Shafer Uses Excavators, Dozers, Rollers to Rebuild Highway

the perimeters of the cemeteries to identify any anomalies,” Johnson said.

On the construction side, the existing highway will be removed and completely rebuilt along with three new interchanges and local street improvements. New storm and sanitary sewer are part of the construction package.

To make this all happen, the highway was reduced to one lane each direction to stage the construction and free up space for construction crews to work safely on the other lanes.

Construction quantities going into this project offer a clue to the intensity of the work that crews faced.

Fill, excavation, sewer and paving quantities lead this list with 298,700 cu. yds. going into embankment and 218,100 cu. yds. of excavated soil coming out. Nearly 2,800 cu. yds. of structural concrete will be placed, and 30,000 ft. of storm sewer will eventually be buried under the new pavement.

Equipment scattered throughout the work zone includes Cat, John Deere, Komatsu and Bomag heavy equipment. Terex and Manitowoc cranes and Grove lifts are on site for the bridge work.

Affecting residents directly, much of the work will zero in on improving the Thurston Avenue, Fairoak Avenue and Main Street crossings and connections of the highway.

Improvements at these highway connections include a new interchange at Thurston with a bridge to replace the existing, at grade signalized intersection.

The Fairoak Street connection with the highway will be removed and replaced with a new underpass.

The Main Street interchange will be reconstructed with roundabouts at the intersections to better control the transition from a freeway environment into downtownAnoka.

When construction finished for the season in late November, Shafer crews had met the major milestones.

Last August, the contractor discovered a safety issue that led to a quick reshuffling of the construction and traffic control phasing.

With Thurston Avenue scheduled to remain open to traffic through the first year of construction and nearby Fairoak Avenue closed, the contractor determined that the temporary clearance of 10.6 ft. of the new bridge at Thurston Avenue was too tight and not safe.

Because Fairoak Avenue was closed, the contractor proposed a rapid revision in the traffic and construction schedules.

“We didn’t realize how tight [the clearance] was going to be until we’re sitting there looking at it and ready to set the beams,” said Chris Tredinnick, project manager of Shafer.

At this interchange, the original construction schedule called for further excavation of nearly 4 ft. under the HWY-10 bridge in 2023 to meet the standard clearance of 16 ft. and complete the construction of this interchange this year.

To resolve this safety concern, road crews temporarily closed Thurston Avenue in August to accommodate the newly proposed sequencing of the project.

“It was decided between the city and the contractor that it was in the best interest of the construction workers and the motorists to temporarily close Thurston at the same time as the Fairoak closure and move forward with the excavation under the new bridge last August to expedite the construction at Thurston Avenue,” Tredinnick said. “There was no wiggle room in the schedule to have that kind of problem. You’re at the end of summer, almost to the fall and you have this curve ball thrown at you. Once we realized there was a problem, we came up with and implemented a solution within a week. It was a substantial change in the overall schedule.”

The other issue that popped up was a 48in. sanitary pipe connection to the Metropolitan sewer system buried 30 ft. deep and originally planned to be jacked underground.

Once crews began jacking the pipe, they quickly ran into obstacles.

“It hit a lot of obstructions and we ended up having to cut it and make changes to the alignment.” Tredinnick said.

Construction milestones include the completionofthenewwestboundHWY-10bridge over FairoakAvenue and the new eastbound HWY-10 bridge over Thurston Avenue.

When work resumes in the spring, crews will build the new westbound HWY-10 bridge over Thurston Avenue and the new eastbound HWY-10 bridge over Fairoak Avenue along with the remaining underground and paving work.

When substantial construction is completed this fall, highway capacity on this stretch of the road will rise from 60,600 vehicles per day to over 90,000 vehicles per day.  CEG

(All photographs in this article are Copyright 2023 Construction Equipment Guide.AllRightsReserved.)