When it comes to utilizing technology in infrastructure, Florida is surprisingly good.
In a recent report from the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, Florida projects feature in 3 of 25 case studies highlighting innovations in transportation infrastructure.
The report comes just weeks before the nation's transportation industry could get a major shake up.
With 52 percent of the country's highway and bridge investments stemming from the Highway Trust Fund — due to have its authorization expire May 31 — infrastructure advocates are all hands on deck to urge Congress to find a permanent solution.
Part of that effort is highlighting the return on investment taxpayers can get when technology and creative solutions are used in highway construction.
The I-4 Ultimate project, touted as “the largest infrastructure project in state history,” according to the case study, will revolutionize the Sunshine State's Central Florida corridor by adopting technology such as dynamic toll lanes. Those lanes will help manage congestion by varying the toll according to traffic volume and monitoring the number of vehicles using the express lanes.
The I-4 renovation will replace more than 140 bridges, reconfigure 15 interchanges, reconstruct the existing roadway and increase the posted speed limit from 55 miles per hour to 60 miles per hour.
The project is expected to be completed by 2021 — 17 years earlier than had the stakeholders utilized more traditional funding methods, according to the report. I-4 Ultimate is financed through mobility partners, Skanska and John Laing, and built by three contractors, Skanska, Granite and Lane JV.
The Port of Miami Tunnel project is similarly being lauded, this time for being a successful public-private partnership between Miami-Date County, Florida Department of Transportation and city of Miami. Bouygues Civil Works Florida is the design-build contractor and Transfield Services Infrastructure is the tunnel operator. The agreement includes 55 months for design and construction as well as years for operating and maintaining the tunnel, and will expire in October 2044.
The tunnel project is also considered innovative for the technology it utilizes, which will help the tunnel improve Downtown Miami traffic flow by reducing the number of cargo trucks traveling on busy streets. The tunnel will have automatic incident detection, 91 CCTV cameras, 50-foot hurricane flood gates and a dynamic messaging system, according to the report.
Finally, Jacksonville is being recognized for a project that has been successfully completed using creative techniques. After the 2013 Mathews Bridge crash — when a ship slammed into the bridge and severed a main truss support beam — lead designers RS&H developed a repair plan within 24 hours.
Using a 3-D model of the bridge, the firm was able to cut down the time it took to review the steel fabrication drawings from 30 days to just 12 hours. The entire repair project, which included five contractors, was completed after 33 days — a full week before its quick deadline.
“Today, America has the most complex — and sophisticated — intermodal transportation infrastructure network in the works,” wrote Pete Ruane, president and CEO of the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, which published the report. “The 'pick and shovel' enterprise has long been replaced with a high-tech industry that is driven by some of the nation's brightest minds.”
Ruane said this technology can only benefit the entire public.
“The real beneficiaries of the projects highlighted in [the report] are the American people,” he states. “Their tax dollars help finance project design and construction.”
Source:http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/news/2015/05/15/these-three-florida-projects-show-infrastructure.html
