Crews with a joint venture of Skanska Koch and Kiewit are using a launching gantry to install precast-concrete segments for one half of the new deck. New precast piers are supported by drilled shafts going 20 ft into bedrock, says Dennis Stabile, the Port Authority program manager. To strengthen the arch before cutting a portal for the new roadway, "we're adding thousands of pounds of steel," Stabile says. "We're adding steel plates mostly on the lower and upper chords and vertical members. It's tedious work—existing rivets have to be knocked out. There are 150 ironworkers working two 10-hour shifts, six days a week."
The next major construction-site visit was the $2.6-billion Ohio River Bridges project, a poster child for alternative project delivery and funding. Walsh Group won the $860-million design-build Downtown Crossing contract in 2012, with a January 2016-slated completion. Walsh also is in a $763-million concessionaire contract, with Vinci, to build ORBP's East End Crossing.
The new downtown crossing will feature a cable-stayed structure with three pairs of freestanding towers as high as 280 ft, says Jeremiah Littleton, transportation engineer specialist with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. It recently expanded the scope to include a $22-million full retrofit of the 52-year-old John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge, designed for a 50-year life and made of the same type of steel truss as the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis that collapsed in 2007. "We are finally going to fix this bridge," says Littleton. Noting the decades it took before ORBP finally launched, he adds, "As an engineer, you want to help people. It's frustrating because there's no money."
Other planned stops on the road trip, detailed at www.ENRLowSlow.com, include the $1-billion St. Louis Arch park, the $114-million Kansas City streetcar project, the Denver $5-billion FasTracks project and water projects in California.
