OTTAWA — The Ministry of Transportation of Ontario plans to keep three lanes open in each direction during the expansion of Highway 417 between Nicholas Street and the split with Highway 174 in the east end.
During an information meeting Monday night at the Hampton Inn Ottawa Conference Centre, MTO officials said construction of the expansion — which is to take the 417 from three lanes to four in each direction in that stretch — would happen in two phases.
The first, starting this summer and continuing into 2014, will involve widening the outer portions of the highway. In the second stage, in 2014-15, traffic will be shifted outward to include the newly constructed sections to allow for completion of the widening towards the highway median.
To minimize the disruption caused by the expansion project, the MTO will use rapid replacement construction techniques to remove and replace bridges over the highway at Lees Avenue, Vanier Parkway and Belfast Road.
That method, which was used to replace bridges over the highway at Island Park, Clyde and Carling, allows for replacement during a single overnight closure of the highway after the new section is constructed nearby.
In the case of the Lees Avenue bridge, the situation will be a bit different. That bridge is scheduled to be removed in one night in the second half of 2014, but it won’t be replaced until a second night 10 or 12 weeks later. In the interim, Lees will be closed between the University of Ottawa entrance and Chapel Crescent.
David Lindensmith, the MTO’s project manager for the expansion, said Lees would have to be closed to provide enough space to build the new bridge.
The Queensway expansion will also allow the MTO to address a safety issue on that part of the highway by eliminating westbound 417 access onto St. Laurent Boulevard. The multi-lane change that is now possible has produced a high-collision stretch.
A study of 1,200 collisions from Nicholas to the split at Highway 174 from 2005 to 2009 found there were 0.96 collisions per million vehicle kilometres between Vanier Parkway and St. Laurent, where 0.6 would be typical for freeways in Ontario.
Drivers will instead access St. Laurent from Innes Road or from Aviation Parkway, leading to Ogilvie Road. Lindensmith said the future configuration in that spot “will resemble Highway 417 westbound in the vicinity of Highway 416 and Moodie Drive, where access to Moodie Drive is precluded from Highway 416, but access continues to be provided from Highway 417.”
Other significant parts of the project involve the “widening and rehabilitating the Southeast Transitway, Central Transitway and St. Laurent Boulevard bridges” and “widening and replacement of the bridge deck and beams of Hurdman’s Bridge over the Rideau River.”
Premier Dalton McGuinty announced the $200-million expansion project last June. At the meeting Monday night, residents of neighbourhoods near the affected areas came to pick through the details of which streets and ramps would be closed and for how long.
Source: The Ottawa Citizen