Toronto CityPlace Puente de Luz Bridge | ?m | ?s | Concord Adex | Francisco Gazitua

The final left started at 3:45am and took 40 minutes to place it on the north pier. It is welded down at the north end. Not sure if all the decking has been place and welded down where it was missing at the splice joints. I know the railing is.

The bridge was fully bolted at 5:30 am, with both cranes removing their support cables from the bridge.

The 350 Ton Mobile crane should have left the site by 9 am, as it only had a few weights to remove when left at 7. It will be a few days before the 600 is gone, as there is too much work to be done to take it apart.

The delay in the final lift was caused by GO on Friday when they requested the pad support not be end to end, but on an angle. The pad support for the 600 ton crawler only surface on Thursday, as GO felt the crane would cause damage to the road as well the tracks on either side of it. This was never part of the original plan for the erection.

Since the erectors could not obtain more pad supports on short noticed, they had to take the ones from the east side of the support pier and move them to the west side as the crawler moved east to west with the final section. The final section had to place on the ground so the pads could be moved and this took 1:20 hours.

With the delay of the move, the iron workers were able to get all the bolts in place for the small section and torque with the impact gun. The bolting of the small 75Ton section to the main section erected last month took 3 hours, which was twice as long to do the final splice. They were having a lot of problems getting it bolted in the first place and had to hammer drift pins in various places to get the holes to line up. I hope the hammer didn't keep many people awake as I could hear blocks away when I went waking after the final positioning took place?

Videos and photos maybe up by tonight, as I heading to bed after 50 hours of no sleep.

There will be a concrete deck on the bridge and it is to be pour in a week or two.

Opening is either at the end of November or December now and subject to weather and politics. Trying for the end of November at this time.

The City rule out stairs for the bridge, as there will be a snow clearing machine for the ramps and bridge. Sorry folks, but walking back and forth is the only way you are going to get across the bridge.
 
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Thanks for all the info drum118! Good for you for staying up for the entire thing. I don't think I could have lasted. I'm looking at it now from my balcony and it looks great. Can't wait till it's opened.
 
The City rule out stairs for the bridge, as there will be a snow clearing machine for the ramps and bridge. Sorry folks, but walking back and forth is the only way you are going to get across the bridge.

Thats not a good excuse for not having any steps whatsoever. Just to the east from the bridge, you have the Northern Linear Park underpass that goes under Spadina. They built a ramp AND stairs for that, so having stairs shouldn't be an issue for the bridge. The stairs are metal grates, so snow just goes right through them. There are also signs that say the steps are not cleared in the winter, which takes away any liability for accidents that may occur.

Theres no reason but $ as to why they cant put stairs here.

The bridge in its current configuration is pretty much useless to Cityplace, as most of the buildings are to the East of the bridge. For all those buildings, mine included, it doesn't make any sense to walk further West to access the bridge. Spadina is still more convenient. For buildings further West (Library District, TCHC, Quartz) you are already close enough to Bathurst, that its faster to just cross the Bathurst Street bridge than deal with both ramps. The only building that will see any sort of benefit from this bridge is Parade.
 
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The bridge in its current configuration is pretty much useless to Cityplace, as most of the buildings are to the East of the bridge.

Repeat after me: CityPlace is not finished!

The bridge is about halfway between Bathurst and Spadina. CityPlace will eventually fill all the land between Bathurst and Spadina. Bridge in middle of CityPlace. See?

By your logic, Parade, Quartz and the other holes in the ground not yet developed are also 'useless' to CityPlace.
 
Repeat after me: CityPlace is not finished!

The bridge is about halfway between Bathurst and Spadina. CityPlace will eventually fill all the land between Bathurst and Spadina. Bridge in middle of CityPlace. See?

By your logic, Parade, Quartz and the other holes in the ground not yet developed are also 'useless' to CityPlace.

Read the rest of my post. I mentioned Parade, Quartz, and the other projects. It would be faster for them to use Bathurst Street to cross the railway, than use the bridge, making it useless to them too.

The bridge is just about halfway between Bathurst and Spadina, (Aligning it with Draper Street would pretty much have made it bang on centre) but the ramps bring it way off centre, and closer to Bathurst Street.
 
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September 9 and 10 erection video cut down to 7 minutes in fast mode from over 1:5 hr.

Need to correct some timeline info.

Site meetings took place at 10:30 with close to 50 personal on hand and a sign that erection was going to start before 1 am time frame for the first section.

11:32 pm, the small section was started to be lifted by 600 ton crane to be handed off to 350 T crane.

12:24 am, the 350 ton crane start to lift the small 75 ton section into place and would support it until the whole bridge is done.

12:31 am, small section in place and bolting begins.

12:32 am, 600 ton start to lift and move final 200 Ton section.

3:09 am, final section starts to be lifted into position.

3:48 am, north end sitting on pier.

5:30 am, erection completed.

Large group of watchers on the north east side sitting on chairs and having a party, based on the mess I saw later on. Someone up on the roof of that low rise condo using flash and there was more than one person. Very small group on the south side all night.

As for the ramp location, it was not going to be dead centre regardless if the south ramp was on the east side. As stated to me by PCL, cannot please everyone with the ramp and I agree.
Photos up on Sunday. Enjoy as I threw something in at the end.
[video=youtube;e2Qn87gSvPM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2Qn87gSvPM[/video]
 
Pic taken Sept 10, 2011

c9MD8.jpg
 
Read the rest of my post. I mentioned Parade, Quartz, and the other projects. It would be faster for them to use Bathurst Street to cross the railway, than use the bridge, making it useless to them too.

The bridge is just about halfway between Bathurst and Spadina, (Aligning it with Draper Street would pretty much have made it bang on centre) but the ramps bring it way off centre, and closer to Bathurst Street.

Maybe they're trying to alleviate traffic from Bathurst St? It's not a very wide sidewalk especially if there's a lot of people crossing it. However I understand what you mean by useless. If they added stairs or some sort that leads east, it would allow passage for both east and west end. As it stands, people heading east would rather take Spadina to go north. Once Bathurst is open, people will probably take Bathurst to go west unless the sidewalk is packed.
 
The bridge connects Dan Leckie Way and Portland Street. This is where the ramps end. Seems sensible to me.

If you want to go north from Cityplace, between Bathurst and Spadina, Portland St. is your only option. Same for Dan Leckie Way for going south.
 
Speaking of this whole ramp thing, you have to assume one of the biggest challenges between now and opening day on this bridge will be getting some kind of pedestrian access finished and safe on the south side. The foot of the ramp is deep behind the hoarding that's screening off Parade West, TCHC Block 32 and TCHC Block 36 (Library District) sites right now, so it'll be interesting to see what sort of routing is opened by the time they want to cut the ribbon and whether it'll be over some permanent landscaping or be some sort of provisional alley. I have a hard time picturing the linear park being substantially finished all the way west from the current fenceline to the foot of the ramp in such a short timeframe, and that would require pushing the hoarding in pretty close to Parade West. Don't know if the construction folks would be any happier with threading an outlet down Dan Leckie between Parade and Block 32.
 
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Isn't Bathurst blocked west of Portland from Bremner making this bridge a huge convenience to those walking north and/or west from CityPlace?
 

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