AASHTO Journal, 17 July 2015 The Federal Highway Administration published a final rule for national tunnel inspection standards, which will be the basis of its first standardized tunnel inspection program. This effort will be modeled after what the FHWA said is its “successful bridge program established nearly a half-century ago to ensure the safety of the nation’s bridges.” U.S….
The Iowa State University Institute for Transportation has released a report that presents a literature review on long-term monitoring of bridge systems and applications, the prototype hardware of these systems, and methodological issues. Read the Report
AASHTO Journal, 10 July 2015 The Ohio Department of Transportation has hired a contractor to quickly replace a major Interstate 70 bridge at Columbus, after it was destroyed July 1 when a tanker truck hauling ethanol overturned underneath that span and set off an intense fire. The U.S. Department of Transportation is providing $1 million in “quick release” funds…
Better Roads, 03 July 2015 Bobby Atkinson A Dallas resident took his drone to the sky to capture the progress of the construction on the Margaret McDermott Bridge. The footage, featured by the Dallas Morning News takes a cinematic look at where the bridge is at in this phase of the project, which will provide an upgrade to the bridge which crosses…
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has released a summary that explains its efforts to develop safety standards for preventing falls from wooden platforms on bridge decks. Read the Summary
The Oregon Department of Transportation has released a report that identifies and demonstrates a methodology to prioritize bridges for retrofit by prioritizing the inventory and enumerating the cost. Read the Report
The Oregon Department of Transportation has released a report that evaluates a multi-parameter corrosion monitoring system for existing reinforced concrete structures on bridges in chloride-laden service environments. Read the Report
The Institute for Transportation at Iowa State University has released a report that evaluates the performance of several concrete coating alternatives based on AASHTO specifications and on their performance on in-service bridges. Read the Report
The Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) has released a report that discusses the utility of air-launched ground penetrating radar for assessments of bridge decks. Read the Report
The Institute for Transportation at Iowa State University has released a report that presents a study on the recently-developed air-coupled impact-echo (IE) nondestructive testing method in which microphones replace the traditional physically-coupled IE sensors for testing concrete on bridge decks. Read the Report
AASHTO Journal, 15 May 2015 The Washington State Department of Transportation is relying on deep sea divers to replace aging cables on the Interstate 90 floating bridges across Lake Washington, connecting Seattle and Bellevue. The $3.4 million safety and preservation project that began May 11, WSDOT said, will see specially trained contractor crews from Orion Marine replace 21 “frayed…
The Center for Transportation Research at the University of Texas at Austin has released a report that evaluates the strength and serviceability of post-tensioned girders loaded in shear, including how a post-tensioning duct located in the web of a girder affects the shear transfer mechanism of a bulb-tee cross-section. Read the Report
AASHTO Journal, 1 May 2015 The Federal Highway Administration has begun collecting new data from state departments of transportation to more closely monitor bridge conditions throughout the nation. Each year, state DOTs provide bridge inspection information to an FHWA national database by the end of April, and starting this year that includes more detailed “element-level” descriptions of conditions. “Smart…
Better Roads, 29 April 2015 Chris Hill The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) will begin gathering new data on bridges that will report conditions down to the square foot surface area, rather than simply the overall condition. The “Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century” (MAP-21) Act requires this shift in data collection. As opposed to the previous overall…
Better Roads, 29 April 2015 Bobby Atkinson The massive Left Coast Lifter places a pier cap in its first job for the new Tappan Zee Bridge project. Photo Credit: Peter Carr/The Journal News One of the largest cranes in the world was finally put to use in the Hudson River on Friday as it made its first lift in…
The Center for Transportation Research at the University of Texas at Austin has released a report that analyzes the feasibility and effectiveness of a lightweight noise barrier on a highway segment that has presented noise problems for the adjacent neighborhood. Read the Report
The Florida Department of Transportation has released a report that considers coating technologies for steel components in highway bridges to identify those that would provide corrosion durability of the components and reduce inspection and maintenance costs. Read the Report
The Missouri Department of Transportation has released a report that presents the behavior of hollow-core fiber reinforced polymer concrete-steel bridge columns under combined axial-flexural and vehicle collision loads. Read the Report
The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development has released a report that develops bridge scour monitoring techniques using fiber optic sensors as a means to address the difficulty of inspecting bridge scour. Read the Report
The Mountain-Plains Consortium at North Dakota State University has released a report that considers the feasibility of creating an integrated structural health monitoring and impact/collision detection system for bridges in remote cold regions. Read the Report
The Center for Transportation Research at the University of Texas at Austin has released a report that describes a research program developed to study cast-in-place (CIP) splice regions of spliced I-girders, practices that have been implemented in CIP splice regions, and design recommendations based on the structural performance of spliced I-girder specimens. Read the Report
AASHTO Journal, 17 April 2015 The New York State Department of Transportation and other agencies have begun work on a $15.6 million project to replace seven bridges in the Town of Keene that are at risk from flood scouring, part of 80 bridges approved so far for replacement by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the…
AASHTO Journal, 17 April 2015 U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said the Federal Highway Administration is issuing a $162 million low-interest, long-term TIFIA loan to help finance construction of the East End Crossing section of the Louisville-Southern Indiana Ohio River Bridges Project. “This project will relieve congestion and stimulate the economy of the entire Louisville-Southern Indiana region both today…
The Mountain-Plains Consortium at the University of Wyoming has released a report that considers the geotechnical process associated with the failure of compacted earth, spill-through abutments, and spill-slope soil on abutment scour of bridges. Read the Report
The Ohio Department of Transportation has released a report that evaluates different approaches to address premature bridge cracking through use of test parapets. Read the Report
The Minnesota Department of Transportation has released a report that identifies new techniques and equipment that can improve the quality of timber bridge inspection practices and can be implemented as part of the National Bridge Inspection Standards (NBIS). Read the Report
On February 20, 2015, TRB’s Long-Term Bridge Performance (LTBP) Committee sent its fifth letter report to Gregory Nadeau, acting administrator of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). The committee provides advice and assistance on the conduct of the LTBP program, which is designed to collect research-quality data on a large representative sample of in-service U.S. highway bridges and to…
AASHTO Journal, 13 March 2015 The first use of a “bridge slide” construction technique by any tribal nation in the United States drew about 100 industry professionals from across the country to view the project at the Gila River Indian Community south of Phoenix. That technique, which is among the advances to come out of the second Strategic Highway…
TRB’s second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) Report S2-R19B-RW-1: Bridges for Service Life beyond 100 Years: Service Limit State Design explores design codes critical for bridges to reach a service live of beyond 100 years. The report also addresses performance measures and design procedures that utilize criteria to maximize the actual life of a bridge system. The weigh-in-motion…
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General has released a report that details the U.S. Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA’s) efforts to improve bridge safety. Read the Bridge Safety Report
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