PROVIDENCE – The bridge carrying Interstate 195 over the Providence River recently took top honors in a regional engineering contest and now heads to a national competition.
The American Council of Engineering Companies Massachusetts and Rhode Island chapter chose the project as a Grand Conceptor winner in the organization’s 2010 Engineering Excellence Awards competition, qualifying it for the organization’s national award.
The arch bridge includes a network of crisscrossing cables that support a 400-foot long span. Its designers said the bridge represented the first use of such a design anywhere in the United States.
The bridge was designed and built by a team of contractors, including Cardi Corp., William D. Warner Architects & Planners and lead consultant the Maguire Group, A Metric Engineering Group Company.
In an unusual move, workers built the bridge’s arched span off site. Assembly took place at Quonset Business Park in North Kingstown and two barges carried the bridge up Narragansett Bay and to its position at the mouth of the Providence River. The History Channel chronicled the move as part of its “Mega Movers” series.
The bridge serves as the centerpiece of the R.I. Department of Transportation’s I-195 relocation project, which moved the highway south and included building a network of 16 new bridges and a new interchange between Interstate 195 and Interstate 95.
“According to DOT’s statistical evidence, this project has reduced travel times by more than 20 percent and average speeds are almost 10 percent higher, saving commuters hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel costs every year,” Maguire President and CEO Carlos Duart said. “The innovative use of the network arch cable arrangement also produced a significant savings in structural steel, and resulted in a structure light enough for the contractor to build off site and then float into Providence – altogether a great feat of engineering.”
Maguire’s bridge design group in its Providence office led the design on the project with assistance from Exeter-based William D. Warner Architects & Planners, Maguire said.
Just before it opened to traffic in October 2007, more than 10,000 people crossed the bridge during a “public walk” of the new structure.
