Valley Line LRT/ Valley Line West | ?m | ?s | City of Edmonton

Money Mart is empty now, likely to make way for VLW construction.

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The_Cat said:
I hope that the entrance to the Churchill LRT station can be opened up as coronavirus recedes.
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I don't know if you are referring to the connector or not, but in this week's downtown update video, they said that they're aiming to open the connector by late fall. So it doesn't sound like it'll open before the line unfortunately :/
 
CplKlinger said:
Edmonton is pretty vague, and says it'll take "five to six years" to complete.
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Considering the geotechnical aspects of the segments of the Valley Line, I would have thought that it shouldn't take any longer for the city to construct the west leg compared to the southeast leg. Although the west segment is longer and has more stations, the only major technical challenges are the Groat Road Overpass, WEM elevated guideway and Henday overpass. Contrast this with the Quarters tunnel, Tawatina Bridge (!!!), Davies elevated guideway, Whitemud overpass and the massive OMF facility on the SE segment. But who knows. Maybe the government will mismanage the project way more than a P3 and that'll lead to more delays.
 
In regards to the West Leg of the line, those of us living around Stony Plain Road got a notice from Epcor detailing the draingage work happening in the area a couple weeks ago. I didn't think much of it at first, but the conversation has swung back towards phasing again so i'll share what little i can offer. These are a couple photos of the pamphlet, which covers all the work along the entire route. Most of it talks about work that is already complete and work that is going to happen in 2021. a lot of it is "there will be big machines digging big holes please stay safe" type stuff (hence why i didn't share at first) but it does show a map of where there is still work to be done. The other points that stuck out to me are the (very very vague) timelines given, saying that this project is going to last until either 2022 or 2023. This is the Epcor side of things; the utility relocations, not the work to be done by Marigold Partners. I don't know how work will be divided up between the two, how much drainage/sewer work Marigold will be expected to do on theirs and surrounding sites etc, but I assume based on that 2023 end date that Epcor is going to be working on stuff both ahead of and concurrently with LRT construction.
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I included the page about SPR over Groat Road because it is discussing the TBM work that was mentioned earlier; this is also the most detailed description of work in the pamphlet. based on the vagaries in this document, i doubt we'll see any real construction this summer as Epcor gets its duckies in a row.
Also looking at this I think the 2026-2027 timeline is pragmatic but not pessimistic; the Right-Of-Way for the Valley Line West is pretty narrow for a lot of the route. Where the SE leg only had to squeeze down 95 Ave and 83 Street for a few blocks each, everywhere else having either extra lanes or frontage roads to spread out the work across, the SPR corridor is very narrow, with a lot of cross-streets and buildings close by. Apparently it also houses a lot of utilities too. It is a straight, level peice of track that's gonna go in there, but there's still a lot of other stuff that has to be moved and rebuilt, all in a very tight space. That's gonna take a lot more time to build.
 
Can someone who understands construction explain to me why we can't get more workers on projects like this and accelerate them? I understand this isn't asia and our government systems affect it. But I dont understand the hundreds of kilometers of high speed rail being build through mountains in China in the next 5 years while we build 1 line of 20kms. Is it purely financial?
 
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