Scott Road Arterial Upgrade and Realignment

Location: Surrey, BC
Overview
The City of Surrey retained Binnie to provide full consulting services including project management, preliminary and detailed design, survey, inspection and contract administration. The work was to incorporate a number of recommendations made in an earlier Value Engineering study. The section of Scott Road between 103A Avenue and 96 Avenue was a two-lane facility with an additional climbing lane for southbound traffic to accommodate the steep 14% grade. The work involved upgrading to a four-lane divided arterial with a southbound climbing lane at a maximum grade of approximately 10%. The goal of the upgrade is to improve road geometry, safety and capacity and bring Scott Road up to City of Surrey arterial road standards.

The preliminary design was selected as one of the early test examples for a Road Safety Audit by ICBC. Detailed design development addressed, and where feasible incorporated, related recommendations from the audit.

Key design concerns included the need to reduce previously excessive grades on the steep escarpment down to a maximum 10% profile. This process required major cutting and filling. The compressible soils in the fill areas required significant pre-loading, settlement monitoring and the use of lightweight fill. Design was complicated by the presence of an old, active critical GVRD trunk sanitary sewer, piled in the area of the road fill. A bridge structure was required to minimize loading effects on this sewer and work scheduling needed to be coordinated with GVRD as they planned to replace the old sewer with a new piled trunk sewer prior to bridge construction.

Works included diverting peak storm water flows from Scott Creek to a new trunk sewer located along the new road alignment. Environmental mitigation and habitat compensation was necessary at Scott Creek crossing. We examined various earth-retaining walls and structures to minimize riparian encroachment. And we coordinated BC Hydro relocations and an at-grade Southern Railway rail crossing.

The design and construction of this project was divided into four phases due to funding parameters, time constraints and traffic management including the need to maintain existing Scott Road traffic during construction. Sequential tendering of construction contracts and critical path scheduling were required for this multi-year project. Partial funding for the project was from the sale of provincial and city-owned lands. The total value of the works is approximately $11 million. The work was started in 1999 and is ongoing.