When Mark Callahan looks back on the arduous but successful seven-year effort of managing the project development and environment study for the $1.6-billion Wekiva Parkway, he gives credit to an unlikely group—environmentalists who once opposed it.
“Without the environmental groups on board, it wouldn’t have happened,” says Callahan, who led CH2M’s PD&E study effort for the Florida Dept. of Transportation (FDOT) and what was then the Orlando-Orange County Expressway Authority (OOCEA). Initiated in 2005—nearly 20 years after conceptual plans for the regional beltway—the PD&E study was key to winning federal approval, in 2012.
The cooperative approach has implications for future infrastructure investments around the country.
环保主义者不仅在船上。卡拉汉回忆说，有时，他们乘方向盘通过“绘制我们的对齐方式并给予我们投入”来帮助推动长期稳定的项目。卡拉汉说，如果像佛罗里达奥杜邦协会这样的团体并没有像他们那样热心地倡导该项目，“我们仍然会对那些胆小的事情搏斗。”
Instead, the project finally moved forward, authorized via the Wekiva Parkway and Protection Act, signed into law by then-Gov. Jeb Bush (R) in 2004. FDOT and the Central Florida Expressway Authority (CFX)—previously OOCEA—are jointly managing the $1.6-billion project. CFX handles the two Orange County sections, and FDOT oversees the sections located in Lake and Seminole counties. In 2013, FDOT awarded a $27.2-million design-build contract for sections 4A and 4B that The De Moya Group completed in January. FDOT is procuring an estimated $220-million design-build contract for Section 6, which includes the Wekiva River bridge. Bids are due next year.
CFX正在管理建造9.6英里的新高速公路。Prince Contracting持有5610万美元，2.1英里长的第1A部分合同，计划于2017年完成。SuperiorConstruction通过目标4660万美元的1B合同，针对2017年4月的完成和38.6-6-- $ 38.6---原定于2018年1月结束的百万合同。SouthlandConstruction将通过其7,960万美元的合同建造1.5英里长的2B部分，而GLF Construction则持有1.6英里长的2C部分的4,950万美元合同。这两个部分均计划在2018年1月完成。
Article Index:
Getting Started
The effort to build the Wekiva Parkway dates to a 1986 study that produced conceptual designs. The parkway’s alignment runs through a part of the state noted for its unusual-for-Florida geography of rolling hills that includes multiple state parks, a bear wilderness area and other federally protected natural resources, including the nationally designated Wekiva River.
Carrying SR 429, the parkway will initially have four lanes, with an ultimate six-lane build-out. It will connect to SR 417, completing a long-sought regional beltway as an alternative to Interstate 4. The project consists of 25 miles of new expressway, seven miles of widening State Road 46, reconstructing the U.S. 441/State Road 46 interchange in Mount Dora and relocating a mile of County Road 46A out of the Seminole State Forest.
May 2012 brought two big milestones. The FHWA issued a Finding Of No Significant Impact, preempting the need for an environmental impact statement. And FDOT and OOCEA (now CFX) finalized a preliminary funding agreement. FDOT’s and CFX’s financial commitments stand at $1.1 billion and nearly $527 million, respectively. CFX received a $194-million TIFIA loan in 2015. The project includes $500 million in non-tolled road improvements.
“A lot of things fell into place,” says Ananth Prasad, national transportation sector leader for HNTB and FDOT secretary at the time. “Wekiva happened because of the willingness of all parties to clean up old issues, and that required a lot of give and take.” HNTB is engineering sections 1 to 5, while Atkins is designing sections 6 to 8.
该集团中央佛罗里达州办公室倡导主任查尔斯·李说，佛罗里达州奥杜邦协会（FAS）发起了付出和吸引。当FDOT官员和环境团体在拟议的环城公路上陷入僵局时，FDOT开始制定计划，以扩大莱克县的46号州际公路46，而奥杜邦的李称为“糟糕透顶”。李说，拟议的扩张“将刺激各种发展……将增加野生动植物的死亡率，”李说，尤其是黑熊。“对我们来说很清楚，只是说'不'不会让我们在任何地方，而是完全无法接受的SR 46。”
Consequently, Lee and Callahan recall, FAS proposed construction of a “clean enclave-type highway” that would be partly elevated, providing wildlife crossings and decreasing wetlands impacts, along with minimal interchanges. Compared to the alternatives proposed by FDOT, a Wekiva Parkway built with that concept would provide “environmental results [that] would be far superior,” Lee argued at the time.
