TRC Wins ASCE Award for Jaye Street Bridge Rehabilitation Project
The Jaye Street Rehabilitation was a long-awaited improvement in Porterville, CA. TRC played a key role in the $7.74 million project, providing bridge rehabilitation design for widening the bridge and implementing scour countermeasures and seismic retrofits. For its efforts, the project team received the 2019 Outstanding Structural Engineering Project Award from the ASCE Region 9 chapter.
Jaye Street is a major thoroughfare for the City of Porterville, providing connection to Highway 190 and the surrounding commercial district. For years, a 2-lane stretch of roadway across the Tule River Bridge caused congestion.
Jaye Street/Tule River Bridge Rehabilitation
To eliminate the bottleneck, improve safety, promote recreational access, and provide a better overall connection to retail stores and offices, the city widened the bridge to 4 lanes and connected it to the local river walkway network.
The $7.74 million project was more than 15 years in the making and highly anticipated in the San Joaquin Valley region. Originally funded for construction in 2003, groundbreaking was delayed several times, at one point to mitigate construction from impacting a federally threatened insect species.
TRC played a key role in finally moving the project forward to a successful completion. Our design included widening the bridge from 34 feet to 83 feet, constructing 5-foot-wide barrier-protected sidewalks on either side, and implementing scour countermeasures and seismic retrofits to protect the existing bridge portion built in 1970.
Seismic protection included strengthening of the existing abutments, addition of structure approach slabs, and regrading of the channel at the north end to lengthen bridge columns. To maintain irrigation facility function, a new cast-in-place concrete box culvert with headwalls was installed to convey Hubbs Minor Ditch.
The addition of pile-supported retaining walls facilitated relocation of the Tule River Parkway recreational trail underneath the bridge. Rehabilitative work also included deck repairs, application of a polyester concrete overlay to cover the deteriorated riding surface, and streetscape enhancement with decorative lighting, landscaping, and safety barriers.
TRC collaborated with a multidisciplinary team of roadway, hydraulic, geotechnical, traffic, environmental, electrical, landscape design, and construction staff. Coordination with city, state, and federal agencies was crucial to meeting design requirements, maintaining traffic flow during construction, and securing $5.8 million in funding through the the Federal Highway Bridge Program.
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