Published Nationally ®
Southeast Edition
August 10 2010
$3.00
Vol. XXIII • No. 16
“The Nation’s Best Read Construction Newspaper… Founded 1957.” 470 Maryland Drive • Ft. Washington, PA 19034 • 215/885-2900 • Toll Free 800-523-2200 • Fax 215/885-2910 • www.constructionequipmentguide.com
Inside
Road Work Wraps Up Early With Advanced Grading…14
Stimulus Transportation Investments a Bright Spot The highway investments in the stimulus law have been a bright spot for a transportation construction industry hard hit by recessioninduced cutbacks in state programs and decline in private sector work. But continued uncertainty about passage of a multi-year surface transportation reauthorization bill is hindering chances for a sustained
economic recovery. That was the thrust of the message delivered by Kevin Gannon, vice president of Appleton, Wis.based Northeast Asphalt Inc., at a July 27 House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee hearing on implementation of the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
Gannon, a director on the American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) board, told the committee that recovery act-funded projects his company is working on have not wholly offset the 50 percent drop in private sector work in recent years. He said, however, that ARRA projects have allowed them to hang on
to the firm’s existing workforce. Gannon noted that as of July 16, more than 11,000 highway and bridge projects under the recovery act had moved to the construction stage and more than 3,000 were now finished, worth a total of $23 billion. “This is $23 billion that is genersee ARTBA page 80
Full Impact of Gulf Oil Spill Still Uncertain
Trekker Tractor Hosts Two Open Houses…18
By Giles Lambertson CEG CORRESPONDENT
Photo courtesy of Davis Denny
Dune Project No Day at the Beach…29
Table of Contents ..............4 Paving Section ............33-46 Backhoes and Attachments Section ........................47-65 Parts Section ..............70-71 Business Calendar............72 Auction Section ..........76-87 Advertisers Index ............86
Birmingham’s rail tradition is celebrated in a leafy green space that construction crews have been working on since January 2009.
Long-Envisioned Railroad Park Takes Shape in Birmingham By Cindy Riley
CEG CORRESPONDENT
Construction crews in downtown Birmingham, Ala., are near completion on the new Railroad Park, an eight-block green space that was first envisioned in the 1970s. Located along 1st Avenue South, between 14th and 18th Streets, the 21-acre park is a joint effort between the City of Birmingham and the
Railroad Park Foundation. The park will provide space for local recreation, family events, concerts and cultural happenings while connecting Birmingham’s downtown with Southside and the busy campus of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. A major ongoing capital campaign helped raise the money needed to construct Railroad Park, which blends history with modern-day see RAILROAD page 26
The blowout of the Deepwater Horizon oil well in April has been a slow-motion disaster for Gulf states, with the agony measured in economic uncertainty as well as in real-and-present environmental injury. Construction contractors are among the residents of states bordering the Gulf of Mexico who are still assimilating what it all means. There is not yet general agreement whether the spill, now capped, will end up hurting the industry a little, a lot, or not at all. In truth, the immediate impact on builders is mostly positive. That’s because manmade and natural disasters always spur clean-up activity, which nearly always means building industry job creation in the short term. After Hurricane Katrina smashed Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005, debris removal and then reconstruction of vast stretches of those states were a tremendous boon to contractors. One of the differences between that catastrophe and this one is that most of the oil spillage is affecting Gulf waters and coastal areas. While some sand berm-building and coastal dredging work suddenly has see SPILL page 22