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Houston: ship channel bridge project

Started by MaxConcrete, May 01, 2015, 03:29:30 PM

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MaxConcrete

There is actually some progress on the bridge, and the Houston Chronicle has a report.

QuoteTo some drivers, the notion that Harris County was working on a new Sam Houston Tollway bridge across the ship channel might have once seemed like a tall tale.

Now it is a tall pillar of concrete and steel – where workers trudge up and down 15 flights of stairs and counting. It will eventually tower over the ship channel as the priciest piece of road ever for the Harris County Toll Road Authority.

Almost two years from completion, the first phase of the Houston Ship Channel span is becoming more noticeable to drivers on the existing bridge. Even more work will become obvious over the summer, but not without another thing tollway drivers are used to seeing: lane closures.

...

The southbound span – where the new approach lanes have been sitting for more than three years – is scheduled to open by the end of 2025. The demolition of the existing bridge and construction of the second massive span will take until 2028, officials said.

"For a long while there it seemed like they stopped working." For months, they did stop, as officials sorted out what to with the initial design, which relied on a cable-stay bridge design that used precast concrete pieces tightened into place. While using precast sections avoided erecting steel across the ship channel, then pouring concrete in a typical method, a 2018 Florida bridge collapse that involved the same bridge engineering group led some to question the new technique.

That rethink halted work on the bridge in January 2020, ultimately setting the project back by nearly four years by some estimates, but assuring the bridge – which ballooned in cost from $1 billion to $1.3 billion because of the rethinking and redesign – doesn't fail.





www.DFWFreeways.com
www.HoustonFreeways.com



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