Best of 2005 Awards

Brooklyn-Queens Expressway Rehabilitation - 25th Ave. to Broadway

Project of the Year: Highway and Roadway

The New York State Department of Transportation had serious concerns about a 1.6-mi. stretch of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in Queens.

The roadway from 25th Avenue to Broadway, built 50 years ago, had narrow lanes, no shoulder, poor drainage, unsafe curves, and substandard vertical and horizontal sight distances. At the same time, it served as Interstate 278 - one of the nation's busiest traffic zones with a volume of about 140,000 vehicles per day.

Those conditions sparked a $295 million, five-year-long reconstruction completed in May.

"One of the most complex projects ever executed in the city," said one Best of 2005 judge.

On any other highway, a widening, straightening, and drainage improvement project might be a straightforward proposition. Here, it was a planning feat.

"Every 100 yd. on one of these jobs is a project unto itself," a juror said.

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Not only did the project require maintaining the highway's traffic flow, but crews had to work within a densely developed and populated neighborhood, encountering work areas as small as 12 ft. beside the highway. In addition, the highway straddles a CSX railroad line, with 3,000 ft. of rail running through the project area, forcing the team to contend with rail structures such as a bridge over the highway; a bridge for the line to pass under Broadway that the team refurbished; and three bridges over local streets, all of which the team demolished and replaced.

The effort to rebuild the highway was dependent in large part on freeing up space by moving the rail line, said Peter Franco, project manager for Slattery Skanska of Whitestone, N.Y., the general contractor. The bulk of the early work involved replacing the rail line's three existing bridges - over the highway, 34th Avenue, and 35th Avenue - with one nine-span structure, which was installed in two stages and had eight, 10-ft.-diameter drilled shafts for supports.

The task included lowering the two avenues and 69th Street by up to 10 ft., while also reburying existing utilities such as 48-in. and 72-in. water mains, 12-in. and 20-in. gas mains, sewer lines, electrical ducts, and communications lines. After that effort finished in August 2002, the crews rebuilt a rail bridge over Northern Boulevard, installing a three-span structure with three trusses.

At that point, there was finally room to straighten out and widen the highway, even though the project team still had to contend with a tight work area, difficult soil conditions, and proximity to neighborhoods. For instance, in order to reduce noise and vibrations, the design called for drilled shafts rather than driven piles along 93,000 lin. ft. of foundations, including work around bridges and retaining walls. The task was more difficult because of the prevalence of 10-ft. boulders buried in the soil.

One of the tighter spaces around the Northern Boulevard Bridge required crews to use 500-ton Liebherr cranes, capable of extending heavy loads out to the work area. On other occasions, in order to erect retaining walls for bridges, crews had to build access ramps to get drills onto the embankments.

In all, the project involved 3.5 mi. of retaining walls, more than 38,000 lin. ft. of soldier piling, and 18 temporary ramps.

When crews finally got to the highway itself, they had to demolish and rebuild 13 bridges in similarly tight spaces. To support construction of the bridge sections, engineers eschewed traditional framing because of the space conditions and instead used a geosynthetic reinforced earthwall system, which consists of layers of sand set between sheets of geosynthetic fabric and L-shaped wire baskets holding the sand inside each layer. The team built 40 of these temporary walls.

Dhiaa Shubber, program manager for Parsons Brinckerhoff, the construction manager, said one of the keys to making the project flow more smoothly was having constant meetings with local community boards, groups, and government agencies.

The project overall encompassed four stages and 40 phases, with most work taking place during off-peak hours. The team also used cattle chutes to redirect vehicles, with up to five chutes in operation at once.

Key Players

Owner: New York State Department of Transportation Region 11

Construction Manager: Parsons Brinckerhoff

Engineer: Joint venture of URS Corp. and Goodkind & O'Dea

General Contractor: Slattery Skanska

Design Team: Mark K. Morrison Associates; Urbitran Associates; Muñoz Engineering; Konheim & Ketcham; Edwards and Kelcey

Project Team: Koch Skanska; Underpinning & Foundation Skanska; Trevi Icos; ADF Group; Perini Corp.; Ferrara Bros.; United States Rebar; Welsbach Electric; Precast Systems; St. Lawrence Cement; Master Builders; CFS Steel; Binghamton Precast & Supply; Carabie Corp.; Peduto Construction; Tricon Enterprises