2006 Top Ten (2): Arizona Loop 202 Powers Road to University Drive

My second pick for the top ten construction projects of 2006 is the contract to construct Arizona Loop 202 on new location between Powers Road and University Drive in Mesa. It had federal-state number STP-202-B(007)B (TRACS number H578201C) and was awarded for $195 million on December 15, 2005, with construction beginning soon after the first of the new year. Arizona DOT describes it as the "largest and most complex" Loop 202 contract to date, despite the fact that it has no system interchanges along its length. Much of the complexity arises from the need to grade and landscape a flood control basin to the immediate east of the freeway, while overcrossing roads also need to pass over a canal which runs parallel to the freeway on the west. However, this additional bridging and flood control work is not the most unusual aspect of this contract.

Two interchanges along its length--at Brown and McKellips Roads--will be of the dumbbell type, with a roundabout at the ramp termini on each side of the freeway. As suggested by Weber et al. in a paper presented at the TRB-sponsored roundabouts conference in May 2005, the guide signing for these roundabouts is designed according to guidelines given in Chapter 7 ("Design of Traffic Signs") of the British Traffic Signs Manual. Some changes have been made to accommodate American differences--such as the use of route markers and a different set of traffic signing typefaces--to yield the following signs:







Where diagrammatic signs ("map-type signs" in British traffic sign designer's parlance) are concerned, perhaps the most eye-catching difference between the Chapter 7 design idiom and the one that has evolved in the USA (see the Oregon example below) is the use of right-angle chamfers rather than filled-barb arrowheads on the arms indicating exits from the roundabout. Arms with these chamfers are called "stub arms." However, Chapter 7 rules also provide for the more important arms (generally the ones carrying more traffic) to be thicker, as is the case in the examples shown above.


The chevron-ended signs ("flag signs") follow Chapter 7 guidance to the extent that a wider chevron is used for taller signs, but in Britain the sign border would have a point, with a background-color gap of uniform width between the chevron and the inner edge of the border. The sign panel itself would also have a point unless, of coure, the sign were mounted on an aircraft gray backing board, as in this instance:


The lane assignment signs closely follow British designs except for the filled-barb American arrowhead.

Chapter 7 design rules for direction signs have their ultimate origin in Traffic Signs for All-Purpose Roads, the 1963 report of a committee chaired by Sir Walter Worboys which gave rise to the modern British traffic signing system. Unlike the United States in the 1950's, which opted to bolt several slightly different systems for signing freeways onto an existing system for signing surface roads which has received only incremental modifications over the years, the British opted to replan their traffic signing system from the bottom up. Map-type and flag signs were introduced in the Worboys report; lane assignment signs were introduced later, though I am not sure when (I hope to research their history in the future).

Loop 202 will probably be the first trial of Chapter 7 design rules on a freeway, although industry Deep Throats have told me privately of one or two roundabout projects on surface roads where signs are being designed to adapted Chapter 7 rules with Clearview typefaces. It remains to be seen whether the British idiom will come into general use; as matters now stand, American designers have already abandoned some of the most fussy aspects of Chapter 7, such as the requirement to radius out all inward-pointing corners in the roundabout symbol (this is done automatically in British sign design packages such as KeySIGN, but it would be unrealistic to expect American sign design software to have this capability yet). There have also been problems with chamfer angles other than 90° being used, apparently as a result of pre-chamfered arms being horizontally shrunk or stretched to a desired new width.

Michigan DOT advertises I-75/I-96 Ambassador Gateway contract

Yesterday, Michigan DOT advertised the main contract for the I-75/I-96 Ambassador Gateway. This project will make major improvements to the connections among the Ambassador Bridge, the two Interstates, and the local street system. It includes a signature cable-stayed pedestrian bridge to connect the two halves of Bagley Ave. which were severed by construction of I-75 and I-96 plus a number of flyover ramps, some of which lie within the current toll plaza approach, to connect the freeways more directly with the Ambassador Bridge.

Google Maps covers the project location in its current state. To indicate the scope of what is planned, I have created two photo maps by overlaying extracts from the plan sheets over aerial photos downloaded from Google Earth. (Note that while north is up in Google Maps, north is generally to the right--but not at precisely the same angle--in these extracts.) The first gives a general overview of the project.



The second gives more detail of the spaghetti-like arrangement of ramps in the vicinity of the toll booths and Customs plaza:


Bid opening for this project is currently scheduled for June 8, 2007. Michigan DOT does not publish estimates of construction contract value as part of the advertisement process, but the 2006-08 TIP for the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (the MPO for Detroit and vicinity) allocates a total of $150 million for this project.

Contractor outreach started early for this project, in what I take to be another indicator of its size and importance. On February 27, 2007, Michigan DOT announced a pre-advertisement constructability review meeting to take place in Lansing on March 16, and also published sketches showing the geographical scope of roadway (11 MB) and bridge (21 MB) construction required for this project. The project website was unveiled on April 20 but still has only the bare bones.

2006 Top Ten (1): I-10 Twin Spans bridge over Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana

This post presents the first of my picks for the top ten American road projects of 2006. Rather than choosing according to quantitative criteria such as cost (it would be a major undertaking to obtain and assemble all the information from more than fifty state DOTs and more than a dozen turnpike authorities to make such a ranking possible), I am simply picking projects I am familiar with which I consider to have national or interregional significance. I am deliberately excluding design-build projects, and each project must have been advertised, had its bid opening, or began construction in 2006.

