With billions of dollars of state and federal funds anticipated, California can now pay some 80 engineering consultants on its planned 800-mile, $46-billion high-speed rail line. Already $5 million in debt for scoping and design work that occurred on the north-south express connector since the financially-strapped state froze infrastructure financing in December, the Pooled Money Investment Board approved a $29.1-million loan at its April 6 meeting after State Treasurer Bill Lockyer successfully sold $6.54 billion in bonds at the end of March. Photo: CA High-Speed Rail Authority Engineers have worked on planned line without pay The High Speed Rail Authority
President Obama has chosen Victor M. Mendez, former director of the Arizona Dept. of Transportation, as his nominee to head the Federal Highway Administration, the White House announced on April 2. His nomination now will be considered by the Senate. Mendez joined Arizona DOT (ADOT) in 1985 as a transportation engineer and rose through the ranks to become the agency's director in 2001. At ADOT, Mendez succeeded Mary E. Peters in the top job. Peters also left to be FHWA administrator and later became secretary of the U.S. Dept. of Transportation. Photo: Arizona DOT Victor M. Mendez Mendez was active
Contradicting the National Transportation Safety Board’s report that blamed too-thin gusset plates for the Aug. 1, 2007, collapse of the Minneapolis Interstate 35W bridge, an independent analysis has concluded that rusted, frozen roller bearings prevented thermal expansion and caused a truss chord to fail, triggering the gusset-plate failure. The analysis by Thornton Tomasetti, New York City, using forensic bridge information modeling, was presented to victims’ families and will be deployed in an anticipated lawsuit against URS Corp., San Francisco, and Progressive Contractors Inc., Minneapolis, in the next few months, according to Chris Messerly, one of the pro bono lawyers with
The Ohio Dept. of Transportation has scrapped a controversial plan to close the aging I-90 Inner Belt bridge in Cleveland while fast-tracking a replacement bridge. Instead, it will use $200 million in federal stimulus money and a mix of local and federal funds to build a new span while keeping the old one operating. The Inner Belt bridge, built in 1959 and similar in design to the failed I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, is a major safety concern and is rated “poor” on the federal bridge rating system. Its condition led ODOT to ban truck traffic last year. The agency last
Federal infrastructure stimulus announced in February could pave the way to faster development at Sacramento’s 244-acre Railyards. The long-planned mixed-use project owned by S. Thomas Enterprises was selected by the Sacramento Area Council of Governments to receive $20 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds. The stimulus funds will push work on track realignment and road building ahead by six months, according to Suheil Totah, vice president of Thomas Enterprises. “This is tremendously significant for the project because the money wasn’t expected and now we will be able to move forward on items that had been put on
Four executives with one of the largest construction firms in South America, Camargo Correa, were arrested by Brazilian police Wednesday in connection with a year-long corruption probe. A total of ten employees of the firm were arrested as federal police carried out a series of raids on the company’s offices in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janiero — part of an investigation named Operation Sand Castle. Photo: C.J. Schexnayder The Campos Novos dam in southern Brazil built by Camargo Correa and completed in 2006. Investigators with Brazil’s federal prosecutor’s office specializing in financial crimes say Camargo Correa was laundering money
The American Society of Civil Engineers released its comprehensive 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure on March 25. ASCE released a preliminary report of the national letter-grade findings on Jan. 28, assigning the nation’s roads, bridges, water systems and other critical infrastructure a cumulative grade of D and noting a five-year investment need of $2.2 trillion. The version now out breaks down the data in state-by-state detail. See www.asce.org/reportcard.
Warm-mix asphalt is hot. Asphalt industry officials believe warm mix, porous asphalt pavement and reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) will come to dominate paving in the next few years because the products offer lower costs and higher environmental benefits than traditional hot mixes. Photo: Pat Monroe Photo: Aileen Cho / ENR Attendance was up at World of Asphalt 2009, fueled by warm-mix applications. Related Links: World of Asphalt 2009: Warm All Over “The warm-mix revolution is starting to spread,” said Matthew Corrigan, asphalt pavement engineer with the Federal Highway Administration, addressing attendees of the Asphalt Pavement Conference on March 9 in
Alow-profile 350-meter-long, 15-m-wide suspension bridge designed by a U.K.-French team will carry part of a 25.5-kilometer planned light-rail system, called Metro West, across Dublin’s Liffey River to the city’s northeast corner. The Irish government’s Railway Procurement Agency, which oversaw design competition, wanted a low-key design. “Because it’s sensitive, we didn’t want [tall] towers,” says Davood Liaghat, technical director at Buro Happold Consultants Ltd., Bath, U.K. The structural firm, with Paris-based Explorations Architecture S.A., won RPA’s com-petition and a $190,000 prize. Celtic Crossing. Suspension bridge will maintain a context-sensitive profile. “We decided to lean the towers back to [match] the tree
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