Tom Warne Report, 4 September 2013 ConstructionEquipmentGuide.com – August 27, 2013 Virginia is making progress on a bold four-year project that will complete the replacement of 11 bridges over a 7-mile stretch of I-95. State Department of Transportation officials opted to use a unique method and work on all of them at once, in order to get the work…
Tom Warne Report, 27 August 2013 Land Line Magazine – August 21, 2013 A group of landowners on the Canadian banks of the Ambassador Bridge have filed a $10 million lawsuit against the bridge company for boarding up and neglecting properties it owns in their neighborhood. Company owner, billionaire Matty Moroun, responded that the city of Windsor is to…
The Kentucky Transportation Center at the University of Kentucky has released a report that explains how mobile light detection and ranging (LIDAR) was used to obtain bridge clearance heights, which can vary and can be difficult to measure due to high traffic volume. Read the Report
The Oregon State Department of Transportation has released a report that considers the factors that influence the maintenance costs of its bridges and culverts. Read the Report
The U.S. Federal Highway Administration has released a tech brief that presents research results on the strength properties of standard open aggregates tested in a large-scale direct shear device. Read the Technical Brief
The U.S. Federal Highway Administration has released a report that investigates the composite behavior of a geosynthetic reinforced soil (GRS) mass through a series of large-size GRS composite tests. Read the Report
TRB’s second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) has released a project brief that describes a guide designed to provide information and define procedures to systematically design new and existing bridges for service life and durability. Read the Project Brief
By Lorella Angelini, International Concrete Repair Institute According to the National Bridge Inventory, there are more than 600,000 highway bridges in the United States. Most of these bridges (98%) are owned by state and local governments, whereas the remaining 2% are federally or privately owned. The average age of these bridges is 45 years with more than 30% exceeding…
AASHTO Journal, 23 August 2013 Officials from the Tennessee Department of Transportation joined elected officials Tuesday to celebrate progress on the $28.1 million Hurricane Bridge rehabilitation project in DeKalb County. TDOT Commissioner John Schroer announced the department hit a major milestone in the rehabilitation project by opening the bridge to two lanes of traffic, as opposed to the one-lane…
AASHTO has published a new newsletter. Read the Inaugural Copy
The Center for Transportation Research at the University of Texas at Austin has released a report that quantifies demands placed on box beam end blocks upon pre-stress transfer and characterizes the demands placed on box beam end blocks upon application of superimposed loads. Read the Report
The Michigan Department of Transportation has released a report that explains physical-test-aided and detailed finite element analysis as a way to understand the behavior of typical skewed highway bridges and to develop design guidelines for assisting in routine design of these structures. Read the Report
The Florida Department of Transportation has released a report that quantifies wind load coefficients (drag, torque, and lift) for common bridge girder shapes, as well as shielding effects arising from aerodynamic interference between adjacent girders. Read the Report
Tom Warne Report, 18 August 2013 The Associated Press – August 7, 2013 PORTLAND, Ore. – Washington lawmakers’ refusal to front their $450 million share of the I-5 bridge replacement between Portland and Vancouver seems to be clinging to life, even as the project’s office is preparing to shut down. Planners are requesting a permit from the Coast Guard…
AASHTO Journal, 16 August 2013 Massachusetts Department of Transportation Secretary and CEO Richard Davey was joined by Gov. Deval Patrick and other federal, state, and local officials last week to begin work on a major bridge project designed to increase capacity on an I-95 bridge while also providing bike and pedestrian access. Officials official broke ground last Thursday, Aug….
