An artist rendering shows what the Delta train bridge will look like.

14 April 2011

Long-Awaited Delta Train Bridge Construction Set to Start in May

Cambridge Ontario - Next month, it's finally, really, going to happen.
 
That's when construction starts on a $25 million bridge to carry Hespeler Road over the Canadian Pacific Railway tracks, just north of the Delta intersection in Cambridge. A year from now, 57,000 vehicles a day won't jam six times a day as kilometre-long trains trundle across the road, full of Cambridge-made Toyota and Lexus cars.
 
"It's disgusting. It should have been done 20 years ago," said Ed Weber of Cambridge, as he sat in his car Wednesday, blocked by a westbound train. Traffic backed up a kilometre north and south along Hespeler Road and Water Street at 10:30 a.m.
 
A "grade separation" between Hespeler Road and the tracks was talked about in the late 1970s, as part of a plan to remake the Hespeler Road intersection with Coronation Boulevard, Dundas Street, and Water Street, known by locals as the Delta.
 
The train bridge, however, was cut from the plans to save money. It made sense at the time. Few trains crossed Hespeler Road any more. Railways were in decline nationwide.
 
The Delta was rebuilt and Hespeler Road widened to four lanes across the tracks by 1984. A year later, Toyota announced it was going to build a factory in north Preston. Starting in 1988, every car made there was shipped by trains limited to 16 kilometres per hour, all of them crossing Hespeler Road. Canadian Pacific Railway also built two rail marshalling yards near the Toyota factory.
 
As traffic jams festered on Hespeler Road, the train bridge plan was revived. The staggering cost, estimated at $30 million from the start, was hard to hammer into a strained region roads budget. By the turn of the century, it was in the spending plan, but several years away.
 
To solve the problem sooner, talk turned to moving the shunting operations out of town instead of the bridge, but negotiations with Canadian Pacific Railway foundered. Regional council pushed Ottawa to order the railway to pay most of the bridge cost. In August 2009, the railway was ordered to pick up 85 percent of the tab.
 
Since then, the railway and region have worked together in slimming the job, shaving upwards of $10 million from what grew to a $35 million project. Much of the savings came from combining a twin tracks under the bridge to one, which shortened and lowered the bridge, said region project engineer John Stephenson. The bridge will now rise three metres above the level of today's Hespeler Road, while a new set of tracks will be five metres lower.
 
Construction preparations started in summer 2008. Buried natural gas pipes and cable television cables were rerouted, internet, electricity, and telephone wires strung on new poles out of the way, a church was demolished, and redundant rails removed.
 
Next Wednesday, regional council is expected to vote on hiring a contractor for the biggest public construction job in Cambridge this year.
 
Sheri Simpson was caught by the train Wednesday morning, too, as she walked south along Hespeler Road.
 
"It didn't back me up too much. I waited 10 minutes and then kept walking," she said.
 
Simpson lives on nearby Brooklyn Road and knows the bridge is overdue to keep traffic moving on Hespeler Road. She worries about how pedestrians like her are going to navigate the construction zone, since they don't have any other way to head south to Tim Hortons or to Cambridge Memorial Hospital.
 
When driving north on Water Street, Stewart Kelly of Cambridge is always watching for trains creeping across the train bridge at Galt Collegiate Institute. That's a hint there's a long freight train looped around and blocking Hespeler Road north of the Delta. He starts thinking about a detour, or girds himself for a long wait with hundreds of other motorists.
 
Funneling the daily traffic through a mess of construction equipment and over busy train tracks will be ugly, but worth it, Kelly said.
 
"I think people are willing to handle the inconvenience. They're willing to go through it to get the bridge," Kelly said.
 
Project engineer Stephenson expects traffic will slow through the construction zone, despite the best efforts of the contractor. Likening it to a ballet in a shoe box, he said the project will be demanding, since the goal is moving big equipment into a tight area, while keeping four lanes of traffic flowing, most of the time, and Toyota trains running on schedule all of the time.
 
Ten weekends, the contractor will be allowed to work around the clock, and another 60 over night Monday to Friday, Stephenson said. Big augers are needed to bore holes for concrete footings to support the new bridge. It will be noisy, but after hours work is needed to get the job done as fast as possible without pinching morning and afternoon traffic, he said.
 
Train Bridge Job May Go Social
 
Something like @deltaBridge will be one of the most useful Twitter accounts to follow in Cambridge over the next two years.
 
For the first time, Waterloo Region is pondering blogs and social media tools to keep the public updated about construction progress of a $25 million bridge over the railway tracks on Hespeler Road.
 
A Twitter feed is under consideration to update motorists and residents about lane closures, slowdowns, and overnight work, said project engineer John Stephenson. (Already, some people send out tweets when they're stuck by a train at the tracks).
 
Cameras offering live views of construction and traffic disruptions on a public website are also being considered, he said.
 
For now, however, it's all old school dissemination of information, paper mail outs to neighbours, and public meetings.
 
On Thursday, 21 Apr 2011, a public drop-in session is set for Avenue Road public school on Gail Street, 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Contractor and region representatives will be there to introduce themselves and explain how the complicated project will unfold this year and next.
 
Construction Timeline
 
20 Apr 2011 - Regional council awards construction tender;
 
Early May - winning contractor starts building four-lane bypass road along west edge of the construction zone, at track level;
 
Early July - traffic moves to the detour, work starts on bridge abutments and new stretch of lowered train tracks north of the existing tracks;
 
May/June 2012 - switchover when the construction zone closes to all traffic for a few days as new tracks go into service and half of the bridge prepared for vehicle traffic;
 
June 2012 - workers start building the western half of bridge, essentially stitching it the first half already in use;
 
December 2012 - Project completed.
 
Kevin Swayze.