Highway 174 bridges dismantled this weekend for Stage 2 LRT
Ottawa's light rail contractors will demolish two Highway 174 bridges this weekend so they can build Montreal station in the highway's median and start laying tracks out to Orléans.
That will mean traffic will not be able to travel on Montreal Road under Highway 174 from 8 p.m. Friday to 7 a.m. on Monday, and detours will be in place. A shuttle will be available every five minutes for pedestrians.
Highway 174's eastbound on-ramp from northbound Jeanne d'Arc Boulevard will close overnight Saturday, while the westbound on-ramp from southbound Champlain Street will close overnight Tuesday, Dec. 8.
The big, year-end goal for the east-end LRT work has been to dismantle these bridges.
Over the coming days, the decks will be chipped away, the girders and beams of the old bridge taken down, and the piers removed. In all, 1,456 cubic metres of concrete and 160 metric tonnes of steel will be taken down.
Station construction to begin next year
Motorists will have noticed how crews with Kiewit and Vinci Group have been busy this year near that Montreal Road interchange. They've widened the highway, built seven new ramps, and moved traffic onto two new, outer bridges.
In future, a "flyover" bridge will take trains from Blair station into the highway's median and out to Trim station. Construction of those tracks and Montreal station itself will begin next year, the mayor said.
"So we're going at a really fast clip folks, to make sure that these projects are ready," said Jim Watson at a rainy news event Friday afternoon.
The $4.66 billion Stage 2 of light rail is set to open in stages. This five-station, 12-kilometre eastern extension of the electric Confederation Line, from Blair station to Trim, is scheduled to be finished by 2024.
The western extension from Tunney's to Moodie, with its 11 stations, is set to open last in 2025. Kiewit and Vinci Group have been relocating sewers, culverts and other utilities, preparing for the cut-and-cover tunnel along Byron Avenue and a second tunnel under Connaught Avenue.
The southern, diesel Trillium Line extension to Riverside South and the Ottawa International Airport is being built by SNC-Lavalin and is scheduled to open first, in 2022.
