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While Toronto residents have remained focussed on the challenging progress of the city’s most anticipated transit infrastructure project, the Eglinton Line 5 Crosstown, other LRT lines have been pushing through construction in the Greater Toronto Area. One of them, the Hurontario LRT, formally to be called the Hazel McCallion Line, remains on track to meet its 2024 completion target following the successful completion of a new underpass below the QEW. With construction continuing to proceed smoothly through Mississauga, the Metrolinx project can hold on to its hopes of avoiding the disappointment of delays that transit projects are often prone to - for now.
With an 18 kilometre route servicing 19 stations along Hurontario Street, the line promises improvements to the connections between local transit services in Peel Region. Specifically designed to elevate transit between the municipalities of Brampton and Mississauga, the LRT will offer four interchange stations that facilitate connections to GO Transit, MiWay, including the Mississauga Transitway, and Brampton Transit, including its ZUM services.
The project’s latest milestone took place over Halloween weekend, with the excavation of a new underpass below the QEW, east of and parallel to the existing Hurontario Street underpass. With a timeline of just 55 hours total to complete the task, a number of logistically complex procedures were required. The QEW was closed on the night of Friday the 28th, and work began immediately to begin the process of creating the new underpass, a process that can only be accomplished that quickly through the use of the push box system.
The push box is essentially a prefabricated concrete box with openings on both ends that is constructed on site for the purpose of creating a passage below the existing highway. Built above a flat concrete surface referred to as the launch pad, the push box is literally pushed into place as excavators carve out the berm below the highway in front of it. The entire 55 hour process was captured in the time-lapse video below.
By the morning of Monday the 31st, the push box had been set in place, and the segment of the QEW that was torn up had been repaved, allowing traffic to continue as usual. The diagram below shows the new alignment of traffic lanes where Hurontario Street interchanges with the QEW: the new underpass takes northbound lanes, while the Hurontario LRT will operate on reserved lanes where the old northbound lanes were. With the underpass completed, months of work are still required to lay the new lanes and modify the existing interchange on-and-off-ramps.
Another push box will be employed less than two kilometres south, at the LRT’s future terminal station, Port Credit, which also offers service to GO Transit’s Lakeshore West line and other MiWay services. In the image below, the push box can be seen to the left (south side) of the tracks. Here, the process of installing the box will be even more technical in this case, as daytime train service on the east-west tracks is required to continue without disruption.
UrbanToronto will continue to follow progress on this development, but in the meantime, you can learn more about it from our Database file, linked below. If you'd like, you can join in on the conversation in the associated Project Forum thread or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.
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