Route 93 “Fast 14” Bridge Project.
Workers speed to end ‘Fast 14’ bridge repairs
By Richard Weir | Sunday, August 14,
2011 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Coverage
Photo by Patrick Whittemore
The end may be close at hand for drivers who have battled patience-busting tie-ups on
a five-mile stretch of Interstate 93 north of Boston for weeks during trips to the northern
beaches and mountains. Yesterday, workers installed girders on the last of 14 new
bridges erected along the highway, all in record time.
To motorists who found themselves stuck in this summer’s weekend lane closures, and
the resulting miles-long traffic delays from the Medford project, outgoing state
Transportation Secretary Jeffrey Mullan offered his gratitude.
“I want to thank the motorists of the commonwealth of Massachusetts who patiently
beared with us as we executed this project. I want to assure them that while they had 10
weekends of difficult traffic, they avoided . . . three or four years of disruption on
Interstate 93 North,” Mullan said, referring to the $98 million “Fast 14” accelerated
bridge project.
The decision by state Department of Transportation officials to replace all 14 bridges
spanning seven road crossings in Medford was spurred by a giant crater that opened on
a crumbling I-93 bridge last August.
While the “sinkhole” made headlines by snarling rush-hour traffic as far as Dorchester
and Reading, it also made transportation officials think creatively about a plan limiting
drivers’ pain to 10 weekends starting in June, instead of spreading it out over at least
four years — the time normally required to replace that many bridges.
MassDOT pulled off the project in such a short time by using, for the first time,
prefabricated superstructures — 40-ton panels each made of two steel I-beams and a
concrete deck lowered by cranes onto the bridges’ original abutments.
Typically, new bridge decks are built on site, said Frank DePaola, state highway
administrator, taking much more time.
The state also deployed “zipper lanes” — the moveable, interlocking concrete barriers
used for the HOV lanes along the Southeast Expressway — to move two-way traffic
throughout the I-93 construction zone.
DePaola said after last summer’s crater fiasco, state engineers examined 13 other
similar bridges along I-93 in Medford and found that they all showed signs of serious
deterioration.
“The typical design life back in the 1950s and ’60s was about 50 years,” he said of the
original bridge decks. The new ones, he added, “are designed for a 75-year life. But we
truly think they will last longer than that.”
While work on the southbound I-93 bridge over Route 16 will end by tomorrow at 5 a.m.
— wrapping up major construction on all 14 bridges — state transportation officials
warned that there will still be periodic lane closures for several more weekends as
crews finish paving, painting lines and installing noise barriers.
Article URL:
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1358594
http://93fast14.dot.state.ma.us/
Over the course of the last ten weekends, MassDOT has demolished and replaced all
fourteen bridges that are a part of this ambitious project. Each weekend, the bridge work has
been completed early and all roads have been reopened to traffic hours ahead of schedule. There will
be additional work during the remainder of the month of August to complete associated road and
bridge improvements within the project limits.
On July 16th and 17th, the project received national attention for the innovation it is using to get the
bridges built so quickly and safely-- and doing the work outside of weekday rush hours.
The Fast 14 Bridge Replacement Showcase, hosted by the Federal Highway Administration's Highways
for LIFE program, attracted more than 160 highway officials, including representatives from 26 state
departments of transportation. These transportation leaders came to learn how to use innovative,
customer service and safety-driven techniques on their bridge construction projects. As part of the
Showcase, Federal Highway Administrator Victor Mendez joined MassDOT Secretary Jeff Mullan and
state and local officials to witness the rapid construction firsthand at the Route 60 bridges.
MassDOT strongly encourages people not stopping in the greater Boston or Medford area to
take alternate regional routes during summer weekends. Paving and other associated work will
continue during overnight hours into the fall of 2011. Since MassDOT is going to replace a different
bridge each weekend, the detour routes and work zones will change. Visit 93 Map to explore and get
information about the work zones, detour routes and travel options.
MassDOT is using innovative construction methods and materials to minimize impacts and congestion.
MassDOT is replacing the bridges with modular superstructure units that have been fabricated off-site,
eliminating years of work in the roadway. The new video below shows the incredible demolition and
rapid construction process that happens each weekend.
