AASHTO Journal, 5 September 2014
A section of the Barton Corner Bridge is rolled into place. Rhode Island DOT officials said the bridge replacement was finished in just 10 days. Photo courtesy RIDOT Facebook.
The Rhode Island Department of Transportation last week celebrated the early completion of the Barton Corner Bridge replacement south of Warwick a day ahead of schedule.
“We were thrilled to not only complete this operation earlier than expected (within 10 days vs. 11), but also in a first for RIDOT, engage the public in the construction process by providing live camera feeds on our website,” said Rose Amoros, RIDOT communications director.
According to RIDOT, the Barton Corner Bridge carries four lanes of I-95 plus two auxiliary lanes at a busy interchange with Route 2 on the Warwick/West Warwick line. The highway provides direct access to the New England Institute of Technology; another limited access highway called Route 4, the gateway to South County; and one of Rhode Island’s busiest retail corridors.
The project used accelerated bridge construction techniques, building two halves of the bridge on land adjacent to the overpass, and then using self-propelled modular transporters to move the bridge halves into place. The technique enabled the contractor, D’Ambra Construction of Warwick to build the bridge much faster compared with conventional construction methods, which would have taken twice the time. And the approach also allowed RIDOT to do the work without impact to interstate traffic prior to installation.
Amoros told the Providence Journal that the project web site, which included real-time information on when portions of the roads would be closed, suggested detours and live video, received 100,000 visits in only nine days, nearly as much as the agency web site receives in an entire month.
For more on the Barton Corner Bridge project, visit http://www.tmc.dot.ri.gov/news/barton_corner/index.php.
