Best of the Best Projects 2020
Best Highway/Bridge: Crosstown Parkway Extension Design-Build Project
The team built a new hurricane evacuation route over wetlands and created a landscaped corridor.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF WALSH GROUP/RS&H
The team built a new hurricane evacuation route over wetlands and created a landscaped corridor.
Crosstown Parkway Extension Design-Build Project | Submitted by RS&H Inc.
Port St. Lucie, Fla.
Region: ENR Southeast
Owner City of Port St. Lucie
Lead Design Firm/Structural/Civil Engineer RS&H Inc.
Contractor Archer Western Contractors LLC (Walsh Group)
Construction Engineering and Inspection Consor Engineers LLC
Crews utilized a temporary trestle and precast pile caps to mitigate challenges posed by environmental conditions and permitting issues, completing the Crosstown Parkway Extension in Port St. Lucie, Fla., two months early and $13 million under budget.
The 4,000-ft-long bridge and 1.5 miles of roadway improvements constitute a third crossing into Port St. Lucie that relieves traffic congestion and provides an additional hurricane evacuation route. The project transformed a residential street into a continuation of the Crosstown Parkway corridor, with three lanes in each direction divided by a landscaped median, bicycle lanes, meandering sidewalks and landscaped berms.
The corridor includes a “superstreet” intersection, the first of its kind in Florida. The superstreet is a restricted crossing U-turn intersection, designed for when traffic on the major road will be much heavier than on the cross street.
The bridge, composed of Florida I-beams and a cast-in-place deck, traverses a highly environmentally sensitive area, including the Savannas Preserve State Park. The bridge sits on over 300 prestressed concrete piles with a maximum pile length of 85 ft, says Rachel Back, business development and strategy specialist with RS&H, the lead design firm for the design-build team.
The team designed the bridge with geotechnical information obtained from the channels and geotechnical knowledge from completing a similar bridge 11 miles away. The borings were obtained from the temporary construction trestle under the overall project permit, eliminating need for a separate permit. Archer-Western had done similar work on a bridge in Daytona Beach, says Brian Sparks, the contractor’s design-build manager.
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The project required restricted construction hours due to neighbors and US Highway 1. Two hurricanes affected the area during construction, requiring securing and clearing before construction could begin again.
