February 26, 2010

GOVERNMENT OF B.C.

Plans for the new interchange show how access to Victoria’s airport will be improved.

FEATURE | Roadbuilding

Victoria’s new airport interchange to be built in a roundabout way

SHANNON MONEO

correspondent

VICTORIA, B.C.

After years of lobbying, a major interchange, complete with two large roundabouts, is being constructed to improve access at Victoria International Airport.

Fast-moving traffic heading to the airport from Victoria on the busy Pat Bay Highway has for years, accessed the airport by making a left-hand turn onto McTavish Road.

At times, the turning lane would exceed its capacity, forcing vehicles to wait in the left passing lane, a dangerous situation, said Richard Paquette, Victoria International Airport’s CEO.

After leaving the airport, vehicles, including big tour buses, were forced to turn left onto McTavish at an uncontrolled intersection, again making for risky travel.

The $24-million project, which broke ground in late November, will feature two large, and one small, roundabouts, interchange overpass, pedestrian overpass, new roads and major expansion of transit facilities.

The Pat Bay Highway (also known as Highway 170), will get 1.02 km of upgrades and 1.8 km of new highway ramps.

Local roads, including McTavish, will see 1.5 km of reconstructed and new roads.

“This project is high on the list of what we want to see,” Paquette said.

Another of the many projects being funded by the $4-billion federal Infrastructure Stimulus Fund, the federal $10.5-million contribution comes with the condition that the interchange must be finished by March 2011.

The B.C. government also kicked in $10.5 million and the Victoria Airport Authority contributed $3 million.

While the largest contract for the major interchange work won’t be awarded until March, a handful of companies have started preliminary work.

In July, Richmond-based Urban Systems began designing, what design manager Rod Friesen described as an innovative project.

The two large roundabouts planned for each side of the Pat Bay Highway will be a rare sight, he said.

Common in the U.K., Australia and parts of the U.S., he was aware of only a couple of large roundabouts in Canada.

But there’s going to be more of the circular byways.

And there are compelling reasons why.

Vehicles travel at a slower speed through a roundabout and when there’s a collision, contact is often a glancing blow, not a potentially deadly T-bone event.

For the last couple years, a small roundabout on the way to the airport replaced what was a dangerous intersection.

In addition to designing the roundabout, Urban Systems is drafting bridge, utility, landscape and drainage plans, with tenders for work going out in mid-February, Friesen said.

The biggest challenge is the time constraint associated with federally funded infrastructure projects.

This is why wick drains are being installed by Edmonton-based Nilex to speed up consolidation of the soil where the interchange overpass will be built.

The soft, underlying clay soil requires pre-loaded fill.

Without wick drains, it could take up to five years for consolidation of that soil, said Brad Zaworksi, a Nilex project manager.

Instead, 6,000 vertical wick drains will be placed about every 1.5 metres in a 60,000-metre lineal space, cutting consolidation time to four to six months, Zaworski said.

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