Valley Line LRT | TransEd/Marigold | City of Edmonton

[The_Cat]

From Wikipedia:
Construction began on April 22, 2016, with completion of phase 1 set for July 29, 2057.[3][9][10][11][12] Upon completion of the entire line, the Valley Line is expected to serve more than 100,000 commuters daily,[13] nearly matching the current Capital Line and Metro Line in terms of capacity and ridership.

 

[The_Cat]

Sign at the Davies LRT Station:

 

[Stevey_G]

 

[Edmcowboy11]

Well based off of TransEd's record with concrete work, I'm not surprised this is happening. I've seen so many pieces of concrete have to be replaced it's ridiculous. Over the past few weeks alone I've seen so many simple bits of concrete such as curbs and sidewalks being broken up and replaced. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, fool me dozens and dozens of time, what the fu..!!!
All their excuses are just that, excuses for continual substandard work.

 

[IanO]

QA/QC anyone?

 

[cliffapotamus]

Not official word from Transed, but a qualified person giving an idea of challenges and timelines.
Structural Issues on Edmonton's LRT Line Could Add 6 Months to Timeline: Engineer
I wonder what Marigold is doing to respond to this. They've already formed 1 column in the same shape as these Transed columns; depending on how much they reviewed the design before using it, the Marigold column may be prone to the same issues.

 

[The_Cat]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1558058381050490887

 

[The_Cat]

I wonder if the curves in the tracks have some impact on the forces of the towers. For example, a track curving left could have a train applying slightly greater force on the right side of the track, and possibly more force on the right side of the tower below.

 

[mcr]

Not official word from Transed, but a qualified person giving an idea of challenges and timelines.
Structural Issues on Edmonton's LRT Line Could Add 6 Months to Timeline: Engineer
I wonder what Marigold is doing to respond to this. They've already formed 1 column in the same shape as these Transed columns; depending on how much they reviewed the design before using it, the Marigold column may be prone to the same issues.

I'm far from an expert on this, but I would suspect the issue is less in the shape of the piers, but in the quality of the concrete work & materials. A "Y" shaped pillar is pretty standard practice. Hopefully Marigold is working to different specs, or at least checking in with TransEd as to what went wrong.

 

[EtoV]

At this point, in future lines the engineers just need to copy whatever design they used in Vancouver for the raised skytrain sections. I don't recall any of the newer lines running into these types of issues, and with the seizmic issues need to account for a lot more. It should be easier and cheaper to build the same system here, even accounting for slow load and the freeze/ thaw conditions.

 

[Pro.N]

I'm far from an expert on this, but I would suspect the issue is less in the shape of the piers, but in the quality of the concrete work & materials. A "Y" shaped pillar is pretty standard practice. Hopefully Marigold is working to different specs, or at least checking in with TransEd as to what went wrong.

I'm sort of on the same boat here. Not an expert, but I have ordered a fair amount of concrete products through my work (structural and non-structural), and there seems to be something off about the "thermal expansion" reasoning they are giving. Concrete is such an engineered product. Maybe they ordered the wrong slump and or missed some additives or something? Having issues with 40% of your piers kinda seems like a major supply issue. Would be interesting to get a deeper look at the details regarding the issues.

Does anyone know how inspection/oversight works on a P3 like this? Id assume that the city should have some type of QA/QC/Inspection process? I'm pretty sure the City even employs concrete testers in their roadways division.

 

[edmontonidiot]

I'm sort of on the same boat here. Not an expert, but I have ordered a fair amount of concrete products through my work (structural and non-structural), and there seems to be something off about the "thermal expansion" reasoning they are giving. Concrete is such an engineered product. Maybe they ordered the wrong slump and or missed some additives or something? Having issues with 40% of your piers kinda seems like a major supply issue. Would be interesting to get a deeper look at the details regarding the issues.

Does anyone know how inspection/oversight works on a P3 like this? Id assume that the city should have some type of QA/QC/Inspection process? I'm pretty sure the City even employs concrete testers in their roadways division.

I'm curious too. I work in oil and gas, and have worked on several projets and turnarounds that went way off the rails. Usually, it's mismanagement in oil and gas, not saying that it's the case here. I was working a turnaround in Fort Sask last year, and a client I was working for fired 40% of their QC's in the middle of the contract due to 'performance'. A four week turnaround turned into 8 because there was no manpower. Crazy.

 

[awstott]

I'm sort of on the same boat here. Not an expert, but I have ordered a fair amount of concrete products through my work (structural and non-structural), and there seems to be something off about the "thermal expansion" reasoning they are giving. Concrete is such an engineered product. Maybe they ordered the wrong slump and or missed some additives or something? Having issues with 40% of your piers kinda seems like a major supply issue. Would be interesting to get a deeper look at the details regarding the issues.

Does anyone know how inspection/oversight works on a P3 like this? Id assume that the city should have some type of QA/QC/Inspection process? I'm pretty sure the City even employs concrete testers in their roadways division.

Living just off 66 street near the 38 Ave stop I've been watching a lot of the construction on this line and the amount of concrete they have replaced it ridiculous - be it something as simple as curbs and sidewalks, to sections of the track bed, to the across the whitemud, to the 3 sections of the elevated track bed. Watching the trucks I believe they mostly used the same supplier for most of the concrete - Rolling Mix Concrete. The odd thing is there was a QC truck from Rolling Mix on site for most of the pours so why was there so many issues? Some of the curb stuff was PRM (Park Ready Mix - assuming a division of Park Paving).

I really wish we could submit a FOIP request to Transed and find out just how many tons (or is cubic yards a better measure?) of concrete was replaced.

 

[The_Cat]

It seemed odd that some of the sidewalks were replaced.

 

[IanO]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1557822717650276353