Photo: Commuters hustle past the transit center construction site. Credit: J. Deseo/SSP.
Here’s the good news: Some of the construction work at Silver Spring’s transit-center site is cooking with oil. The bad news: The heavy lifting is still to come.
According to a newsletter from the county’s department of general services, crews slaving in the sand pit have replaced utility lines that cross the site outside the Silver Spring Metro station. That includes phone, gas and sewage lines, plus a fat Pepco duct bank (whatever that is).
Sticking with the up side, crews wrapped work on temporary erosion-control gear, including storm-water management ponds near the corner of Colesville Road and Wayne Avenue. They also tested the bedrock beneath all that sand to determine how deep in the ground the transit center’s foundation has to go, the newsletter explained.
Now the bad news. Excavation, blasting (that’s right — I said blasting) and installation of supporting structures are planned for the fall, the newsletter read. Crews also will put up a large retaining wall next to the MARC and Red Line tracks, though the newsletter did not explain why it was needed.
Construction on the transit center began one year ago, with work expected to roll for at least two years. A time-lapsed video shot from a nearby building and posted on YouTube showed machinery moving dirt between June and early September, but not much else.
County managers for the transit center project did not respond to emails requesting comments on the video or the progress of construction.
Video courtesy of YouTube user obz3rv3r.
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They did blasting when they built the huge Discovery Center (so I am told). My main workplace is right across the street from that. Employees used to watch, hoping chunks of rock didn’t go sailing into the air and coat office furniture with broken glass.
As cool as that might have been, that did not happen.
The bedrock is throughout downtown SS and one of the reasons tunneling the PL was considered cost-prohibitive.
I just hope they do it as they did the high-rise they put on 410 and schedule it same time each day with lots of warning. We are stressed out enough without surprise explosions throughout our days.
At the rate they’re going this should be all ready to go by 2020! Someone should set that video to Benny Hill music.
Wait a minute, there’s still more work to do?? I thought they were finished with the transit center/giant sandpit. Certainly looks good to me, let’s have the ribbon-cutting ceremony!
I would love to see the Greyhound and Metro buses navigate those sand pits. Let’s have a crash derby!
You think blasting is bad? Hah. Try multiple piledrivers banging at the bedrock 8 hours a day for months — that’s what the Argent condos in S. Silver Spring did. Clearly it was not the smartest plan, nor the lowest-impact on us long-suffering neighbors, so when the building across Blair Mill Road went up, they did blasting instead. It was once a day (2 p.m.) just about every day for, oh, a couple months? (I think that’s the same building Kathy J is referring to.) Blasting, on a regular schedule, is WAY WAY WAY better to live around, let me tell you. Though it’s quite anticlimactic to watch. They cover up the blast zone with a heavy tarp thing, and all you see is a little puff of dust.
Having once had an office next to a construction site with continuous pile driving, I know what “M” is talking about. However, I think whether they drive piles or blast is determined by conditions under the site. I don’t think they can drive piles through solid rock even if they wanted to.
Oooh, the blasting for the building on the corner of E-W Hwy and Blair Mill was entertaining. Every day at 2pm for weeks. Wooomp! Too bad I won’t be able to see the Transit Center blasts.
Maybe the guy who pulled together that time-lapsed video can document an explosion or two.
I have been told by people who were present for the blasting of the Discovery Building that the noise was pretty low-key, and they cover the area with dirt before they blast so all you get is a soft “thump” and nothing more than a large puff of dust.
The retaining wall along the railroad tracks is necessary because the three multi-level bus loops will be parallel to the tracks (the old single bus loop was parallel to Colesville). The lowest level (supposedly for Metrobus only) will be at the level of Colesville Road. They want to maximize the “real estate” at the bottom level, and the best way to facilitate that is to have a retaining wall close to the tracks instead of a 45 degree slope.
Re pile-driving vs. blasting, they already did quite a bit of pile-driving for about a week for the area below where the kiss and ride used to be. It was very distracting and blasting would be much more preferable for those of us near the work site. However, before they start blasting, it looks to me like they still have a lot more excavating to do.
The fact that county managers wouldn’t respond to Jennifer’s emails on “progress” of the construction seems curious to me. At the current snail’s pace of this project, I think completion will be in 4 years (summer, 2013), not 2. I hope I’m wrong on this.
Oh, good, more ungodly noises in downtown Silver Spring. Seriously, though, at 6:50 a.m. this morning the construction crew on Blair Mill road was dropping God knows what down metal chutes up a dozen or more stories, that the numerous residents nearby in the MICA condominiums, the Blairs, Rock Creek Springs, etc., might hear the racket. There is no end, no end whatsoever to the deafening roar, nor to the increasing unaffordability and decreasing quality of life.
There are now guys in Tyvek suits and respirators digging up what looks to be an underground conduit of some type. They are keeping the dust down with a water spray, bagging the material in plastic and putting it into dumpsters lined with plastic, so it must be some type of hazmat. Amusing thing is watching the supervisor with no protective gear on at all standing right next to the workers. At one point he was even hosing down the debris himself.
I see the guys in hazmat suits also. Perhaps it was the discovery of some kind of hazardous material that has been causing the delay in finishing the excavation. My guess is that they found mold.