How Much Weight is Too Much for a Bridge? Engineers’ Ratings Have the Answer
In mid-May of 2018 a driver crossing a bridge in the Town of Lafayette in Chippewa County, Wisconsin, noticed something was wrong with the bridge. Town officials quickly saw the problem – the bridge had a major crack in the deck, and a pier pile holding up the bridge had buckled, causing the bridge to… Read More »
Tags: Bridge Closure, Bridge Design, Bridge Inspection, Federal Highway Administration, Load Ratings, Pier Pile, Structural Design, Structural Inspection
How Do You Know What Roads are Good Candidates for Mill and Overlay?
By Mark Petersen, PE Structural layer coefficient. Excavation below subgrade. K values. Cold in-place recycling. If those terms aren’t familiar to you, not to worry. Transportation engineers are well-versed in the vocabulary of road repairs, and you can rest assured that what’s happening on the other side of those orange barrels is for the benefit… Read More »
Tags: Alligator Cracking, Asphalt, Concrete, Highway Design, Highway Engineering, Longitudinal Cracking, Mill and Overlay, Roadway Rehabilitation, Transverse Cracking
Climate Change Intensifies Stormwater Challenges
By Karen Menné-Jacobsen April showers have long been celebrated for their delivery of May flowers. But due to the Earth’s relentlessly changing climate, showers and snowstorms that occur every month of the year are doing so at increasingly torrential rates. And that poses significant challenges related to stormwater and how to handle it. About the… Read More »
Tags: bioswale, BMP, Depressed Median, Impervious Surfaces, NPDES, Pollutants, Rain, Stormwater, Water Quality, WDNR