Army of workers get bridge into shape
A Beast of a job: ’This is going to look pretty spectacular’
An army of ironworkers, engineers and traffic controllers were on hand as the new Johnson Street Bridge took shape Saturday, with the counterweight and one of two steel rings now in place.
Perched on a barge, a giant crane dubbed the Dynamic Beast carefully manoeuvred the 160-tonne lower counterweight onto columns. The counterweight, which helps the bridge move up and down, didn’t immediately align with the bolt holes, so hydraulic jacks were used to line it up, said Jonathan Huggett, the City of Victoria’s project director for the bridge.
About 2:30 p.m., a bit behind schedule, one of the 290-tonne rings was lifted, turned upright and set atop the counterweight.
“The sheer scale of moving big pieces of steel around, I admire the skill of the ironworkers,” Huggett said.
Victoria Fire Department lent the city its drone so staff could post videos of the process online.
Looking at the solitary ring from the Songhees walkway, Huggett was struck by how dramatically the cityscape will change once the new bridge is complete.
“You know what strikes me as really interesting: Boy, is it much smaller and sleeker than the existing bridge,” he said.
“This is going to look pretty spectacular.”
Huggett said he worked on the Skytrain in Metro Vancouver in the 1980s, a major project that built up over years. In contrast, the major components of the bridge will be erected in the span of 24 hours.
“All of a sudden, in the space of one day, you put in those rings in and go: ‘Wow, that’s different,’ ” he said.
Huggett said he stopped to talk to some of the people who gathered to watch the process unfold. “They were all very interested, very excited. I think everybody’s pumped up.”
The existing bridge was closed to traffic for about four hours and, as a result, traffic along Bay Street was snarled for much of the day. There will also be some traffic closures today between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. as the second ring is lifted into place.
If all goes to plan, the Dynamic Beast and the barge carrying it will return to Vancouver tonight. The crane is expected to return in February to lift the main span into place.
The bridge is set to open to traffic in March 2018, after which the blue Johnson Street Bridge will be disassembled.
The bridge is being constructed at a cost of $105 million, up from the original estimate of $63 million in 2009.