MassDOT is committed to providing safe and durable replacement bridges. The project has been
developed by the Patrick-Murray Administration's historic Accelerated Bridge Program to result in the
fewest construction related impacts on traffic, businesses, residents and tourism. This $98.1 million
project has received a $1 million grant from the Federal Highway Administration's Highways for Life
program. Eighty percent of the project cost will be paid for with federal funds. The remaining twenty
percent of the project cost (minus the grant money) will be paid for with Accelerated Bridge Program
funds.
MassDOT strongly encourages drivers to use alternate routes if possible this summer during each
weekend that bridge construction is scheduled. Please allow extra time, plan for delays, and drive with
caution in work zones.
New Hampshire DOT is also working to improve I-93. New Hampshire DOT is in the process of
rebuilding a 20-mile segment of I-93 between New Hampshire Exits 1 and 5 from the Massachusetts
state line to Manchester, NH. Learn more about this project by visiting New Hampshire DOT’s
Rebuilding I-93 Project website.
http://93fast14.dot.state.ma.us/sites/all/files/project_status_report_081411.pdf
PROJECT STATUS
REPORT (August
14, 2011) I-93 Bridge
Anticipated Construction Date
Status
Replacement
Riverside Avenue (north)
Salem Street eastbound (north)
Salem Street westbound (north)
Route 16 (north)
Valley Street/Fellsway (north)
Mystic River Center Span (north)
Mystic River Back Span (north)
Webster Street (north)
Salem Street westbound (south)
Salem Street eastbound (south)
Valley Street/Fellway (south)
Mystic River Center Span (south)
Webster Street (south)
Mystic River Back Span (south)
Riverside Avenue (south)
Route 16 (south)
June 3 – June 6, 2011
June 10 – June 13, 2011
June 10 – June 13, 2011
June 17 – June 20, 2011
June 24 – June 27, 2011
June 24 – June 27, 2011
July 8- July 11, 2011
July 8 – July 11, 2011
July 15 – July 18, 2011
July 15 – July 18, 2011
July 22 – July 25, 2011
July 22 – July 25, 2011
July 29 – August 1, 2011
July 29 – August 1, 2011
August 5 – August 8, 2011
August 12 – August 15, 2011
Completed on June 5, 2011
Completed on June 12, 2011
Completed on June 12, 2011
Completed on June 19, 2011
Completed on June 26, 2011
Completed on June 26, 2011
Completed on July 10, 2011
Completed on July 10, 2011
Completed on July 17, 2011
Completed on July 17, 2011
Completed on July 24, 2011
Completed on July 24, 2011
Completed on July 31, 2011
Completed on July 31, 2011
Completed on August 7, 2011
Completed on August 14, 2011
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2011/08/12/final-weekend-for-fast-14-project-on-i-93/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/10/1005557/-Bostons-Fast-14-slowed-my-vacation,but-its-too-cool-to-gripe-about
Boston's "Fast 14" slowed my vacation, but it's too cool to gripe about
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In August 2010, gaping holes opened up in 14 bridges along 4.5 miles of I-93 in Medford,
Massachusetts, a crucial commuter corridor for the Boston area. There was no alternative
but to replace the bridges—all of them. Normally, tearing down and replacing that many
structures could take as long as four years and would certainly cause horrendous traffic tieups for the 200,000 drivers who traverse that stretch of I-93 every day.
So, Massachusetts’ Department of Transportation [MassDOT] decided to try something new.
The result is “Fast 14,” an innovative and aggressive project that is replacing all 14 bridges,
not in four years, but in a single summer, at a cost of $98.1 million [80 percent of which is
federal money, of course.]. And they’re doing the whole job on a weekends-only schedule.
How can they do that?
Basically, they’re re-inventing bridge reconstruction. Rather than building and pouring
concrete for the bridge supports and decks on site, MassDOT is having everything prefabricated and then assembling the bridges like giant Lego projects. Once the infrastructure
is in place, they surface the decks with a quick-drying substance, paint the lane stripes, and
voila. [Right. It’s undoubtedly not that simple.]
