Repaving worn and battered roadways on Interstate 80 from the Nevada state line to the Acid Flats bridge at Floriston posed serious logistical headaches for general contractor Granite Construction.
The roadway is just 60 feet wide with shoulders. Take away 36 feet for three traffic lanes, make room for the barrier system that guided whizzing traffic safely through the canyon, and Granite's road crews were left with just 22 feet in which to work.
Project Manager Brian Roll says the work was a simple tear-out and replace, but getting trucks and materials in and out of the compacted site was one of the most difficult aspects of the $42 million job.
"It was a lot harder than we anticipated," Roll says. "The work area was only 22 feet wide, and you can't get vehicles by one another."
Traffic was shuttled through three lanes two lanes heading eastbound or westbound depending on volume and Granite crews often worked nights so that they could close an additional lane of traffic.
Roll says the 30,000 feet of the Quick Movable Barrier system could be adjusted in less than two hours. Typical concrete barrier systems would have taken a minimum of 12 hours to shuffle, he says.
Granite repaved 2.6 miles of the four lanes at the western end of the 5.3-mile job, and will tackle the eastern portion beginning next spring. The State of California Water Quality Control Board-Lahontan Region restricts highway work from Oct. 15 to May 1. Caltrans originally planned the job for three phases, but Granite did a cost reduction proposal and condensed the job into two phases, Roll says.
Crews poured more than 37,000 yards of concrete 16 inches thick to form the new roadways, which were scarred from age and a massive volume of cars and big rig trucks passing over I-80. Due to the constrained work area, Granite modified its paving machine to handle delivery from two concrete mixing trucks at a time.
Roll says the project, which is about 52 percent complete, was a blessing for Granite, which employed its wholly owned subsidiary, Bartholomew Construction of Sacramento, as subcontractor on the job.
"This was a big boost to our yearly construction budget," he says. "It kept the concrete plant busy, we were getting material out of our asphalt plant, and we were keeping our guys busy as well."
Roll says the job was under quite a bit of scrutiny due to its proximity to the Truckee River, but by employing best practice management plans the job proceeded without any runoff or pollution entering the river.
"We didn't have any issues and got pretty good scores on our inspections," he says.
