Client Need

Major Mackenzie Drive in the City of Vaughan, York Region, has been undergoing extensive road widening. Our client, Powerstream, needed the existing distribution power line along a 5-kilometre stretch of Major Mackenzie Drive, between Islington and Weston Road, to be relocated to allow for the road widening project.

DPM’s Role

DPM Energy was retained to design for the installation of the double circuit 27.6kV line and to obtain all the necessary municipal permits.

The relocation project was not without its own unique set of challenges:

Protected Areas

Line routing passed through two protected areas, which required special permitting from the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) with regard to waterways and animal migration routes.

Design Considerations

An approximately 2-kilometre section of the line route required the line to be installed prior to grading, which meant that the design had to consider the impact of cut and fills up to 6 metres.

Terrain Considerations

Because this line traverses undulating terrain, which was being graded to a common level for the road after the pole installation, the poles had to be supported with steel guy wires to handle the cut and fills proposed by the contractor and to deal with the typical wind and ice loading requirements for the region. These calculations were performed using SpidaCalc, which is a finite element analysis software package. Poles up to 90 feet, Class H3, had to be used.