The late Detroit Red Wings hockey great Gordie Howe was beloved in his native Canada and in his adopted U.S. home. A new international bridge connecting both places is trying to create similar goodwill for border traffic, but the project’s public-private partnership team and the Canadian government authority it is working for will have to join together to shift lines and mount a comeback in the third period of its construction.

计划到2024年底，这座45亿美元的Gordie Howe International Bridge计划与安大略省的底特律和温莎连接，并拥有六个交通车道。它没有高架结构，它将减轻使用美国和加拿大最繁忙的商业边境穿越（大使桥和底特律窗口隧道）的卡车高度的限制。

When it reaches its planned length of 1.5 miles, it will become the longest cable-stayed bridge in North America, twice as long as the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge that connects Staten Island to Brooklyn, and the fifth-longest in the world. Two 722-ft-tall, inverted Y-shaped towers, one in the U.S. and one in Canada, will support the bridge. The span has a continuous curve, anchored at each end by the towers that suspend the bridge deck with cables. The U.S. section’s side span is 1,171 ft and the Canadian section’s side span is 1,155 ft. Both are supported by 27 backstay cables, and they each have three pairs of ancillary piers that transfer loads directly to the ground. The piers will support curving access ramps that swing up from the ground to support the bridge deck.

“这真的就像试图刺穿针头，”特拉弗斯城办公室设计团队的AECOM副总裁Laura Aylsworth-Bonzelet说。“它必须避免被确定为当地不良状况的概述，此外还有对运输的担忧。他们想尽可能多地在建筑过程中保持河流开放，这意味着水中没有码头建筑。”

Each bridge tower is made of cast-in-place reinforced concrete built in a sequential manner through lifts approximately 15.3 ft tall to achieve their aesthetic design and desired functionality. The tower legs are 460 ft tall and will hold the pylon heads that suspend the bridge.
杰夫·约德斯（Jeff Yoders）/E新利luckNR的照片，由温莎 - 德德罗伊特桥当局提供模型和图形

P3 Delivery and Operation

北美（BNA）建筑商加拿大GP团队赢得了2018年Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority（WDBA）（加拿大皇家公司为交付它而创建的）的设计建造 - 合同维护合同。P3财团包括ACS基础设施，加拿大Dragados，Fluor和Aecon。该项目的全部范围包括四个单独的部分：桥梁本身，加拿大入境港口，美国的入境港口以及将桥梁连接到75号州际公路的密歇根州交汇处。收费广场。

The Michigan Dept. of Transportation will take over maintenance and management of the Michigan Interchange when the bridge is completed, and BNA will begin a 30-year operation-and-maintenance contract for the rest of the project, excluding the ports of entry, which will be operated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Canada Border Services Agency.

Crews are now working on the 262-ft-tall upper pylon of the Canadian side’s tower, placing and tying the rebar cages that will strengthen concrete as they step up the tower
图片由桥接北美和温莎桥梁管理局提供

根据前密歇根州州长里克·斯奈德（R）和加拿大前总理斯蒂芬·哈珀（C）在2012年达成的协议，加拿大将收取通行费，以报销政府的项目成本，密歇根州的交换和所需土地收购的成本18luck.cub在两个国家。

After being selected in late 2018, AECOM deployed separate U.S. and Canada design teams on the project due to different building standards on either side of the river, but WDBA still wanted common themes, including aesthetics. AECOM used its building information modeling (BIM) capabilities for roadway, terrain, utility and sewer network design and analysis, and also incorporated environmental, water and geotechnical datasets into the plan. AECOM designed alternative alignments and drainage schematics for the I-75 interchange to determine the optimal proposal.

机组人员弯曲并建造钢筋笼子，这些箱子被提起到美国塔的顶部，同时在横梁和柯贝尔（Corbels）上工作，为加拿大一侧的桥梁部分进行准备。
图片由桥接北美和温莎桥梁管理局提供

COVID-19并发症

当大流行在2020年袭来时，AECOM设计团队搬到了800多个家庭办事处。由于他们已经在Bentley的ProjectWise Cloud环境中工作，因此密歇根州互换设计团队的所有成员都继续与整个项目团队合作。

Construction, however, was a different story. Sitework included the installation of more than 250,000 wick drains in the ground planned for both ports of entry, relocation of utilities and the construction of new pier caissons on both sides of the river. A railroad track also had to be rerouted, significantly impacting the erection sequence of the U.S. tower.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) had exempted the project from her state’s initial stay-at-home order that had shut down construction elsewhere between March and May 2020, defining both the bridge and the Michigan Interchange as “essential.”