All of the demolition work and necessary lane closings take place on weekends, using a
precisely choreographed procedure that creates the work space between 10 pm on Fridays
and 5 am on Mondays. The work focuses on a different bridge each weekend. To get a
better idea of the process, watch this video about Fast 14. [Full disclosure: It’s got a
somewhat promotional tone, because MassDOT and USDOTare very proud of this project.
But it gives a good explanation of how the work is being done, and how the scheduling
works.] The project began in June 2011 and, as of mid-July, it was on schedule, with half of
the bridges already replaced.
Not being a Boston commuter, I can’t comment on how this whole thing is going over
among the locals, who are being warned, every week, to plan ahead, if they’re going to a
Red Sox game or another downtown event. I do know that, when my summer-travel
itinerary required my family to drive from Boston’s Logan Airport to points north—on a
Saturday afternoon in July—we got stuck in a very long jam. With two of I-93's customary
four northbound lanes closed, we inched along about 6 miles in an hour. [See current
north- and south-bound speeds here.] We weren’t happy, but we weren’t in a commuter
hurry, either. And when I got home and learned about Fast 14, I felt better about the whole
thing: It’s infrastructure; it’s jobs; it’s good old-fashioned ingenuity at work; and it’s for the
common good [if you believe that safe bridges and smarter highway construction—or
highways in general—are about the common good. Some of which may be debatable.]
Anticipating a similar snail’s pace for our return trip on the next Saturday, we factored in an
extra hour. But we didn’t need it: At 2 pm, Northbound I-93 traffic still looked terrible, but
our two southbound lanes flowed freely. I can tell you one thing: I wouldn’t want to be a
Boston driver on that stretch if they were doing this work in the conventional way. All hail
MassDot and radical thinking [said the outsider].
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2011/08/14/photographer_documents_fast_14_i
nterstate_93_bridge_project/?page=full
Clicks amid the mayhem
Photographer’s work documents I-93 bridge project
Stephen
SetteDucati takes a picture under the Mystic River Crossing northbound section of Interstate 93 last month as the bridge is
torn down. (Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff)
By Joel Brown
Globe Correspondent / August 14, 2011
MEDFORD - The scene suggests Dante’s “Inferno’’ rewritten by a small boy.
Under the full moon, torches throw off torrents of sparks, while shattered cement and
twisted metal crash to the ground in clouds of dust. More than a dozen big yellow excavators
move at once in a brutal ballet. It’s a sandbox dream, except these machines are full-sized,
not toys. Each one has a special attachment at the end of its bent arm, for cutting,
jackhammering, or biting I-beams in two. The noise is deafening: grinding, smashing, and
pounding, pounding, pounding. The ground shakes often.
This is the demolition phase of the state’s Fast 14 Interstate 93 bridge replacement project.
And Stephen SetteDucati is right in the middle of it with his camera.
“This is something I never, ever get bored of, even if I see it a thousand times,’’ SetteDucati
says, grinning as a huge piece of equipment rumbles past with a twisted girder clenched in
its iron claw.
Between 9 p.m. and midnight on this Friday in July - just three hours - crews mostly
demolish both spans carrying I-93 southbound over the Salem Street rotary in Medford.
During the rest of the weekend, both will be replaced, and SetteDucati will be there to
photograph it. It’s a process repeated up and down this stretch of highway all summer, as 14
bridges are replaced. The final bridge deck replacement - of the span carrying I-93 over
Route 16 in Medford - will be completed by the end of this weekend.
Some nearby streets are closed off. State and local police keep the few spectators outside
temporary fences. Hard hats and bright safety vests are mandatory, earplugs advisable. But
SetteDucati moves comfortably through the seemingly chaotic scene, snapping away with
his top-of-the-line Canon EOS 5D digital camera and checking other cameras mounted on
tripods and even the vehicles themselves to shoot time-lapse montages and video. The
machines’ drivers wave and shout to him as they pass.
“I’ve been around these guys a lot and I know how they work, and they look out for me,’’ he
said. “I make sure they see me, and they give that little wave, that they know I’m here.’’
