(The following article by Susan Voyles was posted on the Reno Gazette-Journal website on December 7.)
RENO, Nevada — About 1,600 feet of the trench floor and 600 feet of wall has been poured for the Reno Transportation Rail Access Corridor, a 2.2 mile-long long trench being built through downtown Reno.
Freezing cold and snow set the project back a few days in the past few weeks. But the $282 million project still is on time and on budget, said Dante Pistone, spokesman for Granite Construction Co., the contractor.
“We lose a day here or there due to weather. But we are still on schedule,” he said.
John MacIntyre, the city’s downtown project coordinator, agreed the project is on track. “We have not encountered any kind of situation that was unexpected,” he said.
A prehistoric village was discovered on the west end of the project.
“We knew we had the likelihood of archaeological finds,” McIntyre said. “We handled those per protocol in place.”
Granite faces a Thanksgiving deadline to have the trench open to trains. Since April 13, trains have been routed onto a temporary track called a “shoofly” through downtown.
When completed, the trench will have 11 bridges over it to carry street and pedestrian traffic. The trench will have an average depth of 33 feet and a width of 54 feet.
Project manager Ron Dukeshier said the hardest part will be in the heart of downtown where the ground water is closer to the surface, and there are larger buildings that need more support.
Concrete is being poured at the east and west ends of the project. The floor ranges from 2 to 3 1/2 feet thick. More concrete is being poured to seal out the ground water where needed, in slabs 3 to 5 feet thick.
While the walls are going up, digging at other sections of the trench continues and is not expected to be finished until March.
It is the largest public works project the city has undertaken.