TORONTO, ON
Gardiner Expressway Rehabilitation
It is one of the most heavily travelled structures in the City of Toronto.
Constructed between 1956 and 1965, the Gardiner Expressway is travelled by over 50,000 trucks and cars on average each day making it one of the most heavily travelled structures in the City of Toronto.
The Gardiner Expressway Rehabilitation Project extends 1.15 km from Jarvis street to Cherry street, including the York/Bay/Yonge Westbound off-ramp, Sherbourne Westbound off-ramp, and the Jarvis Eastbound on-ramp.
Entuitive provided construction engineering support for the fabrication and installation of 412 unique prefabricated superstructure components, which included the production of shop drawings for the precast deck panels, the design of formwork and access platforms, and the specification of removal and installation procedures.
The project involved the replacement of all the bearings, steel girders, and concrete deck that make up the bridge superstructure.
PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS
CLIENT
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ARCHITECT
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OUR ROLE(S)
Construction Engineering Consultant
SIZE
66 spans, totalling 1.15 km
BUDGET
$248 M
MARKET (OFFICE)
TORONTO
KEY CONSIDERATIONS
Challenge One
Engineering a construction method to allow rapid removal of existing superstructure components, and erection and installation of new prefabricated components. The contractor’s preference was to use mobile cranes to complete all removal and erection work, in order to avoid the higher costs of more specialized equipment and to maximize flexibility on the job site. It is rare for mobile cranes to be set up and operated on a bridge structure, as the weight of a crane plus the load it is lifting will far exceed the design live loads for bridges. To add to the challenge, the schedule required cranes to be set up both on the existing structure and on newly installed superstructure components.
Solution One
Entuitive enabled the use of cranes for all removals and erections by individually analyzing both the existing and new structure under more than 3,000 crane load cases. This work was made possible through the development of a parametric model of the structure, which facilitated both the analysis and the drawing production. Sixty-six removal and erection plans were detailed, using cranes with capacity between 145 and 200 tonnes to replace 1.15 km of the Gardiner Expressway.
GALLERY
