Beltway 8 / Ship Channel Bridge Replacement

[hindesky]

[BeerNut]

Harris County to spend nearly $300M more to fix Ship Channel Bridge project, starting with demo of work already completed

Quote

Resuming work on the Ship Channel Bridge along the Sam Houston Tollway will cost Harris County nearly $300 million more, including $50 million to rip out what had been built under what county officials say was a faulty design.

 

[rechlin]

What a shame. It's too bad they didn't pause the project after FIGG's failure in Florida, or we'd be a lot less in the hole.  Hopefully some of the costs can be recovered, but I doubt it.

[Luminare]

4 hours ago, rechlin said:

What a shame. It's too bad they didn't pause the project after FIGG's failure in Florida, or we'd be a lot less in the hole.  Hopefully some of the costs can be recovered, but I doubt it.

Just a hunch. I in no way know this to be the case, but I would assume they will probably get a bunch of money from the party at fault through either litigation, arbitration, or mediation. Whoever is the party at fault will more than likely go bankrupt and cleaned out because of it, but at least it will cover some of the damages. While the county could have stopped it was probably difficult to just halt everything, and that is always the clients call. Fortunately this was caught before this was completed and in use. It could have been a lot worse. Better to rip out concrete than dead bodies due to a collapse. Hopefully the county will be a little wiser in their next bridge project.

[mollusk]

Actually, the bonding company or companies for whoever is responsible will be the ones coughing up the cash (and as is often the case with insurance companies, it'll likely have to be dragged out of them) because public projects have to have performance bonds.  Any litigation / arbitration will probably have XYZ Co as the named defendants, though.  That said, whoever's bonding company(/ies) pays up will probably have to reimburse the bonding company (or as suggested, get cleaned out), since construction bonds are generally secured, typically at least with indemnities and unless often with hard assets.

[Ross]

3 hours ago, mollusk said:

Actually, the bonding company or companies for whoever is responsible will be the ones coughing up the cash (and as is often the case with insurance companies, it'll likely have to be dragged out of them) because public projects have to have performance bonds.  Any litigation / arbitration will probably have XYZ Co as the named defendants, though.  That said, whoever's bonding company(/ies) pays up will probably have to reimburse the bonding company (or as suggested, get cleaned out), since construction bonds are generally secured, typically at least with indemnities and unless often with hard assets.

How about soft assets, like the CEOs kneecaps? Much more motivating than a pile of cash or some office computers.🤣

[mollusk]

17 hours ago, Ross said:

How about soft assets, like the CEOs kneecaps? Much more motivating than a pile of cash or some office computers.🤣

Depending on the size of the contractor and its creditworthiness, officers frequently personally guarantee the bond indemnities.

[hindesky]

FAA Obstruction for 2 tower cranes, one on each pylon.

[J Money]

Do we know if this is for the deconstruction, or are they starting to rebuild?

[BeerNut]

Harris County's most costly redo ever, $1.3B Ship Channel Bridge rebuild, finally starts to rise

Quote

or more than 20 months, the county’s biggest single road project was stuck in the mud, figuratively and literally. Work on the project, roughly two years into construction, stopped when officials second-guessed the design after the engineering company that designed it, FIGG Bridge Group, was investigated for its role in a deadly 2018 Florida pedestrian bridge collapse.

 

[hindesky]

The two tower cranes FAA Obstruction applications are back up.

[strickn]

Do these forms state when the work/tower crane obstruction will begin and end?  Actually let's just use a bunch of robo hovercraft ferries instead.

[hindesky]

1 hour ago, strickn said:

Do these forms state when the work/tower crane obstruction will begin and end?  Actually let's just use a bunch of robo hovercraft ferries instead.

I think they do later on, these were in the "Proposed" section of the FAA Obstruction.

[strickn]

It looks as though the duration is 18 months and the end date is end of October 2025, but one of those figures could be outdated.  If they are both correct then that would place that tower crane placement at the end of February 2024.

 

Cable stayed bridges still don't look like they are holding up anything more than a coat hanger holds aloft.  There's no dramatic sweep or swoop with gravity like a suspension bridge, the Eiffel Tower, etc and, almost as uninspiring, they most often have dopey shapes to their towers.

 

A lowercase w atop a capital M does not look like it will be a new favorite of our metropolitan population.  We could do better.  The early project interviews said that solid reinforced concrete towers would be too heavy so they would have to be hollow.  Why not take that as a design prompt?

a reason to engineer a graceful kind of load distribution with a less bland expression than these cable stayed ones generate?  We're already well beyond the pale of efficiency on this bridge...  

Well, why not just make a four lane wide bridge that is triple-decker?  Use the whole structural bundle of the three decks to itself transmit loads beyond the shoreline towers inland onto a variety of spread footings using a bigger grid of ground as its anchorage?  
Then we wouldn't even need to demolish the steep existing bridge just for four more lanes of additional width, either.  So it could become an actual favorite landmark of local cyclists, runners, and walkers.  Not sure how well it would suit the Rodeo trail rides though.

Edited August 16, 2023 by strickn
Add hike and bike idea

[ChannelTwoNews]

Ship Channel Bridge on tollway nears milestone for work (houstonchronicle.com)

"Almost two years from completion, the first phase of the Houston Ship Channel span is becoming more noticeable to drivers on the existing bridge. Even more work will become obvious over the summer, but not without another thing tollway drivers are used to seeing: lane closures."