The companies that hire him appreciate how he has become “embedded into the crews and
operators of the equipment we employ so when he comes to work he is part of the gang not a
‘picture guy’ in the way of busy people,’’ Peter T. White, president of J.F. White Contracting
Co. of Framingham, said via e-mail. “Once people see his work, they more readily welcome
him on site and hope he maybe captures their job just right like he has done several times
for J.F. White in the past.’’
SetteDucati grew up outside Albany, N.Y., and came to the Boston area to study architecture
and design at Wentworth Institute of Technology. He was working as an architectural
photographer by day in the early 1990s when he began to spend nights taking his own
photos of the Big Dig. He became, by his own account, more and more obsessed as the
project grew, resulting in the publication of “The Big Dig at Night,’’ a book featuring his
photos and text by Dan McNichol.
Just one problem. The first book signing at the Barnes & Noble in Downtown Crossing was
on Sept. 12, 2001.
“The people who came in were just like zombies,’’ SetteDucati said. “They said, ‘Where were
these photos taken?’ ‘The Big Dig.’ ‘They look just like Ground Zero, you should take them
down.’ ’’
With the intense focus on security after 9/11, SetteDucati needed to make connections with
the construction companies to be able to work in and near the Big Dig and other projects.
Eventually he began working for them, including J.F. White, W.L. French Excavating Corp.,
and Wakefield-based Testa Corp. One of his assignments for Testa was to shoot some of its
work at Ground Zero in New York City.
He makes a permanent artistic record of each company’s work in stills and on video, and not
just pretty shots of the finished product. He’s shooting the Fast 14 for White, which runs the
project as a joint venture with Kiewit Corp., although on this night, Testa is doing the
demolition work as subcontractor.
“Steve’s mission is to capture our work and provide lasting memories and images of what it
was that day, that moment,’’ White wrote. “The straining arm of a dock-builder’s arm, an
ironworker guiding 200,000 pounds of steel and concrete to within an eighth of an inch, a
mega-crane resting between picks, a demolition shear tool biting bridge beams in two as if
it’s a kill - these are moments never precisely to recur again in that spot, and that to me
makes photos in and of themselves valuable.’’
SetteDucati’s work is used in bid packages, for promotional purposes, or simply to hang in
company offices. One of his first jobs for White was providing an image to fill a wall in a
stairwell at the company’s headquarters.
In addition to the Fast14 project, he has also been keeping tabs on the Chelsea Street Bridge
project over Chelsea Creek between East Boston and Chelsea. And he’s been traveling to
Missouri to document the demolition of a huge Chrysler plant outside St. Louis for Detroitbased MCM Management Corp. There are many other projects in his portfolio.(His work is
on display at www.setteducati.com.)
This summer SetteDucati was also elected president of the Commercial Industrial
Photographers of New England. He said he hopes to expand membership by bringing more
of his fellow industrial shooters into the fold. Single, he lives in Worcester with a bull terrier
named Strut.
In Medford, surprisingly few neighbors turn out to stand behind the fence and watch the
demolition.
“I could stand here all night and watch,’’ said Sandy Gale. “It’s so cool.’’
“I like all the equipment,’’ said Michael DiStasio, 10, whose father brought him out to watch.
As SetteDucati walks around the Medford site near midnight, it’s easy to see the pure joy on
his face as Testa’s yellow machines do their work. He said he thinks he knows when he got
hooked.
“When I was a young boy, around 10 years old - my grandfather out in Ohio was having his
farm strip-mined for coal, and there were these huge machines everywhere. And on Sundays
when they weren’t working, my father would take me down to the pit,’’ SetteDucati said.
The attractions included the Gem of Egypt, a steam shovel with a bucket large enough to fit
six full-size SUVs in it and tracks 10 feet tall, he said.
“I remember taking a drive with my father and grandfather to go see this in the middle of
the night,’’ SetteDucati said. “It’s plain as day, I can see it in my mind, when we were going
up this little mountain road and turned a corner, and I looked down in the valley and there
were all these lights and this massive, massive machine just digging one scoop at a time of
coal out of the earth. Whether I’ve been trying to recreate that vision for the past 35 years perhaps that’s what it is. Night photography has always been my thing.’’
Joel Brown can be reached at jbnbpt@gmail.com.