Kuwait’s public-works ministry in February signed an $870-million design-bid-build contract with a European-led consortium to upgrade more than 15 kilometers of Jamal Abdul Nasser Street. Photo: Courtesy of Louis Berger and PACE Upgraded Kuwaiti road will bypass local streets with viaducts. div id="articleExtrasA" div id="articleExtrasB" div id="articleExtras" Nasser Street links to a $950-million Jahra Road project that started last September. The two highways will relieve a congested corridor linking Kuwait City with its western suburbs and provide access to major government facilities and other centers, says an official with Louis Berger Group Inc., Morristown, N.J., which is handling design and
Since its inception in 2006, the most visible aspect of the Panama Canal’s $5.2-billion Third Lane Expansion project has been the excavation of the 6.7-kilometer-long Pacific Access Channel. With the completion of a $42.3-million, 1.8-km-long cofferdam this spring, that excavation is continuing as planned. The backfilled cellular cofferdam will hold back Miraflores Lake, the man-made body of water between the Miraflores locks and Pedro Miguel locks. Once the cofferdam is finished, excavation of 26 million cubic meters of material in the access-channel route can proceed as well as the construction of a permanent, $70-million, clay-core, basalt-rock-filled dam. The Pacific Access
A 1.24-mile-long aerial cable-car system could be operational in time for the 2012 London Olympic Games if Mayor Boris Johnson signs off on the plan. The $65-million project would be the U.K.’s first urban cable car and would cross the River Thames. Last month, councils for the two boroughs affected—Greenwich and Newham—approved the plan that links Greenwich Peninsula and the Royal Docks. + Image Image: TFL A map shows the cable-car system that has been approved by London’s Greenwich and Newham boroughs. The system would cross the River Thames. Photo: TFL Cables Will Run Between 295-ft-tall Towers. The system, designed
The Obama administration is proposing an additional $53 billion over the next six years to continue developing high-speed passenger rail. The plan, which Vice President Joe Biden announced on Feb. 8, would supplement $10.5 billion already appropriated for the rail program over the past two years. Congress will decide whether to provide the new funds. Biden said President Obama will seek $8 billion in his fiscal 2012 budget request. But House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) criticized the way the Dept. of Transportation has parceled out the $10.5 billion and said that adding $53 billion “is like
After years of snafus, political battles, and funding fits and starts, New York City’s next major transit extensions are taking shape.Newly bored caverns deep below city streets and railyards provide hidden testimony to the construction team’s accomplishments, all while the nation’s busiest subway and commuter rail network strains to carry millions of passengers to and from the city. The next tunnels are a study of firsts, many side by side. Two giant tunnel-boring machines, crawling along like worms underneath the Big Apple, made transit history. Below neighborhoods on Manhattan’s West Side, they both achieved a difficult 90° turn, helped by
The plan to build a second subway line serving Manhattan’s congested East Side has been on the city’s drawing board for eight decades. Now, having withstood financial crises and opposition by residents near the construction zone, the $4.45-billion first phase of the Second Avenue subway project is under way, with 7,200 ft of tunneling almost completed out of a total of 15,000 ft planned. And as crews begin freezing a 150-ft stretch of earth for the second tunnel, they also are trying to thaw the hearts and minds of opposition groups. With the help of Rockaway, N.J.-based subcontractor Moretrench, a
Taking its cue from the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED building certification program, a new Illinois initiative seeks to incorporate sustainable design and construction practices into state road and transportation projects. Like LEED, the Illinois-Livable and Sustainable Transportation (I-LAST) Guide establishes a scoring system for planning, design and construction to “preserve natural resources and encourage low-impact forms of transportation,” says Doug Knuth, project chair with the American Council of Engineering Cos. of Illinois, which developed I-LAST in association with the Illinois Dept. of Transportation and the Illinois Road and Transportation Builders Association. The program is the latest in a growing
Persistent water seepage has prompted the contractor of a new “straw” at southern Nevada’s Lake Mead to drill a starter tunnel in a drier direction. Photo: Courtesy of Southern Nevada Water Authority Nevada starter-tunnel route must be changed. The contractor says it is investigating an alternate alignment roughly 20� east from the current 200-ft-long starter tunnel. The plan would be to eventually rejoin the original alignment. Vegas Tunnel Constructors LLC (VTC), a joint venture of S.A. Healy Co., Lombard, Ill., and Impreglio S.p.A., Sesto San Giovanni, Italy, last year encountered water three times in six months while creating a starter
President Obama’s call in his State of the Union address for more funding for highways, transit and other infrastructure has launched what should be a rugged fight with congressional Republicans this year over public-works spending. Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress will push to Photo: Courtesy of The White House President Obama: Wants a six-year highway-transit bill jump-started with $50 billion and proposes an infrastructure bank to leverage private funds. Promises that all work will be “fully paid for” but didn’t say how. Continues to support high-speed-rail lines spread around the U.S., with a goal of high-speed service available
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