BergerWorld: 2nd Quarter 2008

Richmond, Virginia's 2,900-foot-long Huguenot Memorial Bridge was built in 1950 to carry State Route 147 over the James River. A&W was recently selected by the Virginia Department of Transportation to provide design services for a $45 million bridge improvement program. The services included aerial and ground surveys; traffic data acquisition and analyses; hydraulic, hydrologic and scour analyses; traffic maintenance and protection and detour route assessments; evaluations of the repair and replacement alternatives; establishing optimal span design; final designs; cost estimates for the selected improvements; and an extensive public outreach program. A significant feature of the project included the provision of pedestrian and bicycle lanes over the bridge to allow access to riverside parks. Finally, because the bridge is located in a residential community on the scenic James River, the Team is introducing mitigating construction impacts and aesthetic elements, including the incorporation of attractive special-lighted piers and minimizing the number of piers.

The project also required extensive studies of stormwater and potential environmental and cultural resource impacts, and the Louis Berger Group was retained to perform these duties. The Team's stormwater and environmental work included the preparation of comprehensive erosion and sediment control designs, as well as phased construction plans, while Berger's archaeological and geoarchaeological investigations covered approximately 7.7 hectares and included pedestrian surveys, shovel tests, and deep trench excavations in the James River to search for buried cultural deposits and assess the integrity of the original James River and Kanawha Canal. The archaeological survey resulted in the identification of a site potentially eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.