AirTrain

Rank #1
Cost: $1.9 billion

When AirTrain opened for business on Dec. 18, 2003, it was hailed a transportation triumph for the region. It also marked the completion of a massive construction project that lasted several years and involved numerous companies.

The project was started in 1998 and the bulk of the construction was completed in 2002. But months of testing - delayed by the death of a worker during a test run of the train - were required before the service opened. Since the project wasn't fully completed until late 2003, New York Construction magazine elected to include the project's on this year's list.

Designed to address the chronic difficulty of getting to and from the region's airports, AirTrain is an 8.1-mile light rail system that link's John F. Kennedy International Airport's nine airline terminals to each other and the airport as a whole to mass transit stations in Howard Beach and Jamaica, Queens.

The 3.3-mile line west from JFK to Howard Beach includes stops at airport car rental facilities and the employee/long-term parking lot before moving on to the Howard Beach subway station where travelers can connect to New York City Transit's A Train.

A second 3-mile line north to Jamaica runs for much of the way along the median of the Van Wyck Expressway. Building the guideway along the Van Wyck meant reconfiguring the highway from the airport to Atlantic Avenue while allowing for the continued flow of traffic, a process that began in summer 2000.

At Jamaica, AirTrain connects to the Long Island Rail Road, which has had a station there since 1913, to NYCT's E, J and Z subway lines and to a dozen different bus routes.

Slattery Skanska Inc. was the lead member of a consortium that designed and constructed the light rail system. To meet the project's aggressive timetable, construction at several locations - the Van Wyck, central terminal area, federal circle, Howard Beach, and the operations, maintenance and storage facility - were done simultaneously.

Erection of the guideway structure was one of the major components of the light rail system construction. For the structure's foundation, workers drove 80-ft.-long Monotube piles and Tapertube piles into the soil. The tops of the piles were capped below ground with footings that typically measured 20 ft. by 20 ft. by 5 ft. in depth. Installation of the cast-in-place concrete piers that varied in size up to 45 ft. in height and 6 ft. in diameter atop the footings allowed, completing the guideway's support system.

The team then erected the guideway structure that supports the system's trackway, which features running rails, safety walkways and traction power, as well as communications ductbanks. The 48,000-ft.-long structure consists of over 5,000 precast, post-tensioned, segmental concrete box sections.

For the final construction phase, Slattery Skanska's track division assembled and installed 1,500-ft.-long continuous rail strings and placed direct fixation track, linear induction motor rail and power rail. Also, the electrical division oversaw the design and installation of equipment for four 27 kV feeders, a main substation that distributes power to seven substations for traction power and nine substations to operate the passenger terminals.

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