Texas Dept. of Transportation officials have directed contractors building the new Harbor Bridge in Corpus Christi to temporarily halt work on the cable-stayed portion over unspecified safety concerns.
txdotengineers raised concerns over the planned installation of some bridge structure elements and warned that “safety issues could arise” if construction continued, officials said in a press release announcing the suspension of some work July 15. However, TxDOT declined to answer questions about the specific design elements in question. A spokesperson from the Flatiron/Dragados joint venture leading the project also did not respond to ENR's inquiries.
“We work hard to maintain productive relationships with all of our partners to deliver projects efficiently, and we cannot compromise on safety,” Lance Simmons, TxDOT chief engineer, said in a statement.
Officials didn’t say what impact they expect the suspension to have on the project’s completion date.
This is the second time TxDOT has halted the project over design concerns. As ENR previously reported, in 2019 the state paused design work for the bridge following a National Transportation Safety Board report on the 2018 collapse of a FIGG Bridge Engineers-designed pedestrian bridge in Miami.取出了FIGGas engineer-of-record from the Corpus Christi project. A team ofArup and CFCwas later selected to take over as engineer-of-record.
根据美国运输部的联邦公路管理局的数据，该计划要求建造总计6.4英里的桥梁和连接道路，以取代当前的港口桥梁，以估计为11亿美元，以估计成本为11亿美元。一对538英尺高的塔将支持1,661英尺长的六车道宽的主跨度。该桥梁在频道上载有37号州际公路，美国181号公路和286号州。作为工作的一部分，附近的高速公路交汇处也正在重建，当前桥将在新桥完成后拆除。
In a March work update, Flatiron/Dragados said the north and south cable-stayed bridge towers were both “rising steadily” and crews were installing 40 tendons of 31 strands each for tower table post-tensioning. Most of the substructure piers for the north and south approaches had been erected, and structure work for the interchange was underway.
