When the city of Lenexa, Kan., this spring opted to move forward with a test pilot of “smart pavements,” it represented a vital step forward for electric vehicles.

Beauty and beastly strength: Concrete made by Fort Miller Group, which precast the giant concrete flowerpot-like structures for Manhattan’s Little Island park on the Hudson River, boasts this traditionally unlikely combination.

American Concrete Institute says its first-ever initiative to develop a precast standard is not related to an article in Concrete International that sounds the alarm about the potential for brittle failures of non-code-compliant precast, prestressed-concrete double-T parking decks, with flanges reinforced with a high-strength polymer-coated carbon-fiber grid product, called C-Grid.

A new bridge connecting Portsmouth, N.H., and Kittery, Maine, features what engineers believe is the first-ever use of precast-concrete segmental towers on a vertical-lift bridge.