Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Through subsequent amendment and refinement of this federal law,
and the adoption of copy-cat laws in various states, the NEPA Process has
come to dominate
major
public works. (Minor projects and projects with
no expected deleterious environmental consequences are exempted.) In the
development of a bridge, the sequencing of project stages is so thoroughly
shaped by the NEPA that it is often impossible to distinguish steps meant
specifically for bridge engineering and design from steps meant for dealing
with environmental (and cultural and economic) impact.
The environmental regulations and the requirements for citizen
involvement have done enormous good for the United States. They have
prevented many poorly conceived and environmentally harmful public
works. But when is a good idea taken too far, so far that it results in delays,
cost overruns, stagnation, and harm to communities? This is a question to
which we return at the end of the chapter.
FROM PROPOSAL TO COMPLETED CONSTRUCTION
As a result of NEPA and its progeny, bridge development has become a
process managed by multidisciplinary teams, responding to complex regula-
tions, usually under the authority of a state department of transportation,
but interacting with many other agencies. The full-fledged process to be
described here applies to construction of new bridges or replacement of old
bridges—projects that have significant environmental impacts. The process
is typically understood in stages. Though NEPA terms are shared, state
transportation agencies do not necessarily call the stages by the same names,
or divide them at the same rungs. Terminology differs somewhat from state
to state.
The description we offer here is a simplified amalgam of the processes
used in New York State and in Oregon. In our version, the bridge devel-
opment project has six stages: (1) initiation, (2) scoping, (3) preliminary
design and environmental review, (4) detailed design and agreements, (5)
bidding and contracting, and (6) construction. Put this way, the process is
linear and ends at the completion of the bridge. Thought of differently, the
process is a recurring cycle: after construction comes operation and main-
tenance, which is followed by rehabilitation, which is eventually succeeded
by decommissioning or otherwise by replacement or reconstruction, when
the process starts all over again. However, in this chapter we discuss just
the six stages that conclude when construction is complete.
We use examples from the development of two bridges. The first is a
pair of new deck-arch bridges over Cattaraugus Creek as part of the Route
219 Expressway in upstate New York, completed in 2011. The second is
the replacement of the Kosciuszko Bridge, part of the Brooklyn-Queens
