Designing for the North: the Tlicho All Season Access Road

Whatì is a First Nations community located about 164 kms from Yellowknife.

It was previously mainly a fly-in community that had a winter access road, but a new highway, the Tłı̨chǫ All Season Access Road (TASR) or Tłı̨chǫ Highway/Highway 9 , now connects it to the national highway system year-round.The TASR is a design-build, finance, operate, and maintain (DBFOM) project constructed by North Star Infrastructure GP - a joint venture with Kiewit. The project consisted of 96 km of two-lane gravel road, 15 water crossings (four requiring bridges), one arch culvert, and one large culvert. The road's alignment follows an old winter road. It traverses regions of warm, discontinuous permafrost and muskeg terrain.Thurber provided geotechnical engineering to support the design. The design was led by Hatch.