While the Washington Dept. of Transportation won't open the detailed bids for downtown Seattle’s Alaska Way Viaduct replacement project until mid-December, Gov. Chris Gregoire (D) nudged the long-awaited 56-ft-dia, two-mile-long bored tunnel one step closer to reality, when she announced on Oct. 29 that both teams submitting bids that day were at or below WSDOT’s estimate of $1.09 billion. The viaduct, which runs along Elliott Bay on state Route 99 in downtown Seattle, is nearly 60 years old. The 1989 Loma Prieta and 2001 Nisqually earthquakes pointed to the road’s seismic vulnerability. WSDOT spent $14.5 million in emergency repairs but
The aviation industry has been hit by its share of turbulence in the past few years. Many airports had to defer projects or downsize capital improvement programs after revenue streams were curtailed sharply by upheaval in the airline industry, shaky credit markets, surging oil prices and decreased passenger travel. Photo: Chicago O’hare Airport The Chicago City Council recently approved $1 billion in bonds for O’Hare airport’s modernization program. The funds will be used primarily for runway projects, which will be bid by the end of 2011. Related Links: The Top Owners Sourcebook Complete Report Overview: No Quick Fix For Battered
Thomas Enterprises’ default on the 240-acre Sacramento (Calif.) Railyards infill project in late October returned ownership to lender Inland American Real Estate Trust. The lender says it will keep the project on track and pay infrastructure contractors who have been waiting as long as six months. Oak Brook, Ill.-based Inland American initiated foreclosure proceedings against Atlanta-based Thomas Enterprises in June after the developer defaulted on $187 million in loans. When the property went to foreclosure auction on Oct. 22 with a minimum opening bid of $50 million, no one bid, effectively handing control over to the lender, which already manages
Republicans' takeover of the House and gains in the Senate could make major funding increases in infrastructure bills harder to achieve in 2011. With some races still unsettled as of the afternoon of Nov. 3, the GOP had scored a net increase of 60 seats in the House, giving the party a total of 239. Democrats hung on to the Senate, though their majority had dwindled to 51, from 59 prior to the election. Among the Democratic casualties were some House committee chairmen, including James Oberstar (Minn.), head of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and a fixture on that panel
New Jersey Gov. Christopher Christie’s Oct. 27 decision to spike a major new commuter rail tunnel under the Hudson River, which was set to be the largest U.S. public-works project, is causing ripple effects across the region and the country. Industry proponents are hoping for stronger support for similar but still-viable projects from Congress and from U.S. employers. Backers of the New Jersey rail link, called Access to the Region’s Core, could not secure Christie’s support because he feared the state would be on the hook for cost overruns some said would boost the project price to as much as
The U.S. Dept. of Transportation has pumped another $2.5 billion into the high-speed-rail funding pipeline and is increasing the flow of actual obligations from its $8-billion first rail round. The moves are good news for the states that won grants and companies pursuing the work. However, whether the new Congress will approve another installment of Photo: California High Speed Rail Authority California won the largest amount, $901.6 million, in the second round of U.S. DOT rail grants. high-speed-rail (HSR) aid in 2011 remains an open question. In announcing the winners of the $2.5-billion round-two competition on Oct. 28, DOT Secretary
Halliburton Co. is denying that unstable drilling cement foam triggered the April 20 deadly explosion at the Macondo well, although the Houston-based oil-field services company admits it did not test the final cement mixture for stability before using it. On Oct. 28, Fred Bartlit Jr., the lead investigator for the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, issued a report on Oct. 28 stating the cement foam was unstable and may have contributed to last spring’s blowout. Bartlit reported that tests performed by Chevron Corp. on a cement-slurry, or drilling mud, mixture— similar to that
Two Indonesian tsunami warning buoys, put in place after a 2004 earthquake and tidal wave killed more than 230,000 people, failed to activate on Oct. 25 when a 7.7 magnitude temblor hit the country’s Mentawai Islands. This time, more than 400 died. Even if the buoys had been operational, islanders would not have had enough time to evacuate, since the earthquake that triggered the tidal wave occurred too close to shore, according to the U.S. National Weather Service. After the 2004 event, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration donated two Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART) buoys to
The American Society of Civil Engineers unveiled details of a long-awaited sustainable infrastructure certification program during the group’s national conference on Oct. 21-23 in Las Vegas. Tailored to be broadly adaptable to particular circumstances, the program brings some 900 existing sector-specific rating systems under one umbrella. After successful case studies, the system called PRISM, or Project Rating for Infrastructure Sustainability and Management, will launch in May 2011. The voluntary rating system, developed by ASCE, the American Council of Engineering Companies and the American Public Works Association, aims to do for bridges, roads and waterways what the U.S. Green Building Council’s
After a heated dispute lasting more than a half-year, building owner Carpenters Tower LLC and its contractor, McCarthy Building Cos. Inc., have resolved all the legal issues related to the distressed, reinforced concrete frame of the 25-story McGuire Apartments in Seattle. The resolution clears the way for the demolition of the vacated residential tower, completed in 2001, though the owner has not yet set a timetable for the razing. The brouhaha reached a peak last spring after the owner claimed the cost to repair the building’s corroding post-tensioned slab system and other problems would exceed the structure’s worth. McCarthy then