For quite a while now I've noticed some structures being built at a one corner of a little baseball park near the Queensway (for those not in Ottawa - our city's major/only thoroughfare) and have idly wondered what they were building. Then a couple of weeks ago my mother mentioned that they were going to be replacing 2 of the bridge decks along the 417, and were going to do it using 'bridge rapid replacement'. Basically they will build the decks at another location, close down the road for a day or two, tear out the old one, and truck the new one into place. Well, duh, it clicked about a week ago, that is what those new structures are. Next time I'm a passenger on the Queensway I'll try to snap off a few pics of them sitting there, new roads just waiting to be added.
Here is the diagram from the official docs describing the replacement:
People in Ottawa may have seen and wondered about the signs all over the Queensway letting you know that all on-ramps between Pinecrest and Bronson are going to be closed on the 11-12th of August, and that the entire Queensway is going to be shut down for the same time period, well guess what they'll be doing then?
Starting at 8pm on the 11th they will remove the old bridge and drive the new one into place. The whole process is supposed to take 15 hours and I guess the rest of the time they will be resurfacing and building sound barriers etc.
Rather than having a million or so people out to watch they've also provided a webcam, which will track the bridge movement:
http://islandparkcamera.com/eng.htm
and you can read about the entire project here: http://www.417queenswaybridges.ca/ Once this one is complete they will be doing the same thing to 5 more bridges (Carling to Clyde).
This I can't wait to see! There really isn't any sort of backout plan you can put in place once you tear up all 4 lanes of a city's major highway, let's hope they measured twice *g*