Engineering companies work on transit lines in Toronto, Edmonton and Ottawa

Cities across Canada are seeing their transit systems extended  as projects start to get under way. In Toronto, Metrolinx announced that they had selected a group to design, build and finance a three-kilometre rail line that is a key part of the rail link from downtown Toronto to Pearson International Airport. The selected AirLINX Transit Partners includes Aecon Construction, Dufferin Construction, and AECOM as the consulting engineers. The line will branch off the Weston GO Georgetown corridor and proceed to a new passenger station at Terminal 1. Construction is to begin in 2012.

SNC-Lavalin in a 50/50 joint venture with Graham Infrastructure has won a $300-million contract for the city of Edmonton’s North Light Rapid Transit project. The consortium, known as North Link Partnership, will provide construction management services, labour, equipment and testing and commissioning services. The North LRT is a 3.3 kilometre extension from the city hall’s Churchill Station to Grant MacEwan University, the Royal Alexandra Hospital and Kingsway Shopping Mall. It will terminate at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology campus and eventually link to a service line north to the city of St. Albert. The initial stage involves building a 700-metre underground tunnel from the Churchill station, while the rest of the line is at grade.

In Ottawa, a joint venture involving Morrison Hershfield, STV Canada Consulting, URS Canada and Jacobs Associates (Capital Transit Partners) is completing the preliminary engineering phase of the $2.1 billion, 12.5-kilometre Ottawa Light Rail Transit project. The first phase involves tunneling three kilometres under the downtown. The Ottawa LRT project will be one of the first in North America to convert portions of an existing bus rapid transit to light rail. The city has advanced the schedule for the project, moving the proposed opening date to spring 2018.