The transportation agencies agreed, and incorporated some 7,700 ft of elevated structures designed to accommodate wildlife crossings below, according to FDOT’s Alan Hyman, FDOT’s director of transportation operations in Central Florida’s district 5.
跨越“狂野和风景”
Along its 25-mile-long alignment, the expressway’s mainline will both rise and fall. Lowering the elevation is an unusual characteristic for a Florida road project given the usually shallow water table, but it wasn’t a problem given the relatively hilly local terrain. For instance, one roughly 1.5-mile-long stretch of mainline will gradually dive to a depth of nearly 25 ft below its natural elevation in order to minimize visual and sonic disruptions to residents from passing cars.
Precast concrete panels painstakingly designed and stained to a more natural-looking, varying hue will comprise the mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) walls that support the expressway’s eight interchanges, creating a true “parkway” feel akin to that of the Blue Ridge Parkway, says Donald Budnovich, resident engineer for CFX.
CFX chose concrete U-beam girders for bridge girders, a technology the agency first used on its recently completed $85-million Boggy Creek Interchange project near Orlando International Airport. This time, they’re adding a twist, or a “nuance,” says Budnovich: haunches on the beams.
“这是一项美学功能，但是工程方面的想法是：‘我们已经完成了弯曲的混凝土U梁，为什么不尝试haunch？’” Budnovich说。“这是一个不错的美学功能。”
CFX and contractor Superior Construction Co. erected the first U-beam girders for the Kelly Park Road bridge, spanning 160 ft, on section 1B in June. Curved concrete U-beams typically have more weight on one side. “When you add a haunch, you’re multiplying the effect because you’re adding more weight to one side than the other, but also end to end,” Aldrich explains.
Perhaps none of those aesthetic touches would be under construction if not for the arduous effort it took to secure U.S. Dept. of Interior approval for the $1.6-billion project’s signature component—the 2,068-ft-long state Route 46 bridge over the “wild and scenic” Wekiva River.
Initially, construction and enviro groups butted heads over the crossing, recalls Callahan. “The environmental community just drew a line and said, ‘You’re not doing this the way you normally do it; we’ve got to come up with some other approach,’ ” he says. “That was kind of the turn that got everybody to the table.”
Protected by the Wild & Scenic Rivers Act of 1968, the Wekiva River is part of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System that includes “certain rivers with outstanding natural, cultural and recreational values” and that are maintained in a “free-flowing condition.” While separate classifications, “wild” and “scenic” denote that rivers are “free of impoundments” and are considered generally “primitive.” Think kayaks and canoes, not motorboats.
As a result, the National Park Service (NPS) stood front and center for project coordination and permitting. At first, Callahan says, NPS was skeptical on the notion of building a big new bridge over the quiet Wekiva. But the road-builders had a key ally—the environmentalists.
“A road-building agency talking to the National Park Service doesn’t necessarily hold a lot of sway,” Callahan says. “But when you have almost all of the environmental interests in and around the Wekiva area telling the Park Service that this is the right thing to do, that got us there.”
Listening carefully to those environmental interests, planners decided on building a bridge along the same route as the current low-level structure, but roughly 50 ft above the existing structure, thus limiting river impacts, says Lee. The move enables excavation of earthen embankments that infringe upon the river at both ends of the existing substructure. The heightened elevation will also improve the recreational experience; for example, kayakers and canoers will no longer have to duck when they pass under the bridge during high tide.
Engineers floated balloons along the potential paths in order to obtain perspectives of the bridge from the water, and vice versa, which were important factors to environmentalists, residents and recreational users.
河impacts-including可能降到最低shadow cast upon the Wekiva—engineers decided upon a three-structure crossing, with each structure built to accommodate a maximum of three lanes. Two of the structures will accommodate eastbound and southbound traffic along SR 46, while the third is built as a local service road and to facilitate pedestrian traffic. The structures are being procured via an FDOT solicitation for design-build proposals for an estimated $220-million contract, and will be built via top-down construction.
