ABC: CONSTRUCTION JOB OPENINGS RISE BY 36,000 IN SEPT.

Program Focuses On Speed, Safety, Sustainability, Equity

PROGRAM from page 22 career opportunities in transportation. A continued focus on taking this nationwide will help stakeholders across the country improve their ability to identify, train, and place highway construction workers.

Innovative approaches will be informed by the DOT’s Memorandum of Understanding with the DOL to foster a diverse and skilled workforce to support infrastructure projects.

The focus will expand to rural and tribal communities to increase career opportunities.

“Many of the innovations announced as part of this forward-thinking program will help make the nation’s transit systems safer, greener and more equitable,” said Nuria Fernandez, the FTA administrator. “We look forward to promoting the findings from these initiatives, from reducing greenhouse gas emissions to leveling the playing field for small businesses to compete for designbuild contracts, throughout the transit industry.” ments, local governments, tribes, private industry and other stakeholders to identify a new set of innovations to champion that merit accelerated deployment.

The first six rounds of EDC have yielded several innovative project delivery technologies, including prefabricated bridge systems, design-build contracting, project bundling, e-construction (paperless contracting) and safety initiatives.

The program’s success is based largely on states selecting innovations they want to pursue.

The model identifies and rapidly deploys underutilized innovations to shorten the project delivery process, enhance roadway safety, reduce traffic congestion and integrate automation.

Proven innovations promoted through EDC facilitate efficiency at the state and local levels, saving time, money and resources, said the National Operations Center for Excellence (NOCOE).

After selecting EDC innovations, transportation leaders from across the country gather at regional summits to discuss and identify opportunities. It is there that innovations that best fit the needs of their respective state transportation programs are implemented.

Following the summits, states finalize their selection of innovations, establish performance goals and begin implementation.

NOCOE said the EDC program has made a significant positive impact in accelerating the deployment of innovations and in building a culture of innovation within the transportation community.

“Since the inception of EDC, each state has used 19 or more of the 52 innovations promoted through Every Day Counts, and some states have adopted more than 40,” said the organization.

Many of these innovations have become mainstream practices across the country.

Accelerated Innovation Demonstration and State Transportation Innovation Council Incentive programs administered by FHWA provide additional funding and resources to help accelerate the adoption and standardization of innovative technologies.

Previous innovations include Accelerated Bridge Construction, Road Diets, and Safe Transportation for Every Pedestrian (STEP).

The bridge construction program involved a suite of technologies that allow for accelerated construction of bridges, significantly reducing traffic delays and road closures and often reducing project costs.

Since October 2010, transportation agencies have designed or constructed more than 2,500 replacement bridges using these technologies.

Road Diets are innovative roadway reconfigurations that can help improve safety on mixed-use streets by reducing vehicle speeds, calming traffic and freeing space for alternative modes of travel.

The plan typically converts an existing four-lane, undivided roadway segment to two through lanes and a center, two-way left-turn lane. Road diets can reduce collisions, increase mobility and access and improve a community’s quality of life.

The STEP program is the application of cost-effective countermeasures with known safety benefits to reduce pedestrian fatalities at crossing locations. With pedestrian fatalities a continued concern nationwide, this innovation is helping communities improve pedestrian safety and making crosswalks and pedestrians more visible to drivers.

“By advancing 21st-century solutions, the transportation community is making every day count, to ensure our roads and bridges are built better, faster and smarter and operated at peak efficiency,” said NOCOE. 

Wright Brothers photo Wright Brothers’ crews have focused their attention on moving tons of earth and rock in 2022.

WATAUGA from page 1

It is the first step in a $95 million effort to widen 5.5 mi. of N.C. 105 and turn it into a divided four-lane highway from the small community of Foscoe north to the picturesque college town of Boone.

The first phase to build a longer, wider bridge over the mountain stream began in March when the contracting company began its clearing operations, which included removing a steep bank of vegetation, dirt and rock next to the structure.

The current 263-ft.-long Watauga River Bridge will be replaced in the final two phases to create a curved span 300 ft. in length and widened more than 100 ft. from the present span’s 35-ft.-width to match the expansion of N.C. 105. The highway’s two travel lanes will be widened to four with an added lane dedicated for turning west onto Broadstone Road and another for drivers to head east on Old Tweetsie Road.

Tanya Ball, project manager of Wright Brothers, explained that the $20.2 million bridge work at the intersection of N.C. 105 and Broadstone Road is a massive amount of work contained in a small footprint of less than a halfmile.

“Within the project there are several scopes of work: grading, drainage pipe, signals, walls and the bridge structure itself,” she said. “It will give better and safer access to the Boone and Foscoe communities because it is estimated that more than 20,000 vehicles travel through that area every day. With this large expansion, all the existing roadways and intersecting roads will be brought up to current NCDOT standards with better sight lines and wider shoulders.”

This short highway through the mountains, stretching just 17.7 mi. from Boone south to the community of Linville, is a critical route in what is known as North Carolina’s “High Country.”

In its announcement of the project last year, NCDOT noted its concern for the safety and mobility of motorists using N.C. 105, first opened in 1956. Additionally, the state agency said the almost 67-year-old Watauga River Bridge has reached the end of its service life and needs a replacement.

The structure is slated to be open for traffic sometime in 2024.

Spectacular Sights Attract Lots of Road Traffic

Heavy trucks rumbling up and over steep grades along the highway’s two lanes are part of the reason for the need to expand N.C. 105, but tourists traveling by car account for most of the traffic on the highway.

The reason so many people use the highway is simple: The terrain and the vistas in this part of the Tarheel State’s Blue Ridge Mountains are among the most visually stunning in the eastern United States.

The area includes both the highest peak and the deepest river valley east of the Mississippi River. Visitors stream to visit Mount Mitchell, with an elevation of 6,684 ft., and the spectacular Linville Gorge, with depths up to 3,000 ft. in places, during most months of the year.

The High Country also is noted for its cool spring and summer breezes, and the dazzling colors of the mountain forests in fall.

So it is that the region’s very popularity demands a constant vigil by NCDOT to make sure roads like N.C. 105 continue to be in top form.

Wright Brothers photo A construction project began earlier this year in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains to expand a critical roadway and replace an aging bridge to help lessen traffic congestion in a much-traveled part of the state.