Interstate 90 is the nation's northernmost coast-to-coast artery, moving goods and people from New York City to Chicago and beyond. One 9-mi. stretch of this important road in Erie County, Pa., had been battered into submission by the heavy traffic and was scheduled to be rebuilt.
The project also included rebuilding the Route 215 bridge, Route 18 bridge and the bridge over Neiger Road and double teardrop roundabouts at Exit 9. This was the first double teardrop merges built in the state. The completed project is expected to cost $66.1 million.
Lindy Paving won the bid for the paving project, but the contract was not yet executed when the SR 215 bridge was damaged, requiring emergency removal.
During the summer months, the SR 18 bridge over I-90 was struck repeatedly by trucks. Built in 1959, this bridge was in poor condition. Both bridges were under 14 ft. of clearance.
Lindy Paving stepped up under an emergency work order to demolish the bridges and remove them from the roadway. The team also reconfigured the detours without losing time.
In 2021, Lindy Paving removed the old bridges and built new bridges at approximately 17-ft. clearance in accordance with current standards. The team also rebuilt the bridge over McKee Road. The new bridges were two-span, concrete bridges. Lindy's paving team also began building 12-ft. shoulders to I-90.
The 2022 paving season began for Lindy Paving with an eye on the Oct. 1 deadline for the close of the paving season. Lindy met the deadline with ease and now compressed the schedule from a four-year project to three. The teardrop traffic merges being built will improve safety by eliminating left-hand turns at the ramps.
An unusual aspect of the job was the rubblizing of the worn-out concrete road. Workers used rubblizing equipment from Antigo Construction to break up the old concrete road into bite-sized pieces. When the job was finished, the bottom layers had pieces no larger than 9 in. with rubble no larger than 6 in. in the middle layer. A steel roller was used to compact the fragments further.
Rather than dig up the old road and haul it off to a landfill, or truck in new subgrade material, road workers now had a suitable subgrade to build the road on top of. Project planners also saved time and energy when it set up a portable asphalt plant close to the project. The plant produced approximately 200,000 tons of asphalt in just three months.
Jeffrey Oswalt, PennDOT's district pavement engineer, commented on the strategy: "Rubblizing the existing 7-inch continuously reinforced concrete pavement [CRCP] was chosen over complete reconstruction to eliminate the need of undercutting the subgrade to remove weak native subgrade soils. This resulted in substantial cost savings both in materials and time. In addition, rubblizing was chosen over other slab fracturing techniques because the bond to the rebar in the CRCP could be effectively broken into smaller pieces of concrete. This should eliminate reflective cracking and problematic concrete blow-ups from propagating through the new asphalt overlay requiring costly maintenance and shortening the asphalt overlay life."
Phil Hannah, Lindy Paving's project manager for the job, predicted that paving the westbound lanes next year will require approximately 200,000 tons of asphalt, similar to what was done this year. He estimates the job to be 60 percent complete.
Packed Schedules
As is often the case, this job required the road-building team to keep a lot of balls in the air.
"While working on the eastbound lanes, we were doing rubblization, milling some existing lanes and doing excavation," said Hannah.
The excavation was needed to build a 12-ft. shoulder on the outside lanes where none existed before. The company imported approximately 250,000 cu. yds. of dirt and built the shoulders in a step-by-step fashion with each step supporting the next so the embankment will remain solid. The side shoulder will provide greater safety for motorists and enable the paving team to move traffic onto the shoulder while other lanes are being worked on.
The new road is being built with just a 2 percent fall off at the outer edges of the road to direct the moisture away. This new spec is much safer for motorists than the methodology the old road was built with.
In addition to road building and bridge construction, Lindy Paving handled drainage work, relocated utilities, built guiderail, cable median barrier and provided highway lighting. Project planners struggled to have enough trucks of the right kind to haul dirt and asphalt for the work. This is a continuing issue in roadbuilding projects across most of the nation.
The completed eastbound lanes of the project tested with remarkable smoothness numbers.
"The International Roughness Index [IRI] was 30.7 on one lane and 30.8 for the other lane," said Hannah. "That is a very smooth road. And we're proud of our part in building it."
The Lindy Paving team hopes to see some similar results next year when it moves over to work on the westbound lanes. The team beat deadlines to create a quality pavement.
"We do what everyone else does, we just do it quicker," Hannah joked, crediting a top-notch team with years of experience in working together. "We believe this is a much safer road now that will provide a smooth ride for people traveling on Interstate 90."
Bryan McNulty, PennDOT's district executive of District 1, also expressed satisfaction with the project's progress.
"The I-90 project represents a substantial investment in the communities and businesses along the interstate corridor in Erie County and beyond," he said. "With this project, PennDOT brings the bridge clearances to current standards, improves safety at the Route 18 ramps, and supports the overall efficient transportation system we provide for our residents, visitors and commercial traffic." CEG
