No relief for drivers along the Evergreen Line construction route

By

PORT MOODY (NEWS1130) – The tunnel-boring machine for the Evergreen Line will soon be moving again under Burnaby Mountain, but the traffic headaches in the area will continue.

Maintenance work on the cutter head is now beginning after crews spent the last few weeks stabilizing the soil around it. That work included building grout walls around the tunnel-boring machine, named “Alice,” to keep soil from falling into the cutter-head.

Evergreen CEO Amanda Farrell admits the shifting ground conditions have taken them a bit by surprise.

“They certainly weren’t planning on building the grout walls. They didn’t anticipate they would need to do that. So to that extent, yes, that is a challenge that wasn’t expected. There was extensive geo-technical work done in advance of the project over quite a few years. So the nature of the soil, the sand and the gravel was known, but the challenge of maintaining the large face turned out to be more significant than was anticipated. So yes, it has taken longer to do because of that.”

The machinery that’s been at Clarke Road and Seaview Drive in Port Moody since early this year is now being picked up and moved to the next stop point for the machine, which is the intersection of Clarke and Robinston about a half kilometre south.

Farrell tells us crews on the surface will spend the next few weeks building another grout wall before Alice gets there. “EGRT, the contractor, has decided to build a grout wall here because of the challenges they’ve had the face stability when it comes to maintenance.”

“In previous plans, they weren’t planning to build a grout wall at this location. But that is one of the things that they want to do to enhance the stability of the face when the machine gets there. So there will be traffic disruption and work there for quite some time through to when the tunnel-boring machine arrives.”

Opening day for the Evergreen Line has already been pushed back from summer to fall of 2016, but Farrell says the latest work being done hasn’t pushed back the construction schedule.

“Not at this point. We did move from summer to fall because of the challenges of the tunnel. We’re still within that timeline. If at some point that were to change we’d obviously let people know. But right now, that’s the timeline that we’re within.”

When the machine arrives under Clarke and Robinson, the tunnel will be three quarters finished. Alice should punch through just north of Como Lake and Clarke sometime this fall.

Top Stories

Top Stories

Most Watched Today