AASHTO Journal, 16 August 2013 The New York State Department of Transportation this week announced the completion of a bridge renovation project in Westchester County in just four days through innovative construction methods, which cut the project construction time by months. NYSDOT unveiled the $1.5 million Hutchinson River Parkway bridge renovation project Sunday, just days after beginning Tuesday. The…
AASHTO Journal, 16 August 2013 The Colorado Department of Transportation announced Monday that 95 percent of the state’s bridges were rated in fair or good condition, just four years after implementing the Funding Advancement for Surface Transportation and Economic Recovery (FASTER) legislation. In 2009, legislators enacted FASTER, which created the Colorado Bridge Enterprise (CBE) to finance, rehabilitate, and replace…
The U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health at the Centers for Disease Control has released a report that provides an education module in structural steel design for undergraduate engineering curricula. Read the Report
Tom Warne Report, 13 August 2013 Contra Costa Times – August 5, 2013 OAKLAND – Efforts to keep the new Bay Bridge collapsing amid strong winds are underway as ironworkers are hanging 700 square steel plates beneath the deck. The panels are intended to fend off the strong forces that resulted in the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge…
Tom Warne Report, 5 August 2013 MnDOT News Release – July 22, 2013 ROCHESTER, Minn. – The Minnesota Department of Transportation has announced the selection of the Construction Manager General Contractor procurement method to deliver the Winona Bridge project, marking the first use of CMGC on a MnDOT project. With CMGC, a contracting team is hired during the design…
AASHTO Journal, 9 August 2013 Officials from the New Hampshire and Maine Departments of Transportation joined members of the community this week to mark the opening the new Memorial Bridge, which connects Portsmouth, N.H. to Kittery, Maine over the Piscataqua River. The original Memorial Bridge was built in 1922 and had experienced deterioration over time, prompting NHDOT and MaineDOT…
The Region 2 University Transportation Research Center has released a report that evaluates the deterioration of reinforced concrete bridge components so as to estimate the reserved strength of deteriorated bridges and design cost-effective methods for retrofit. Read the Report
AASHTO News, 5 August 2013 SAN FRANCISCO – Transportation projects that upgraded an international port of entry, rehabilitated a freight rail line vital to agricultural communities, and expanded a major highway years early and hundreds of millions of dollars under budget were among the recipients of top honors in the western regional America’s Transportation Awards competition. “The entries we…
AASHTO Journal, 5 August 2013 The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and the Federal Highway Administration announced today that applications for the second round of the second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP2) Implementation Assistance are officially being accepted. In an email sent to the chief executive officials of the state departments of transportation, AASHTO and FHWA…
The National Highway Institute’s (NHI) 3.5-day 135090 Hydraulic Design of Safe Bridges course provides participants with an intensive training on the hydraulic analysis and design of bridges. The goal of this course is to provide information needed to safely build bridges, while optimizing costs and limiting the impact to property and the environment. This engaging course includes 14 mandatory…
AASHTO Journal, 2 August 2013 Representatives from the Oregon Department of Transportation were joined by elected and federal officials and community members last week to celebrate the early completion of the I-5 Whilamut Passage Bridge in Eugene, a project aimed at cutting congestion and improving the local economy through better freight movement. The new northbound bridge, which now accompanies…
AASHTO Journal, 2 August 2013 The Federal Highway Administration this week published a Supplemental Notice of Proposed Rulemaking this week in the Federal Register, seeking comments on the revised National Tunnel Inspection Standards. The changes stem from the passage of the current transportation bill, MAP-21, and the need to address provisions made in the law. The notice seeks to…
The Illinois Center for Transportation at the University of Illinois has released a report that discusses the application of expansive cements and shrinkage-reducing admixtures in reducing cracking due to drying shrinkage. Read the Report
Better Roads – e Road Pro Daily by Amanda Bayhi The Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) reopened Interstate 70 on Monday morning following a weekend of bridge work. CDOT announced the section of road, located between Interstate 25 and Federal Boulevard, opened approximately 4.5 hours ahead of schedule. More than 1,000 visited the viewing area over the weekend to…
The Center for Transportation Research at the University of Texas at Austin has released a report that evaluates diagonal cracking in reinforced concrete inverted-T straddle bent caps by examining variables such as quantity of web reinforcement and number of point loads. Read the Report
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