By Nadine M. Post for ENR One World Trade Center received its first tenants in 2014. The observation deck is scheduled to open in the spring. Photo by Michael Dickter/Magnusson Klemencic Associates Levi's Stadium, for the San Francisco 49ers, opened on time last summer. Related Links: Wilshire Grand Concrete Mat Placement Sets U.S. Record Pankow Foundation Charts Ambitious Research Goals For High-Strength Rebar The Promise and Pitfalls of Modular Buildings For the buildings sector, 2014 has been a year of starts, stops and milestones—some very high profile. Though at least a year late, tenants finally began moving into the 1,776-ft-tall
Related Links: Transportation Expert Manages With Tenacity Massachusetts Delays $1-billion Boston Line Extension to 2018 The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has received a tentative federal funding commitment for nearly $1 billion, almost half the cost of constructing the Green Line extension project. Congress must approve the grant.In a Dec. 1 letter to Congress, Therese McMillan, acting administrator of the Federal Transportation Administration, announced plans to "execute a full funding grant agreement," totaling $996 million for design and construction of the 4.7-mile Green Line extension. The grant would include the construction of six new stations to carry trains into Somerville and,
Buoyed by court rulings and a dedicated funding source from the state's cap-and-trade program, administrators of California's ambitious high-speed-rail program are moving forward with initial construction and renewed optimism.
Photo Courtesy of WSDOT Settlement of more than an inch has hampered excavation efforts to rescue TBM Bertha. Enlarge Related Links: Divers Searching for Way To Get TBM 'Bertha' Moving Again Seattle Tunneling Behemoth Bertha Awaits Repairs to Bearing Seals Differential settlement of more than an inch has temporarily shut down efforts on the already-stalled Alaskan Way Viaduct project under downtown Seattle. Excavation had been underway on an access pit that was designed to repair "Bertha," the stuck tunnel-boring machine (TBM), as crews continue to monitor the movement on surrounding buildings.The 57.5-ft-dia machine has been stuck since December 2013, just
Photo Courtesy GSA / Benjamin Benschneider The Peace Arch Land Port of Entry redo in Blaine, Wash., includes 10 primary-inspection lanes and double the capacity of the 1976 facility. Related Links: $741M Overhaul of San Ysidro Land Port of Entry Burdened by Myriad Site Constraints After a funding lull, U.S. General Services Administration appropriations are bouncing back for "land ports of entry" projects.In the newly enacted spending bill for the rest of fiscal year 2015, GSA's account allotment for its new-construction includes $216.8 million for the San Ysidro project and $98.1 million for a port in Calexico, Calif. Those were
Related Links: U.S. Land Port of Entry Funding Rebounds San Ysidro Land Port's Team Tames the Logistical Monster Miller Hull Partnership Hensel Phelps With the most unsettling work done, all is calm at the world's busiest border crossing—the 40-acre San Ysidro Land Port of Entry, which is nearly four years into a three-phase $741-million transformation. Once worrisome, the incessant hum of the 50,000 vehicles that line up each day to cross into California from Mexico is now music to the ears of the members of the SYLPOE team, who, for three-plus years, had to keep more than 24 lanes of
Related Links: North Dakota Is Bakken Business Studies Find No Link Between Fracking, Water Contamination New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's (D) announcement that he would ban high-volume hydraulic fracturing, more widely known as fracking, was praised by environmental groups but largely criticized by those in favor of the oil-and-gas recovery method as a way to revive economically depressed areas in the state.However, some firms that work in the sector say they expect to see little change as a result of Cuomo’s Dec. 17 decision since the state has had a temporary ban on fracking since 2008.Cuomo’s action is based on
Related Links: Antwerp Freight Tunnel Has Twin Bore Beneath the River Schelde $5.25-Billion Panama Canal Expansion Program Moves Into the Final Leg Ship access capacity to the Antwerp’s Waasland Canal complex in Belgium will be more than doubled by construction of the world’s largest ship lock at the Deurganck dock. With a construction cost of some $290 million, the lock on the tidal River Scheldt’s left bank—500 meters long, 68 m wide and 17.8 m deep—is due to start operations in spring 2016.The new lock will be more than 4 m deeper than the current world-record holder, Antwerp’s 25-year-old Berendrecht
Related Links: Mammoth Lock Takes Shape in Belgium Belgian Diabolo Project Opens On Schedule Although Europe's second-largest port in Antwerp, Belgium, has more than 1,000 kilometers of railroad tracks, it moves only 8% of its throughput by rail. To help increase train use, the country’s railroad infrastructure manager, Infrabel N.V., has just completed the nation’s longest freight tunnel linking the port’s two halves on either side of the River Scheldt.The $1.1-billion Liefkenshoek freight tunnel includes roughly 6 km of new 7.3-meter-dia twin bores under the river, bypassing a 20-km route around South Antwerp, says Infrabel’s chief spokesman Frédéric Petit. With
Enlarge Map by Jeffrey Cox/ ENR This new line will extend rail service to Calabar. China Railway Construction Corp. will export $4 billion worth of construction machinery, trains and steel products to Nigeria for the construction of the $11.97-billion Coastal Railway Project, whose final contract was signed in the West Africa nation’s capital, Abuja, in November.The Chinese firm said that, under the contract, the largest single award for any Chinese company overseas, a single track of 1,402-kilometer-long standard-gauge railway will be constructed to link the commercial city of Lagos to the eastern port city of Calabar on the Nigerian coast.CRCC
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