McLaren MP4-12C: Drill Bits and Dynamite...Part Eighteen...The South Interchange

This will be mostly photos from various stages of construction of the South Interchange on Segment 1 of the Sea to Sky project. Because traffic needed to keep moving while the new sections of highway were built, temporary lanes were shifted back and forth to allow the contractor to do the required work. A section of road or concrete structure would get built in the area where traffic was moved from. When that was done, the traffic was moved over again to allow another part to be constructed. This required a lot of planning and teamwork to keep things on schedule.
This was the first time that I had worked so close to a very major highway. The drivers rushing to the ferries at Horseshoe bay, or zooming up to Whistler created new dangers that I had not encountered before. It soon was apparent that keeping myself and everyone else safe was going to be a full time job. We had people cursing at us from their cars, women yelling at us for harming Mother Nature, drunks coming into lane closures...pretty much the whole nine yards.

The South Interchange changed shape so often, and at times so radically that even the crews struggled to navigate through the detours and lane changes.

The South Interchange outlined...

The next few Lo-res photos are of Cut 1...which was right beside the traffic on the Upper Levels Highway. Cars and trucks either rushing to and from the ferries...or on the "Indy 500" route to and from Whistler.

Concrete walls going up to support a future overpass/tunnel structure....one of the many lane variations for live traffic in place

At the top of the photo, an abandoned on ramp from the old highway configuration

Concrete getting pumped to a new footing...the right hand lane is for traffic going north to Squamish and Whistler. The lanes going under Eagleridge overpass are for traffic to the ferry terminal.

this is a shot from approx.2000 feet up in the helicopter to get the whole South Interchange in the photo. You can see where the traffic has been pushed over to make room for construction work.

Bowen Island in the background and a BC ferry heading over to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island

Another concrete structure to support the new 4 lanes that will travel through the brand new overland route. Cut 4 in the upper right.

Eagleridge overpass and some very nice houses right across from the project. I have written about relations with the neighbors in another post

There is a pile of wood debris on the ground in Cut 4....this was trucked in from a new section of the road by 6 wheel drive dump trucks, it will get picked up and taken away by highway dump trucks

Right where that black car is parked is where we did a 9000 cubic meter blast....pretty much nerved me right out...if it would have went wrong...it could have easily hurled rocks at the expensive houses across the highway. Fortunately it went off without a hitch. In some lost shoebox...there is a video of the blast.