Only a precast segmental, arched-box structure would work, says FDOT’s Hyman, citing pier systems’ potential river impacts and the bridge’s span lengths, the longest of which measures 360 ft. River users wanted a bridge that “more or less blends in with the environment,” and contractors would have to stay out of the river during construction, Hyman says, so cable-stayed or steel truss bridges would not work.
Constructing one massive structure also was a no-go, he adds, since a bridge accommodating up to nine lanes of vehicular or pedestrian traffic would cast too great a shadow. “Dividing it up into three parallel bridges let more light on the river,” he says. “[Enough light] was a big concern.”
Next, in late 2013 and early 2014, Wekiva River bridge designer FIGG Bridge Engineers—working as subconsultant to GAI Consultants, the engineer-of-record for Section 6—began leading design charrettes with NPS, FDOT and the environmental groups that would solicit critical feedback on all aspects of the bridge’s design, including its exact color, the type of railings used, and even the abstract expression of a tree-related theme within the structures’ piers.
“In the end, it became very clear, especially with the Park Service, that this met their needs with the visual effects and the integrity of the river and the recreation on the river,” says Callahan.
启用Wekiva建设的过程只是建筑行业代表和环保主义者都同意的开始的开始。FAS的Lee说：“在纸上排在纸上之前，在游戏初期结合共识过程的想法非常重要。”“有价值使每个人聚在一起尝试前进，并为解决过程创造更多的形式。这样，您可以回到决策者，并具有更强的共识感。”
The PD&E study that Callahan and CH2M delivered “has become a model for corridor studies in Florida,” says Hyman with FDOT. “If we didn’t get the stakeholders together early on in the PD&E, I don’t think this would’ve happened the way it did.”
WEKIVA模型正在通知计划者和其他目前参加FDOT的I-75救济工作组的利益相关者，该工作组正在研究围绕坦帕湾至佛罗里达州走廊的概念。新利18备用
尽管Wekiva需要详尽的过程，但至少有一个项目参与者仍然对未来的计划工作充满热情。卡拉汉说：“我迫不及待地想做另一个。”
Wekiva Parkway Timeline
1986
The first Wekiva Parkway conceptual design work gets underway with the start of the Northwest Beltway Part B Study
2000
Wekiva河被指定为“野生风景秀丽的河”，因此由《野生与风景河法》保护。在单独的分类中，“野生”和“风景”表示以“没有蓄水性”为特征的河流，通常被认为是“原始”。FDOT官员称，该指定将促使公路建设者获得内政部国家公园管理局的项目批准，这仅标志着美国历史上第二次进行此类项目审查。
2002
Gov. Jeb Bush creates the Wekiva Basin Area Task Force, which is given the duty of analyzing and recommending a study area for connecting SR 429 (the Western Beltway) in Apopka to Interstate 4 in Seminole County.
2003
州长杰布·布什（Jeb Bush）成立了韦基瓦河流域协调委员会。
2004
The Florida legislature passes the Wekiva Parkway & Protection Act, which is signed into law by Gov. Jeb Bush. The law prescribes the alignment for the future 25-mile-long parkway.
2005
由佛罗里达州运输部和现为CH2M CH2M Hill的Orlando-Orange County Expressway管理局雇用，开始为Wekiva Parkway提供项目开发与环境（PD＆E）研究，现在被认为是“模型”新利18备用佛罗里达州的走廊研究，例如正在进行的I-75救济工作组。
2011
Officials with FDOT and OOCEA on May 25 announce an agreement to move forward with construction of the Wekiva Parkway. At the time, OOCEA and Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise expressed hope that construction could start by late 2012.
2012
今年标志着该项目的转折点。联邦高速公路管理局（FHWA）发出了没有重大影响（FONSI）的发现，确定该项目“不会对环境产生任何重大影响”，因此排除了对环境影响声明的需求。同样，那一年，当时的Florida运输部长Ananth Prasad与Oocea签署了一份协议备忘录，该备忘录建立了资金结构，并将长期计划的项目推向了更接近现实的一步。
2013
The DeMoya Group starts work on a $26.7-million design-build contract with the Florida Dept. of Transportation, marking the first construction of the Wekiva Parkway
2015
The Central Florida Expressway Authority starts construction on its first sections of its nearly 10 miles of expressway mainline.
