QEW Widening Starts In Burlington, With HOV Lanes Opening Closer To 2029

Construction has started on the stretch of QEW that backs up daily between Guelph Line and North Shore Boulevard. The contractor, Alliance Verdi Civil Inc., puts the job at $52 million across roughly 5.7 kilometres of the corridor.

The work covers median HOV lanes, bridge widening and rehabilitation, pavement reconstruction, drainage, lighting and traffic management systems. The bridges at Brant Street, Fairview Street and the CN Rail corridor all get rehabilitated and widened while traffic keeps moving over them.

The part worth knowing if you drive it: the HOV lanes will not open until closer to 2029, and building them out takes a separate contract that has not been awarded yet. What is happening now is the groundwork. Traffic gets pushed to the shoulder while crews widen from the inside and put up a concrete barrier wall connecting the bridges and the road.

Between 25 and 50 workers are on the job round the clock. Alliance Verdi has worked on the Burlington Canal Lift Bridge and is the contractor on the Burlington Skyway, which chief estimator Lawrence Rigatti says has about two more months to run. That work has been done at night apart from 20 lane closures on the bridge itself.

Rigatti's own summary of the timing was "better late than never." His advice for anyone driving the corridor on a weekend was to plan accordingly.