New York State Dept. of Transportation officials swiftly are preparing design concepts for a new crossing to replace the Crown Point Bridge, abruptly closed in October due to unexpectedly high levels of pier deterioration. Meanwhile, contractors are racing to build temporary vehicular ferry-terminal facilities at Lake Champlain between New York and Vermont as a stopgap measure. Photo: AP/Wideworld New York-Vermont crossing was shut down abruptly on Oct. 16 after inspectors found unexpectedly severe pier deterioration, possibly due to ice pressure. + Image NYSDOT, in conjunction with the Vermont Agency of Transportation, on Oct. 16 shut down the 80-year-old, 2,184-ft-long steel
Gregory Kats is Senior Director and director of climate change policy at Good Energies Inc., Washington, D.C. (www.goodenergies.com), an investment firm emphasizing renewable energy and environmental technologies. He was a principal author of Green Office Buildings: A Practical Guide to Development (ULI, 2005) and is the author of the forthcoming book Greening Our Built World: costs, benefits and strategies (Island Press, 2009; www.islandpress.org/Kats. Photo: Gregory Kats KATS Tell me about your new book, Greening Our BuiltWorld. The official launch was in [mid-November]. It took two and a half years — a huge amount of original research went into it. It
Flooding has been a continuing and even predictable problem in Saint Petersburg, ever since Peter the Great founded the city that became the Russian capital in 1703 on low-lying land within the Neva River estuary. Now, after 30 years of planning, construction and delays, a $3-billion barrier fitted with floodgates and carrying one of the city’s major ring roads is nearing completion. Slide Show Photo: Halcrow Pivot gates are poised to swing together and meet in mid-channel to halt floods threatening Saint Petersburg. Photo: Halcrow The completed protection system is intended to prevent floods that regularly impact the city. The
“Grateful.” That was the reaction of Lester Robinson, chief executive officer for the Wayne County Airport Authority, upon receiving news this May of $15 million in stimulus funds for a crucial rehabilitation of a crosswinds runway in Detroit. Detroit, Mich. Photo: WCAA Reconstruction of crosswinds runway in Detroit will now be complete this year. Related Links: Stimulus: A Snapshot of Top Shovel-, Wrench- and Pencil-Ready Projects Five months later, Ajax Paving Industries Inc., Troy, Mich., is about 80% complete on the $34-million reconstruction of a 8,700-ft-long runway at Detroit Metro Airport. “The stimulus allowed us to accelerate construction to complete
The Massachusetts Port Authority is wrapping up a repaving job that features the first application of warm-mix asphalt (WMA) on a U.S. runway. Currently, Federal Aviation Administration specifications do not address warm-mix asphalt. However, the mix is gaining attention because of its environmentally friendly properties. Photo: Massachusetts Port Authority Warm mix goes down easy with airport engineers and contractors at Massport’s Boston Logan International Airport, which is the country’s first to embrace the environmentally friendly material. J.F. White Contracting Co., Boston, began its approximately $12-million contract in July to repave a 7,000-ft-long, 150-ft-wide runway at Boston’s Logan International Airport, says
The phone call was from Chicago, and Theodore Zoli, vice president and bridge technical director in the New York City office of HNTB Corp., was working on a project. When he took the call, he wondered what might be wrong. Daniel J. Socolow, director of the fellows program at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, broke the news to him: He was one of 24 recipients chosen to receive $500,000 over the next five years, no strings (or bridge cables) attached, for his work on bridge design and security reinforcement.“I almost fell off my chair,” recalls Zoli, 43.
Applications are in for the first batch of federal high-speed-rail grants financed largely by $8 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds. An unofficial round-one tally shows states are seeking about $6.6 billion. That is far below the $102.5 billion in “pre-applications” states filed in July, but it reflects the first round’s emphasis on individual projects that are ready to start. Moreover, with the construction industry struggling, the new applications represent a substantial amount of potential infrastructure work, including bright possibilities for engineering firms. The dollars are expected to be even larger in the next round of applications, which
In just a decade, the “big four” Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec have embraced public-private partnership (P3) projects to the point where they are almost a mainstream construction-delivery method.
35 years after traffic was suspended, a former railroad bridge gets a major facelift. A nearly 7,000-ft-long railroad bridge is undergoing an extreme $35-million makeover over the Hudson River, thanks to hundreds of precast concrete panels, community zeal and the windblown determination of engineers and contractors. When completed by October, the revamped 121-year-old Poughkeepsie-Highland Railroad Bridge may be the world�s longest pedestrian bridge at 6,768 ft, say officials. Photos courtesy of Bergman Associates Old railroad bridge will become a soaring walkway over the Hudson River when it opens later this year. The historic bridge’s 3,094-ft-long, 25-ft-wide main span consists of
Senior Transportation Editor Aileen Cho sat down recently with Stuart S. Chen, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and Arun M. Shirolé, a senior vice president of bridge engineer Arora and Associates, P.C., New York City. They discussed the origins of Bridge Information Modeling, why they believe it’s needed to integrate design and operations management, the role of vendors and where it goes from here. View of a Portion of the Bridge Computer Model CHEN What is Bridge Information Modeling? AS: It came about back in the late '80s. I was