Pivotal to Vancouver-Whistler’s 2010 Winter Games bid was the
commitment to upgrade the Sea-to-Sky Highway – a busy, serpentine,
two-lane highway that’s the only link between the two locations. It is
famous for its beauty and infamous for its slow traffic and about 400
accidents a year.
With sheer rock faces on one side and a steep
plunge to the ocean and an active rail line on the other side, work
crews are living the old adage of being “between a rock and a hard
place”. And, with 65 Mechanically Stabilized Earth (MSE) walls to build
in 100 km (62 mi), AIL’s engineering and technical support teams have
been perched right out there with them.
The challenges extended well beyond the treacherous terrain.
Beyond the steep geographical constraints that required the road to be widened by up to 10 m (32' 10") where there had only been air before, crews also had to navigate a number of other issues including: working around the clock to take advantage of lower traffic volumes; stopping up to 14,000 vehicles a day for a maximum of 20 minutes at a time; having only the narrow road shoulder to stockpile materials on, and; a drop-dead schedule that commanded fast-paced, synchronized deliveries to complete this four-year, $775 million mega-project well before the Games.
» Find out more about Vist-A-Wall MSE Structural Wall Systems