By Ashley Karen
A great construction is beginning on the Broadway Subway Project, a 5.7-km extension of Vancouver’s Millennium Line, that is going to add six stops to one the city’s most crowded neighborhoods and link VCC-Clark Station to Arbutus and Broadway.
The project which is led by JV between Ghella and ACCIONA, brings two of the world’s foremost tunneling and sustainable infrastructure firms together, and aims to deliver quicker, affordable, more convenient journey to the riders of Metro Vancouver.
Carlos Planelles, Managing Director of ACCIONA North America said: “We are excited to begin the major works on this signature project, which will help put Vancouver back to work.”
He also added: “When completed, the Broadway Subway Project will slash pollution and commuter times, bringing safe, comfortable modern transit to one of the busiest transit corridors in metro Vancouver.”
The team of construction is making traffic decks before boring starts, to ensure the continued flow of traffic along Broadway when the building and tunnel excavation happens underground. This innovative engineering solution contains placing and drilling vertical columns to support steel plates for the traffic decks.
The work will commence on the elevated guideway and tunnel portal later this year, and it will provide access to the underground portion of the new line.
Most of the line is going to be constructed underground using a pair of TBMs. By 2022, both TBMs will have a staggered launch from the Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station. This approach, along with traffic decking on Broadway, is going to reduce the impact on businesses, residents and people travelling to the area.
Over the past several months, work on the Broadway Subway Project has focused on site preparation, constructing demolition and utility relocations.