Today's project is the I-10 Twin Spans bridge over Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana. Ultimately it will replace the existing structure, which was built in the early 1960's and was severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Two crucial parts of this project, which is valued at $800 million overall, went to bid in 2006. The most expensive contract overall has Louisiana DOTD project number 450-17-0025, received a low bid of $396 million when bids were opened on April 12, 2006, and will build most of the over-water spans for the new bridge except for a ship passage (about one mile long). The ship passage contract, under Louisiana DOTD project number 450-17-0028, had its bid opening on November 15 and is valued at $167 million.

Earlier contracts were already active by late 2005, including one which called for one of the existing spans to be cannibalized to create a temporary roadway on the other.

Welcome & an introduction

Welcome to this blog, whose title in Italian roughly translates the English phrase "road megaprojects." I'm a graduate student in economic history at the University of Oxford, and one of my main leisure interests is collecting construction plans for road projects. Despite my university affiliation, I am American, and the US remains my main focus for collecting since its volume of road construction has historically been extremely high, and its contracting culture is both open and technologically advanced--a combination which is almost, but not quite, unique.

I am carrying out this blog partly as an experiment. In the years I have been collecting construction plans, I have seen enormous variation in how major projects are phased. In some states a major project can be let as a single contract valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars, so anyone who gets hold of the plans for it therefore has the perfect bird's-eye view of the work being done. In others it can be broken down into literally dozens of smaller contracts, which are advertised over a period of time, so it becomes much harder to see how the work in one contract relates to the coherent whole. I have also found that I tend to miss some contracts since my approach toward trawling electronic plans tends to skip contracts which may be part of a major project but don't have any signing content (the history and practice of traffic signing is another of my interests).

Blogs, it occurred to me a while ago, are the perfect medium for following large projects which have been broken down into smaller units of work. Posts can be categorized according to the major projects to which they correspond. Posts can also be linked to each other. The medium itself is ideal for recording information as it comes to light. The research required to prepare a blog post can also turn up information I would have missed otherwise--for instance, I didn't discover Indiana DOT contract 29153 (the bridge replacement I mentioned in the post just finished) until I started digging deep for a post which I had initially thought would be about contract 29137 (construction of mainline I-465) only.

At the same time, I have long been suspicious of blogs, since I have felt (even before the ongoing backlash against blogging in general) that the medium furnishes too ready a platform for egotistical foolishness. There is also the problem of archiving (when we maintain blogs, are we writing on water?), and perhaps most crippling of all, finding new material for blog posts. My native country, frankly, is road-obsessed, so I don't think I will run out of new material; instead I suspect time and energy will become the ruling constraints. I am also not writing this blog for comments or attention, though it would certainly be nice if people who found it useful would write in and say so, and possibly even point out corrections to the errors I will no doubt make.
Nor will I pretend to give a comprehensive treatment of the subject--if this blog grows at all, it will do so organically. To give it ample opportunity to die a quiet death, if it should eventually fail to hold my interest, I propose not to promote it in a public forum until it has accumulated at least thirty posts over a period of sixty days.

Indiana DOT advertises several "Accelerate 465" contracts

In an early sign of Major Moves money filtering into construction, Indiana DOT has just advertised the first two contracts for Accelerate 465, its campaign to reconstruct and widen eleven miles of the western leg of the I-465 Indianapolis beltway between SR 67 and 56th Street. In terms of system interchanges, the project extends from south of I-70 to south of I-65 and includes I-465's interchanges with I-70 and I-74, but not with I-65.

This length of I-465 has three through lanes in each direction, and in 2003 four through lanes with an auxiliary lane was described as the minimum cross-section which would allow level-of-service D (Indiana DOT's minimum acceptable LOS for urban freeways) to be maintained in the design year. The recently advertised contracts cover the portion from I-74 to I-65 but do not include the I-74 interchange itself, and provide for a cross section consisting of four through lanes and two auxiliary lanes.

Bids were initially scheduled to be opened on the first contract, 29153, on April 18, but bid opening has been postponed until today. 29153 provides for the replacement of bridges over I-465 at 34th and 46th Streets. In the past week, Indiana DOT has advertised the second contract, 29137, which includes the reconstruction and widening of mainline I-465 and improvements to the 38th Street interchange, including replacement of the bridge carrying 38th over I-465. 29137 is currently scheduled to have its bid opening on May 16, 2007.

Accelerate 465 is the value-engineered successor to Indiana DOT's Indianapolis West Side Corridor project. FHWA issued its FONSI on this project on June 27, 2003, and construction was originally scheduled to begin in 2005/06. In spite of the value engineering recommendations, which HNTB--as Indiana DOT's project manager for this corridor--claims has reduced the overall cost from $800 million to $518 million, some aspects of the project have become more elaborate. A case in point is the expansion of braiding between I-70 and SR 67, which can be seen by comparing the old West Side map with the current Accelerate465 map.



The cost of construction and preliminary right-of-way for the overall project is now quoted as $400 million (the Accelerate465 website doesn't explain how this relates to the $518 million outcome of the value engineering process; however, perhaps not coincidentally, the old West Side Corridor website also quotes $400 million for construction and preliminary right-of-way).

According to the Accelerate465 website, construction is now scheduled to begin in the fourth quarter of 2007 and to continue until 2014. The two contracts just advertised are described as small advance work and, although there is clearly nothing trivial about widening three through lanes to four with two auxiliary lanes, they are considerably less elaborate than the interchange projects which will come in the future.

Accelerate465 has its own logo, which so far has appeared on its website and on the title sheet for contract 29137. If the project plans are to be believed, it will also be mounted on top of the black-on-orange advanced detour signs which warn motorists that there will be congestion as part of the I-465 reconstruction and widening. Though it is somewhat twee, it accomplishes the basic job of branding: