Count on a big lane change the next time you drive toward Victoria through the McKenzie interchange project.
In what the Ministry of Transportation is calling a “major milestone,” traffic is being detoured slightly to allow work to lower the highway to begin.
As of Wednesday night, traffic is making its way through the McKenzie Avenue/Admirals Road/Trans-Canada Highway intersection via temporary on-and off-ramps linked to Admirals Road.
“It starts to enable us to lower Highway 1, which is the key part of what we need to do in the project, in really freeing up that workspace for us,” said Janelle Staite, deputy regional director for the Ministry of Transportation.
“You’re really going to see a lot of earthwork start happening in terms of lowering that highway.”
The highway going through the interchange will ultimately be up to seven metres lower than it is now.
“Admirals and McKenzie are both staying at the same grade and having a bridge, essentially, connecting them,” Staite said. “And then traffic’s going underneath that.
“So you can think about how much of the highway you need to lower for that.”
The central interchange support is also starting to take shape and will increase in size over the next six to nine months.
The $85-million interchange project began in late 2016 and is due for completion in late 2019.
“So we’re 14-ish months out still, but certainly making good headway from when this project got underway,” Staite said.
About 85,000 vehicles travel through the area daily, and traffic has kept moving during construction. When a northbound detour was put in place in August, Staite said staff was there to check for problems and to look at the need to tweak signal operations to help keep things flowing.
The same thing will happen with the new detour, she said
“We will have people out on site and they will be watching to see how is it working, how is it working through the morning peak periods.”
Staite said they are hoping for a “seamless adjustment” to the detour.
“It takes a few days for drivers to get familiar with the changes because we’re creatures of habit, and we know that Highway 1 is a commuter corridor so people are used to one thing,” she said.
“As folks adjust into next week, I think it should be running very smoothly.”
The project is expected to drop commute times by up to 20 minutes.
Sound walls continue to be put in throughout the site to help reduce noise for nearby homes and schools. The impact of previous blasting has drawn some complaints.
