$154M new Saskatoon transit, snow management facility completed

Saskatoon's buses will have a new home in the new year.

Construction of the city's $154-million facility for Saskatoon Transit andsnow management services is complete.

The city announced it had completedthe new Civic Operations Centre on Tuesday, a little less than two years afterit broke ground in January 2015.

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The brand new450,000-square-foot bus barn will replace the existing 100-year-old transit facility in Caswell Hill.

Ready for transit growth

The building has 27 maintenance bays and storage for 224 buses, as well as a full body shop, paint booth and administrative offices.

The city said the new centre is big enough to accommodate its expected fleet expansion over the next 10 to 15 years.

"TheCivicOperationsCentreis a tremendous step forward for our transit operationsand for snow and ice management in our city," said Mayor Charlie Clark.

"Our transit operationsoutgrew the old bus barns long ago, and our staff have been making do in cramped facilities for many years."

City's first permanent facility for snow services

The 73-hectare site, near the CN Railway tracks and Valley Roadwest of Circle Drive, will also be home to the city's first permanent snow management facility.

It has the capacity to store up to one million cubic metres of snow on a concrete pad spanning about five-and-a-half hectares.

According to the city administration, melting snow willrun through an oil and grit separator and into a storm water pond.

"The melt water will then go through a series of specially designed baffle curtains before being discharged in a controlled fashion into the storm water system," said the city administration in a news release.

The P3 approach

Both Saskatoon Transit and the city's snow management services are expected to move into the new centre in January 2017.

The facility wascompleted through a public-private partnership (P3) agreement with Integrated Team Solutions.

"The P3 approach is expected to deliver value for taxpayer dollars equivalent to $92.3 million over the lifecycle of the facilities savings that could not have been achieved through a traditional Design-Bid-Build model," said the city in a news release.

It said PPP Canadacontributed$38.5 million to the project.