Glenmore Causeway Upgrades (Calgary)

ISL is currently engaged by the City of Calgary to provide complete detailed design, tender and construction administration services for the upgrading of Glenmore Trail between Crowchild Trail and 14 Street SW. This work, which is a cooperative project between Transportation Infrastructure and Water Resources, includes the removal and reconstruction of the Glenmore Causeway Bridge to achieve the joint objectives of accommodating medium-term traffic growth and upgrading to meet current flood management requirements for the Glenmore Reservoir. A new bridge, to accommodate traffic from northbound 14 Street merging onto westbound Glenmore Trail, has also been constructed on the north side of the Glenmore Causeway.

Glenmore Trail is the primary east-west expressway through the City of Calgary, and the segment across the Glenmore Reservoir is also part of the north-south Crowchilld Trail / 14 Street expressway route. As the only crossing of the Elbow River south of the downtown core and the main link in the City’s southwest bypass route, it is one of the most important road segments in the City’s transportation network. It currently carries some 140,000 vehicles per day, and the project is designed to accommodate growth to 200,000 vehicles per day. Its strategic importance in the regional transportation network has resulted in the need for comprehensive planning of construction staging and detours. The bridge reconstruction has been planned to ensure that all existing lanes are physically maintained for the duration of construction, and temporary lane closures have been restricted to nighttime periods in the project specifications.

In order to expedite construction, ISL rationalized the complex construction sequencing for the entire project early in the design process. This allowed the design team to identify critical path work items, and to advance design and tender of those elements to allow construction to occur simultaneously with the remainder of the detailed design. In this manner, the project has been ultimately divided into nine tender packages, which has required careful project management and construction administration to ensure that the work of the independent contractors is adequately coordinated and that all of the individual pieces fit into the “big picture”.

Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Completion: 2008

Contributing ISL Disciplines:

• Urban Roadway Engineering
• Transportation Planning
• Structural Engineering
• Water Resources Engineering