堆在美国驾驶。
图片由桥接北美和温莎桥梁管理局提供

但是遵循共同19的指南意味着无法帮助某些影响。接触示意图是防止任何人在2020年和2021年全部登上病毒的关键。但是，当任何一个工人得到它时，整个船员在协议下进行了隔离，这会减慢工作的速度。

“We’ve not changed the schedule, but we’re trying to make up time from COVID impacts and everything else,” says Michael Hatchell, CEO of BNA.

2月，抗议者同情渥太华的加拿大卡车运输示威活动阻止了大使桥，这使另一个地区桥梁过境点的必要性提出了争议。边境两边的汽车制造商报告说，由于关闭的关闭而造成了3亿美元的运营损失。

带有安全仓库和检查设施的两个入境港口是该项目的一部分。加拿大入境港口（上）被封闭，而美国（下）仍在放置倾斜的混凝土部分。
照片由桥接北美和温莎桥梁管理局提供

Final Tower Work

两座塔的腿都是完整的，截至6月下旬，准备好将262英尺高的塔架头放置在其顶部的钢筋笼子。每个Y形的桥塔均由现场钢筋混凝土制成，并通过腿上约15.3英尺的钢琴升降机序列建造，将使桥甲板截面在下一阶段的建筑阶段连接到它们。在加拿大一侧，工作已经开始安装柯贝尔（Corbels），每个柯贝尔（Corbels）将含有60吨不锈钢钢筋，张紧后杆和混凝土。

Concrete work on the upper pylons continues, with jump form systems used to construct the 262-ft-tall pylon heads that will merge the tower legs into a single structure. The lower pylons are the longest portion of the bridge towers; each is composed of 29 different segments. Each segment has an average height of 15.3 ft and requires 128 cu yd of concrete and 121,254 lb of rebar.

Once the transition work is complete, construction will begin on the pylon heads, which measure about 262 ft tall each. Critical to the cable-stayed design, anchor boxes within the pylon head will house 216 parallel strand stay cables that will connect the towers to the bridge and decks.

每个塔都由十二个竖井支撑，将118英尺钻入基岩，能够承载与12层的办公室或住宅建筑相似的负载。轴上装有69,000加仑的混凝土，并由5,250英尺的张紧电缆连接起来，以创建牢固的基础。每座塔计划完成后重6600万磅。正在建造桥梁和电缆系统，以支撑近3400万磅重的重量，这些重量以汽车，卡车和其他越过边界的交通形式产生。

The project’s tower cranes, one for each tower, have a horizontal jib that can reach 197 ft and have a maximum load capacity of 110,000 lb.

哈切尔说，在两座塔中的横梁上的工作也将持续到今年年底。塔头内的锚箱的建设即将在今年完成，以及连接塔顶的电缆的外壳与桥甲板相连。交付桥梁部分的计划尚未完成。

As with many recent projects, materials supplies have been affected, although superintendents say that acquiring equipment and major materials such as steel before the pandemic helped mitigate supply-chain issues.

“有些照明是一个挑战，”哈切尔说。“梯子，大门和几乎所有铝制挤出型的东西都必须建造。这很困难。有一个供应问题。它还没有影响很多，但是很难得到。”

The nature of the terrain, heavily mined for salt through the 20th century, dictated the Gordie Howe Bridge’s alignment and the placement of towers on both shores.
呈现由连接北美和the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority

Note to Lenders

In March, S&P Global reported in an investors’ note that BNA was reporting a potential eight-month COVID-19-related delay, an increase from a previously noted four-month delay, pushing its substantial completion date to November 2024.

BNA在等待WDBA同意的新时间表的同时开始实施工作加速措施。在没有成功的加速和缓解措施的情况下，桥梁组件上的另外245天的延迟可能会吞噬整个桥梁时间表之间的整个缓冲日期和桥梁移交日期之间的整个垫子，并可能再造成八个月的时间延迟到实质性完成日期。

该报告引用了结构交付和随后的连锁效应的延迟，这些效果可能会将对温度敏感的路面工作推向荒凉的冬季。2021年的标准普尔说明说，BNA已向WDBA提交了多个超级活动通知，以供计划缓解，成本补偿或两者兼而有之，并且两方正在协作解决问题。但是，这两种笔记都说，还剩下两年多的时间来完成该项目，加速工作和重新陈述活动可以成功弥补失去的时间。

尽管加拿大入境港口的地下工作基本上已经完成，但美国方面仍未完全完成其海关和仓库设施。两者都通过建筑物和檐篷的建造前进。密歇根州的互换活动正在从Springwells Street的西部到Clark Street东部的I-75延伸的1.8英里段进行，并在6月在Enr时似乎正在按时完成。新利luck

“We’ve looked at the number of crews we’re trying to use and doubling them to make up cycles on the bridge,” Hatchell says. “We brought in teams from Toronto to get help with the bridge, just to add another team working.”