42 BUILD MANITOBA winnipegconstruction.ca NEARING THE FINISH LINE Southwest Transitway on schedule for 2020 opening By Kelly Parker Winnipeg Blue Bomber fans will soon be arriving at the stadium in record time. Phase 2 construction of the Southwest Transitway has moved into its final stages and remains on schedule for opening in April 2020. This phase of the project spans 7.6 kilometres from Jubilee Ave. to Bison Dr., travelling west from Pembina Hwy. through the Parker Lands, and proceeding south along the Manitoba Hydro right- of-way to Bishop Grandin Blvd. The massive project includes construction of a new 7-km-long dedicated busway from Jubilee Ave. to Bison Dr., with grade separations crossing CN’s main rail line, McGillivray Blvd., the Letellier rail line, Bishop Grandin Blvd., seven stations, and combined sewer replacements near Calrossie Blvd. and Cockburn St. “We have four structures right now that we’ve finished,” says City of Winnipeg Project Manager Jesse Crowder, “including three rail bridges and one stadium station. We have three more that are pretty close to (being) complete – McGillivray, Letellier and the two at Bishop Grandin – and then we have one piece that is left in the construction (phase), and that’s the transitway over Pembina Highway.” Crowder says that area has presented the project’s biggest challenge. “The complexity there with the demolition of that old rail bridge and installation of the new transitway bridge, all within a finite space and in a certain timeline, is the biggest and most complicated section. There is a lot going on there with the rail work, roadwork and all of the bridge works. I think that, having gone through that and completed the CN bridges and rail work in late 2018, we’re now kind of over that hump, but they were definitely the biggest challenges over the last year and a half or so.” Pembina Highway Underpass – Roadworks (bottom of image), new Transitway bridge structure foundations (centre of image) and new CN Rail bridge over Pembina in use (top of image). Of the most recent work, Crowder says, “We had a full closure of the Pembina Highway underpass on Louis Riel weekend to install the bridge girders for that structure. We did the demolition of the old CN Rail bridge to the north of that over a couple of weekends back in December so that we could fit the new bridge in. At the moment, the new transitway that will go over Pembina has been constructed, but it’s not connected at either end, but the bridge itself is in place now in between the two ends.” As if the logistics of that piece weren’t enough of a handful, the old rail bridge over Pembina Hwy. ended up being a more significant structure than engineers had anticipated. “I think it was about 70 or 80 years old,” Crowder explains, “so there wasn’t that much known about it, but once we started to do the demolition, it was quite a bit more of a challenge. Fortunately, we had the new one in place and in Bishop Grandin overpasses – Construction underway on new Transitway (top of image) and pedestrian overpasses (bottom of image) at Bishop Grandin adjacent to the existing CN Rail bridge. Photos provided by PCL.