Now that high-speed rail is considered “sexy” and politically supported in the U.S., engineers and suppliers are eager to seize upon potential project opportunities. But they must choose carefully from a variety of technologies, methods and financial models found in the rest of the world. “We are in the fourth generation of high-speed trains globally,” said Anthony Perl, professor of urban studies at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, at a high-speed rail conference held Oct. 22-23 in Washington, D.C. “The biggest obstacle in the U.S. is where to put high-speed rail and where to build it. We have to
South Korea’s 12.3-kilometer Incheon Bridge has opened to traffic on time, 52 months after the roughly $1.6-billion privately financed contract was signed. Linking Yeongjong Island and Incheon City, the crossing includes a 1.48-km-long cable-stayed bridge with an 800-meter steel box-girder main span. U.K.-based Amec PLC was project manger and holds shares in the crossing’s developer, Incheon Bridge Co. Samsung Corp. led the turnkey joint venture working to a design by Canada’s Buckland & Taylor Ltd. and detailed by Japan’s Chodai Co. Ltd. Photo: AMEC
The Los Angeles airport board on Oct. 19 awarded two contracts worth $1.26 billion to reconfigure Tom Bradley International Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport. The project will be built by Walsh Austin Joint Venture, Los Angeles, and is to be completed by 2013. A $545-million contract includes building nine new boarding gates. A $584.2-million contract covers security work.
After a year’s delay, the Florida Dept. of Transportation and a concessionaire have closed on a $900-million public-private partnership that will create a pair of 3,900-ft-long, 41-ft-dia tunnels connecting to the Port of Miami. Last month, FDOT, Miami-Dade County and the city of Miami finalized an agreement in which the concessionaire, called Miami Access Tunnel, will design, build, finance, operate and maintain the project, using its own equity to fund half. Bouygues Civil Works Florida Inc. will lead the $607-million construction portion of the job, with engineering assistance from Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., Pasadena, Calif. FDOT will repay the concessionaire
A Chicago architect is producing a holistic planning approach to reduce carbon emissions in dense urban cores. The fledgling urban replanning effort, which Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture is developing for the 550-building Chicago Loop area, is a process that starts with a survey of existing buildings in a district to assess age, use, condition, energy consumption and more. The survey is a first step toward devising a district-wide approach to sustainable retrofits and appropriate adaptive reuse. The planning framework can be used as a model for retrofits in other cities, urban cores and building campuses, says the architect.
When the University of Chicago’s Joe and Rika Mansueto Library opens its doors in spring 2011 as planned, it will combine distinctive above-ground architecture with sophisticated underground support. Designed by Chicago architect Helmut Jahn of Murphy/Jahn Inc. and built by Barton Malow Co., the one-of-a-kind library will feature reading areas enclosed by a four-story glass-and-steel dome above a five-story-deep, climate-controlled underground storage vault that will protect and automatically deliver up to 3.5 million periodicals, books and rare research materials. Photo: Barton Malow Co. Oval-shaped glass dome will rest on a 120-ft by 240-ft slurry wall, initially drawn as a perfect
Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, Chicago, won a contract to expand Beijing’s central business district. The SOM plan calls for three new districts anchored by signature parks and green boulevards. The plan has other green aspects, which could reduce energy consumption within the district by 50%, reduce water consumption by 48% and landfill waste by 80% and result in a 50% reduction in carbon emissions.
The Dept. of Energy has awarded $3.4 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grants to modernize the electric power grid and boost its efficiency and reliability. Related Links: Grant Awards by Category (141 KB) Smart Grid Grant Locations (568 KB) The federal money will be supplemented by more than $4.7 billion in private-sector matching funds, DOE said. President Obama, announcing the 100 "smart grid investment grants" on Oct. 27 at a Florida Power & Light Co. solar energy facility in Arcadia, Fla., called the spending "the largest-ever investment in a smarter, stronger and more secure electric grid."
More than seventeen years after the so-called Great Chicago Flood—a 1992 construction snafu in which a misplaced piling that was driven into the Chicago River hit an abandoned freight tunnel, flooding downtown basements and knocking out utilities—those infamous tunnels are at it again. Slide Show Photo: IDOT On the morning of Oct. 14, construction workers on Chicago’s Kennedy Expressway noticed that pavement was buckling. Directly underneath, workers were grouting an abandoned freight tunnel. On Oct. 14, workers for Lorig Construction, a Des Plaines, Ill.-based roadbuilder, were preparing to finish grouting a section of old tunnels underneath the Kennedy Expressway, a
Over half the 7.3 million cu m of tunnel spoil from London’s $26-billion Crossrail project is to be barged down the Thames River from tunnel sites to create new wetlands 100 kilometers away. Project owner Crossrail Ltd. (CRL) will fund land acquisition and earthmoving for the U.K.’s largest coastal habitat creation scheme, on Wallasea Island, next to the River Crouch, Essex. Photo: Crossrail Ltd. Low-lying Wallasea Island will be raised with tunnel spoil and converted into habitat for birds. CRL on Sept. 30 signed an agreement with Port of London Authority enabling barging the equivalent of a half-million truckloads of
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