$450-Million Hoosier Highway Has Groundbreaking

A groundbreaking was recently held to mark the start of construction on the $450-million Hoosier Heartland Corridor (State Road 25) between Lafayette and Logansport in north-central Indiana.

Originally scheduled to start in 2010, the project start was accelerated on the orders of Gov. Mitch Daniels, with completion scheduled for 2013. Chicago-based Walsh Construction Co. has the first contract.

SR 25 will be a 31-mi, four-lane, limited access divided highway. The project is divided into four segments, with construction starting in the west at Interstate 65. Along the corridor, INDOT’s project team and design consultants are in varying stages of roadway design, right-of-way acquisition and utility relocation. The Hoosier Heartland corridor will provide greater and safer access from Lafayette to Fort Wayne, where it will link to the US 24 segment known as the Fort-to-Port corridor. When the final segment of US 24 in Ohio is completed, central Indiana will have direct access to Toledo.

The project is part of Indiana’s Major Moves transportation program that funds a decade of highway projects.

Report: Concrete Outperforms Steel as Bridge Material

Reinforced and prestressed concrete bridges have a significantly lower rate of structural deficiency than steel bridges, an analysis by the Skokie-based Portland Cement Association has found.

The analysis, Material Usage and Condition of Existing Bridges in the U.S., found that 72,749 of the U.S. bridges studied were structurally deficient. More than half of the deficient bridges were constructed with structural steel.

The document analyzed data on the condition of the four major bridge construction materials in the United States—reinforced concrete, prestressed concrete, structural steel, and timber. Based on the 2006 National Bridge Inventory data from the Federal Highway Administration and excluding culverts, the report shows that of the 72,749 structurally deficient bridges in the United States, 54.3% were constructed with structural steel, 23.8% were built with reinforced concrete and 6.7% with prestressed concrete.

Market share of the four major bridge construction materials in the United States is also analyzed in the report. Concrete bridges have lower rates of deficiencies, but they also make up an increasingly larger share of the bridge market.

The combined market share for reinforced and prestressed concrete bridges in the United States is close to 70% of bridges built since 1980, based on the number of bridges. This is an increase from the period 1950-1959 where the market share was approximately 44% based on the number of bridges.

“As our nation’s infrastructure needs investment of funds to repair and replace structurally deficient and functionally obsolete bridges, concrete’s competitive cost and durability are key considerations for building economical and long-lasting bridges,” says Sue Lane, PCA program manager for bridges and other transportation structures.