A NEW piling rig using a technique that cuts the amount of noise disturbance has signalled the start of major construction work on Greater Manchester’s Metrolink expansion.

The rig – in action at the site near Great Ancoats Street – began the creation of the concrete retaining walls of an underpass to be used by trams running beneath Great An-coats Street on the new Metro-link line to Droylsden, the first major engineering work of the £600 million Metrolink expansion project.

During work on the underpass, contractor MPact-Thales will move up to 20,000 cubic metres of soil and walls will be constructed using more than 400 concrete piles up to 1.5 metres in diameter and set 15 metres deep.

The reduced-disturbance technique involves a hollow-stemmed CFA being rotated into the ground to the required depth then, as the auger is with-drawn, plasticised concrete is pumped down the stem under balancing pressure to form a shaft of liquid concrete to ground level. A reinforced cage with welded spacers to centralise it within the pile bore is then inserted and secured.

MPact-Thales project director Bryan Diggins said: “We want to be good neighbours to people living and working alongside the new extensions, and our new method of piling cuts noise, dust and vibration.

“We are also looking into ways to recycle the spoil material to reduce lorry movements in the area.”
The initial phase of piling will take place over the next couple of months but construction work will continue in the Great Ancoats Street area for the next two years.

The new four-mile line to Droylsden will run through East Manchester, past the City of Manchester Stadium and the Velodrome. Eight new stops will be created along the route, which is due to open in spring 2012, with trams running to and from Manchester every six minutes.

The Metrolink expansion will also see trams to Media-City UK in Salford by next summer, to South Manchester by spring 2011, to Oldham Mumps the following autumn and to Rochdale by spring 2012.

Meanwhile, new customer information screens, CCTV and public address systems have come to seven stations in the Wigan and Bolton areas of Greater Manchester following a £600,000 Transport Infra-structure Fund investment by Greater Manchester Integra-ted Transport Authority.

In a project managed by Northern Rail, the new equipment has been installed at Bromley Cross, Daisy Hill, Farnworth and Lostock in Bolton, and Atherton, Hag Fold and Hindley in Wigan.

The TIF was set up eight years ago to improve public transport in areas of Greater Manchester not set to receive direct benefit from expansion of Metrolink, and will provide £3.5 million to Wigan and Bolton every year until 2011.