$30M Ottawa airport runway revamp heats up
Ian MacLeod, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: July 18, 2014, Last Updated: July 25, 2014 7:19 PM EDT
Eighty-five thousand tonnes of hot asphalt lands at the Ottawa airport next week.
The mammoth paving job is one of the final parts of a complex, $30-million reconstruction of the big, north-south runway 14/32, which measures more than three kilometres long and 60 metres wide.
A “shave-and-pave” asphalt milling was done in 2000. But this is the first major refurbishment of the 10,000-foot landing strip since 1951, the year prime minister Louis St. Laurent moved into 24 Sussex Dr.
Closed to air traffic since late May, the airport’s longest runway has been excavated and rebuilt with a new gravel base, lighting, wiring, conduits and a storm sewer line.
“These kinds of projects take an awful lot of co-ordination with the carriers, with the regulators,” says Krista Kealey, airport spokeswoman. “Then just simply having the work done is huge, especially when you’ve got an active airport.”
Now comes the really sticky part.
Workers with contractor R.W. Tomlinson begin laying a new asphalt surface on Monday, weather permitting.
When the neighbouring 8,000-foot runway 7/25 was reconstructed last year, workers put down an astonishing 9,000 tonnes of asphalt a day, says Ian Bell, the airport’s vice-president of operations and infrastructure. (The small 04/22 general aviation runway in the north field was reconstructed in 2010.)
In the meantime, big, bright X’s at each end of the disabled 14/32 strip warn off pilots who might somehow miss an air traffic controller’s landing instructions. Arriving and departing planes have been shifted to 7/25, giving residents on the north and south sides of the region a reprieve from the roar of jet engines.
Air passengers shouldn’t notice anything different when 14/32 reopens in late September. Airline pilots will.
“We’re basically taking a runway and rebuilding it to comply with the highest international standards … to increase the safety,” says Bell
Improvements will include:
- A “runway end safety area” or RESA will be installed at each end of the strip to stop out-of-control airliners. Major runways in Canada require a graded, unobstructed buffer zone extending at least 150 metres past the runway’s end for last-ditch emergency stopping. But the airport is doubling that length to 300 metres to meet the International Civil Aviation Organization’s minimum standard for emergency stopping zones, with which much of the world complies. Essentially a big sandbox made from compacted stone, a RESA can dramatically slow and stop a speeding jetliner barrelling off the end of a runway. It will be 100 metres wide and extend 240 metres from the end of the paved “runway strip”. The strip extends 60 metres from the runway’s thresholds. The east-west 7/25 runway, the airport’s main commercial runway, already has RESAs at each end;
- Two key taxiways, Delta and Lima, are being realigned to make it easier for big jets to enter and exit the runway;
- The runway’s drainage design, which had been a “crossfall” configuration sloping from left to right, is being re-profiled with a down-the-middle “centre crown” to direct rain and snow melt to shed equally in both directions. That will be especially helpful in winter. With the crossfall, run-off from melting snowbanks on the left side would sometimes refreeze on the runway as it drained to the right side.
- Next year, once the asphalt has sufficiently cured, the runway will be grooved to enhance drainage and reduce hydroplaning. The 7/25 runway was grooved last year, making Ottawa the only Tier 1 airport in Canada with a grooved runway, mandatory in the United States, says Kealey.
Runway 14/32 by the numbers
10,000 feet/3,049 metres
Length of runway 14/32
$30 million
Cost of major reconstruction
85,000
Estimated tonnes of asphalt need for resurfacing
300 x 150-metres
Length and width of new runway end safety areas
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...evamp-heats-up
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