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With many contractors working simultaneously on different portions of greater Vancouver's second rapid transit line, the $1.17-billion project is coming together with amazing speed.
One year after construction began last October, more than 8,000 metres of elevated guideway and the 600-metre dual guideway tunnel for the 20.5-kilometre SkyTrain Millennium Line had been completed.
Extending north from Columbia Station in New Westminster, the new line curves west through south Coquitlam and across Burnaby. Running through the existing Burlington Great Northern Railway cut, the new SkyTrain guideway crosses under the current line at Commercial Drive in east Vancouver and continues on just past Clark Drive to Vancouver Community College.
While municipalities and a new regional transit authority, TransLink, have wrangled with the provincial government over details of the new line, designers and contractors have been striving to meet a demanding fast-track schedule set by the government's owner agency, Rapid Transit Project 2000.
That timetable calls for the Columbia Station to Braid Station section of the new line to begin operation late next year with the rest opening in two stages in 2002. Since installation of track, linear induction motors, electricals and train control systems requires about a year, guideway construction must be expedited.
Although some extra design and construction time was gained by environmental approval delays, RTP 2000 engineering director Meiric Preece said the Millennium Line is being built faster than similar transit projects at New York's JFK International Airport and in Seattle, Wash.
"The JFK project started before we did, they will finish after us and their line is shorter," said Preece. "(Puget) Sound Transit expects to take three or four years to design and build their new light rail line."
The contractor building the largest portion of the Millennium Line, the SAR Transit Joint Venture, is using an erection technique never used in B.C. before. Instead of casting whole spans of elevated SkyTrain guideway, SAR Transit is precasting about 5,800 concrete segments.
SAR Transit, a joint venture of SC Infrastructure Inc., (SCI), Agra Monenco Inc. and Rizzani de Eccher Inc., is constructing most of the elevated sections of the Millennium Line -- nearly 17 kilometres -- under a $209-million design-build contract.
Enormous custom-built steel trusses straddle the guideway columns and individually lift a dozen segments...