May 13, 2009

Pomerleau set to begin rehabilitation of Ottawa’s Alexandra Bridge

Work on the Alexandra Bridge is being done as part of the federal infrastructure package.

KORKY KOROLUK

correspondent

OTTAWA

Work is to begin about the end of this month on a major rehabilitation of the Alexandra Bridge, which crosses the Ottawa River between Ottawa and Gatineau, Que.

The contract, worth $35.2 million, was awarded several weeks ago to the Ottawa office of Pomerleau Inc., which is headquartered in Saint-Georges de Beauce, south of Quebec City.

Site supervision will be done by McCormick Rankin Corp., under a $1.5-million contract.

The start-up announcement was made recently by John Baird and Lawrence Cannon, both Ottawa-area cabinet ministers in the federal government.

At the same time, they announced that further work is being planned for the nearby Chaudière Bridge, which is to be fully re-opened on May 15, following repairs to two of its masonry arches.

The work on the Alexandra Bridge has been in the planning stages for several years, and is being done now as part of the federal stimulus package.

The bridge is a cantilevered steel truss structure, and was originally built for the CPR in 1898-90 by Ottawa Interprovincial Bridge Company. The work planned includes replacing or refurbishing a lot of the steel, as well as reinforcement of the concrete piers and replacement of the concrete deck.

The work will be phased so the bridge is never entirely closed, although traffic flows will be impeded somewhat. The project is to be complete by the fall of 2011.

Since the bridge is a local landmark, its appearance won’t be changed.

Although its main purpose was to serve the CPR, the original structure had a track for trolley service, as well as a lane for carriage traffic. In the 1950s it was upgraded to carry vehicular traffic as well, and when passenger train service to the downtown Union Station ended in 1966, the rail tracks were taken up. The bridge has been heavily used since for motor vehicles as well as thousands of pedestrians and cyclists every day.

It was first called simply the Interprovincial Bridge, but in 1901, a year after it opened, it was renamed the Royal Alexandra Bridge after the then-queen. Both names are still in common use.

It was also announced that more testing, analysis and planning will be done to determine the extent of both mid-term and long-range repairs that will likely be needed on the Chaudière Bridge.

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