A bridge so far, but not very far
City staff mum on long-awaited, oft-delayed pedestrian overpass crossing Airport Parkway
By Kelly Egan, OTTAWA CITIZEN, October 1, 2013
Photo: Hunt Club Community Organization president John Sankey has been tracking the progress of construction of the Airport Parkway pedestrian overpass for at least two years now. It’s way behind schedule and he can’t get any answers from the city.
There was no one at the site Tuesday morning. Probably there is no one there Wednesday, a safe guess at the Bridge Over Troubled Waiting.
“There was nothing done, whatsoever, between November and May,” says John Sankey, a retired resident who has watched this spot like a hawk for a couple of years now.
The bicycle-pedestrian overpass crossing the Airport Parkway was supposed to join the populated part of Hunt Club to the retail and transit hub at South Keys. A highly useful idea. It was also to be a “gateway” for visitors heading into town from the airport, a cool design feature that would serve as an initial signature for a capital city striving to look modern.
Well, a little bridge is now an uncompleted saga. It is about two years behind the initial schedule, obviously over-budget, and the subject of ridiculous secrecy.
Even Coun. Maria McRae can’t seem to find out when the project, first budgeted at $5.3 million, is to be finished.
“I’ve been pushing staff to get a completion date, even a substantially complete date,” she said this week. “And until more cement is poured, they won’t tell me.”
This must be frustrating?
“Hah!” she responded. “If I could find a word that means uber-frustrated. I can’t begin to describe how frustrating it is.”
A brief timeline. It was conceived as early as 1994, approved by Ottawa council in January 2010, had a sod-turning in June 2011, had an optimistic completion date of November 2011, had the first attempt at a tower knocked down in May 2012, had the tower rebuilt by October 2012, and had the forms for the main deck done in summer 2013.
The ramps and pathways appear done, but the 120-metre long deck has yet to be poured, and the soaring support bars/cables been yet to be installed. (The tower is about 30 metres high and has a stylized version of Ottawa’s O logo in a cut-out.)
Hell has no fury like a retired man of science with time on his hands. Sankey, also president of the Hunt Club Community Organization, has kept a log and photo diary of the project, which is posted on the group’s website.
Hardly to be forgotten, too, is the death of Kenny Dagenais, 26, in October 2007 as he tried to cross the parkway at this spot, with its 80 km/h speed limit and a steady flow of racing drivers.
“Every time I walk down the street I get stopped by people asking, ‘What the blankety-blank is going on with the city?’ ” said Sankey. “We simply don’t know because nothing is happening. The city is compounding it by refusing, point blank, to tell anybody anything.”
The contractor is Louis W. Bray Construction. It referred questions to the city.
It was obvious early on that the concrete work on the first tower was a failure.
“I remember driving by in October 2011 and looking at the concrete and thinking ‘There’s something wrong with this.’ You could see it falling off some days,” said McRae.
There was delay, she said, while a third-party was brought in to examine what went wrong with the concrete job.
Sankey, who is familiar with construction work, guesses the first botched effort cost somebody more than $1 million.
The city generally writes contracts so they contain clauses that impose financial penalties on work that isn’t completed on time. It is believed such a clause is present in this case.
It would also be easy to believe there are lively, if not legal, discussions ongoing among Bray, the city, the bridge design company and the concrete supplier about how this financial mess is to be sorted out.
No one really wants to address the matter, but how else to explain the weeks of inactivity?
Sankey says little work has been done in the past year. He’s concerned Bray might have walked away from the job altogether.
McRae says she’s been told that a final engineering review is going on before the deck concrete is poured. A proper curing, estimated Sankey, will take about nine weeks.
In other words, it’s beginning to sound like the bridge won’t open in 2013. “We’re all just frustrated to the end of our teeth,” said Sankey.
McRae, meanwhile, is so frustrated she’s started to copy city manager Kent Kirkpatrick on any emails she’s getting from area residents.
Like this beauty, from constituent Christine McLaughlin:
“I have just waved goodbye to my family from the UK. This is their third visit in 2½ years and they are utterly astonished that in this time, the footbridge is still NOT finished. Needless to say, it is a running joke for all of us in the Plante/Cahill/Owl area.
“For God’s sake what are they building?? A new bridge over the English Channel??”
To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-726-5896, or email kegan@ottawacitizen.com">kegan@ottawacitizen.com
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