 2022, with handover to the city expected in August 2022.
Train deliveries from Alstrom’s manufacturing site in Brampton or the Stadler site in Switzerland have not yet been affected by the pandemic.
So far, the city has spent $1.46 billion on construction and train purchasing for the $4.66-billion project, Morgan said in his memo.
When complete, Stage 2 of LRT in Ottawa will connect Moodie Drive in the west, Trim Road in the east and down to Limebank Road and the Ottawa International Airport in the south.
