A needed facelift

I-40 widened, revamped across two states

By Chip Taulbee

Work on and around Interstate 40 in Knoxville, Tenn., continues to rake in record-setting road contracts from the Tennessee Department of Transportation.

Thanks to the most recent I-40 contract awarded, Knoxville will soon be the site of more than $252 million in road work, $189.6 million of which is tied up in I-40 jobs.

The latest contract is a $104.6 million job, the largest contract ever awarded by the TDOT, and will widen I-40 in downtown Knoxville. The project includes the third and fourth phases of SmartFix 40, which will reconstruct bridges and roadways on I-40 in and around Knoxville.

Ray Bell Construction Co. of Brentwood, Tenn., was awarded the contract and is also currently building Phases I and II of the project, both part of an $85.1 million job that held the previous record for the largest contract ever awarded by the TDOT.

RBCC teamed with Blalock & Sons Construction of Knoxville for work on Phases III and IV. Work on those final phases began in May and is scheduled to be completed by summer 2009. That project involves widening I-40 between Interstate 275 and Cherry Street.

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RBCC is currently about one year into the first two SmartFix phases. That project, which began in July 2005 and is scheduled to be completed in September 2007, requires extending Hall of Fame Drive to Broadway, reconfiguring James White Parkway and replacing bridges at Summit Hill Drive and Glenwood Avenue.

All told, the four projects entail 2.5 mi. of new freeway, 4 mi. of city street, 5.2 mi. of ramps and frontage roads, 25 bridges, 31 retaining walls and 7,530 lin. ft. of noise barriers.

The job will also remove two dangerous weaving sections of roadway and widen the interstate to six lanes to accommodate the 103,000 cars that pass through there daily.

Because SmartFix is an accelerated project, I-40 will be closed for 14 months starting in May 2008 and traffic will be rerouted to Interstate 640.

Travis Brickey, TDOT communications and community relations officer, said that a conservative estimate is that the I-40 closure will save 23 months of construction time.

Along with the project's speedy pace, several technological innovations went into the project's forward-thinking design.

Some sections of the highway will have clear noise walls called Paraglass. Popular in Europe, Paraglass allows more natural light to flow through the barriers, Brickey said. Also, some other noise walls are made of precast concrete to look like they're made of stone.

Because the site is bordered by three historical neighborhoods, there were extra aesthetic considerations in the project's design.

"We've done a lot of context-sensitive design on the project," Brickey said. That includes a signature entrance with heavy landscaping in front of the signature Hall of Fame Bridge on the east entrance into Knoxville.

Wilbur Smith Associates of Columbia, S.C., provides the construction engineering and inspection.

Another noteworthy feature of the project is a 200-ft.-long tunnel cut under Hall of Fame Drive that will serve as an onramp to I-40 from James White Parkway.

The tunnel is made of precast concrete panels and has four wing walls. BridgeTek of Cincinnati supplied the panels. The tunnel tops are about 42 ft. long by 8 ft. wide and the walls are about 8 ft. wide and average about 18 ft. tall. The tunnel's panels and concrete footing have 4,000-psi strength.

RBCC Project Manager Jeremy Mitchell said building the tunnel, though a wet process because of rain, has not been too challenging. "We went in and cut out the footings, drove piling, poured a mud slab - which is basically just a good leveling pad - set the precast walls on the mud slab, form and pour a footing to hold the walls, and then ship in precast tunnel tops - which are basically arches - and set the tops."

I-40/U.S. 167, North Little Rock and Sherwood, Ark. A $42.3 million expansion of one of central Arkansas' busier thoroughfares is expected to ease traffic on the main corridor in and out of Little Rock, Ark., from the north.

Weaver-Bailey Contractors Inc. of El Paso, Ark., is in the middle of a 2.5-year expansion of I-40/U.S. Hwy. 67/167 in North Little Rock and Sherwood, Ark. The project, awarded by the Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department, will widen a 5.2-mi. stretch of highway from two lanes to three, repaving existing roads and adding one-way frontage roads.

The job is the second largest let by the ASHTD, but for good reason, its contractor said.

"I think there's 70,000 cars a day, and it was built for probably 45,000 to 50,000," Weaver-Bailey vice president Don Weaver said of that stretch of highway, which was originally built some 40 years ago. "Two lanes will just not handle that much traffic."

Weaver will remove about 107,000 cu. yds. of concrete and add about 220,000 cu. yds. "We are reusing almost everything on the job," Weaver said, adding that the highway industry is the country's largest recycler of concrete.

The job also includes an $11 million subcontract to Muskogee Bridge Co. of Muskogee, Okla., which will do work on four bridges.

There will be a new turnaround at Brookswood Road. The Kiehl Avenue overpass will be completely torn down and rebuilt. And two bridges over Woodruff Creek will be replaced. All four of the bridges will be steel and concrete structures.

During early work on 67/167, Federal Highway Administrator Mary E. Peters visited the site to tout its technologies that, she said, will save money and make the road more durable. They include high strength, longer lasting concrete, maintenance-free steel beams and higher visibility road markings. Also, Peters touted, the new bridges would use weather-resistant steel that will never needed to be painted over their 50-year life spans.

Work began on the project in October 2005 and is expected to be complete in March 2008.

I-40 Interchange, Loudon and Roane counties, Tenn. Significant grading work and relocating Tennessee Valley Authority electricity towers are part of an $18 million interchange project on Interstate 40 in Tennessee's Loudon and Roane counties.

Some 60,000 cars make their way through that section of highway daily.

The Tennessee Department of Transportation awarded the contract to Charles Blalock & Sons, which started work on the job in February and is expected to finish in May 2008.

The junction, near exit 360, is a standard diamond interchange. The 305-ft.-long steel girder structure with one center column and two abutments will replace an existing bridge at Blackburn Lane, which will be demolished.

Nearby power lines, however, make the work particularly challenging, according to Duane Manning, assistant regional construction supervisor for the TDOT.

"One of our major challenges is we've got a TVA relocation, [and] there's some existing TVA power lines that's right over the new bridge that we have to build with a very minimal clearance to get in and drive your piling," Manning said.

The TVA will relocate two of its towers as part of the project.

"This is the new method of doing utility construction," Manning said. "Most of the utilities are in the contract, which works out great and helps us give the contractor a little more control of their schedule.

Also around the interchange will be a good deal of grading work. "We're cutting it down almost 100 ft.," Manning said. "We're looking at about 600,000 cu. yds. of grading just in that one location."

The project, which stretches about 4 mi., also includes widening two lanes of road to three for acceleration and exit lanes. The new sections of road will have about 11 in. of asphalt. Existing interstate will be milled 1.5 in. and then get 1.25 in. of asphalt.

The widening includes work on a concrete girder bridge over Paw Paw Planes Road.

Some 60,000 cars make their way through that section of highway daily.