The board of directors of Denver’s Regional Transportation District approved last month a public-private partnership consortium’s $2.085-billion proposal to build and operate 44 miles of new commuter rail, including a line serving Denver International Airport. Denver Transit Partners is sponsored by Fluor Enterprises Inc., a division of Irving, Tex.-based Fluor Corp., and Australia’s Macquarie Capital Group Ltd. They are joined by partners Ames Construction, Balfour Beatty Rail Inc., Alternate Concepts Inc. and HDR Inc. The proposal came in $300 million lower than RTD’s budget estimate of $2.4 billion for the Eagle P3 project. The bid also promises to open the
The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority broke ground on June 26 on the Metro Gold Line’s $690-million Foothill extension. Stretching 11.3 miles, the design-build project will dissect California’s San Gabriel Valley, linking Pasadena with Arcadia, Monrovia, Duarte, Irwindale and Azusa. Work is scheduled to be complete in 2014. The first contract, worth $18.5 million, was awarded to Skanska USA, along with designer AECOM. This 24-month project involves the construction of a train bridge over the 210 Freeway in Arcadia, in a known fault-line area.
Acontractor has won a $5-million bonus for repaving 10,925 ft of runway in 120 days at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. The new $348-million project, which re-opened on June 29, required two online concrete batch plants, intense planning and 17,000 ft worth of fencing to render the Bay Runway—the country’s second-longest—a construction work zone. Photo: Port Authority of NY and NJ Intense planning, collaboration enabled 11,000 ft of repaving in 120 days. Related Links: Rapid Runway Rehab Tutor Perini Civil Inc., Peekskill, N.Y., can win another $5-million bonus on its $210-million contract once it completes remaining
With recession-stricken states stripping road and bridge projects from their improvement agendas and no federal surface transportation reauthorization bill on the horizon, transportation design firms are trying to make the most of a sluggish market. Photo Courtesy of AECOM High-speed rail is gaining renewed interest, thanks to an infusion of ARRA funds. Related Links: View More on Top 500 Sourcebook 2010 View Complete Top 500 Sourcebook 2010 with Data and Analysis Little of the $40 billion allocated to transportation under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) has found its way to design firms, as states stayed true to the
The Virginia Dept. of Transportation has OK’d preliminary engineering on its latest public-private initiative—a proposed new tunnel linking Norfolk and Portsmouth—while again seeking proposals on another such project that failed to generate an adequate response the first time. Moving ahead is the $1.3-billion Downtown Tunnel-Midtown Tunnel-Martin Luther King Freeway Extension. It will create a tunnel under the Elizabeth River parallel to an existing 50-year-old tunnel, which will be renovated. The two-phase procurement process of Virginia’s Public-Private Transportation Act required Alexandria, Va.-based Elizabeth River Crossings LLC, a collaboration led by Skanska Infrastructure Development Inc. and the Macquarie Group, to first assess
Talk about "fast track." Applications for the next round of federal high-speed-rail grants, totaling more than $2.3 billion, are due by Aug. 6, and winners will be announced by Sept. 30, the U.S. Dept. of Transportation says. Related Links: FRA Guidance Document: Service Development Program FRA Guidance Document: Individual Project Funding Availability In announcing the timetable on June 28, DOT noted that the new grants include $2.1 billion for high-speed-rail corridor proposals and $245 million for specific construction projects within corridors. The new round's funding comes from DOT's fiscal 2010 appropriations. It follows the hotly competitive first round, in which
Before barging and lifting two halves of a 2,650-ton truss assembly for the superstructure of the $1.2 billion Huey P. Long Bridge widening, the contractor wanted to have a way to monitor how the steel was reacting to all of the jostling. MTI, a joint venture of Massman Construction Co., Kansas City, Mo., Traylor Bros. Inc., Evansville, Ind. and IHI Inc., New York, NY, hired Applied Geomechanics Inc. San Francisco to develop a monitoring system that would keep the contractor apprised of stresses to the truss in real time. “As they lift, think of two parallel pieces of paper,” says
On June 14, construction broke ground on the $328-million West County Connectors Project, which will link carpool lanes at a three-highway convergence in Orange County, Calif. Photo: Courtesy Of OCTA The design-bid-build project is one of the county’s largest construction jobs in a decade, say officials. A joint venture of the California Dept. of Transportation and the Orange County Transportation Authority is set to complete the job by mid-2014. The first project segment will connect the westbound to the northbound high-occupancy-vehicle (HOV) lanes and reconstruct a highway interchange and a bridge crossing. The second segment also will connect two HOV
To spectators, the 10-hour lift of a 528-ft-wide, 2,650-ton steel-truss-span assembly that is part of the Huey P. Long Bridge widening project may have seemed like watching paint dry, says John Brestin, project manager for consulting engineer HNTB Corp., Kansas City. “But when you think about the fact this was three years in planning—from concept to design to getting it up—it was more like the blink of an eye.” And after the successful June 19 lift, HNTB and the contractor, MTI, say they expect subsequent lifts will be several hours faster when the next span, over the Mississippi River’s main
Prefabricated segmental bridge designs not only help shave time and money off construction but also may perform well in seismically active regions, according to recent tests conducted by the University of Buffalo’s Dept. of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering and its Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research. As part of a Federal Highway Administration-funded project exploring the seismic response of Accelerated Bridge Construction systems, the engineering research team in May erected a half-scale, 60-ft-long, eight-segment, post-tensioned superstructure supported by 10-ft, 5-in.-tall hollow piers on 10 x 10-ft concrete foundation blocks. The blocks were mounted on twin shake tables at the
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