To build a road and bridges, you have to move some dirt.
To complete the Manassas, VA Route 234 bypass, APAC-Virginia has to move a lot of dirt — about 2 million yds. (1.8 million m) — some of it part of wetlands.
“The idea was that when we constructed the bypass, we would be filling in wetlands, where there were beaver dams, and other things you find in wetlands, so we excavated to create additional wetlands.” said Wallace Alphin, vice president for APAC, the company which won the contract to complete the bypass.
The $1.34-million contract to replace the wetlands was the first segment of APAC’s bypass project. Also included was construction of two road segments — one for 2.6 mi. (4.2 km) at a cost of $11 million and the second for 2.4 mi. (3.9 km) at a cost of $23.7 million.
Other segments of the bypass (which will cost a total of about $76 million) were completed three or four years ago, Alphin said, and there are plans to widen the existing Route 234 eventually, where the bypass meets the highway.
“The biggest part of the wetlands project was excavation,” Alphin said, “and the replanting of all the shrubs and landscaping that were already existing.”
The DOT provided a “huge list” of required plantings, Alphin said and the 55 acres (22.2 ha) that were cleared for the project were part of a design from the DOT.
“It was a low area to begin with,” Alphin said, “and we moved about 150,000 yards of dirt, using Volvo A-30 articulated dump trucks and a Cat 330 backhoe.”
That segment of the bypass project is completed and things went “pretty well. The most unique thing there was probably that we had to cross a stream and built a temporary bridge to dig in the wet ground,” Alphin said.
The work on the three-part project started in September of 1999, Alphin said, and is to be completed by Nov. 1, 2001.
The two road contracts include mowing utilities — “We had to remove 24-inch sanitary sewer pipes and replace them with 30-inch pipes,” construction of seven bridges, a grass median, and 10 box culverts.
So far, APAC has moved about 1.5 million yds. (1.3 million m) according to John Winslow, project manager, which they accomplished using eight Caterpillar scrapers and Caterpillar D-8 bulldozers.
“Most of the short haul excavation we completed with that fleet,” Alphin said.
For a 600,000-yd. (548,000 m) 12,000-ft. (3,600 m) long-haul excavation, during construction of a railroad bridge, Alphin said, APAC used six Volvo 830 off-road articulating dump trucks and a Caterpillar 345 backhoe.
Dirt wasn’t the only thing that had to be moved out of the way, Winslow said.
“We had to move about half-a million cubic yards of stones and rocks,” he said. APAC used a drill rig, and pump trucks to pump ammonium nitrate into the holes in the rocks to blast them for removal.
The two bridges over railroad tracks were constructed of pre-stressed concrete beams. The other bridges are plate-girder bridges. They include three bridges over Gateway Boulevard, one over Route 28 and a flyover ramp bridge over Route 28.
“Probably the most super-duper piece of equipment we used was a 350-ton hydraulic crane we rented to set concrete beams for the railroad bridge,” Alphin said.
“The crane vas a Link-Belt, rented from W.O. Grubb in the Richmond area,” Winslow added. He said 50 percent of the bridge work has been completed.
“This is a large project,” Alphin said, adding that the wetlands work was done in the spring, “and we were very fortunate to have a very dry spring. The rest of the project has been very challenging. We had a real wet summer.”
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