Podcast: The Infrastructure Show

The hosts talk with James Carter Jr., Chief Engineer for Bridges and Structures with the Norfolk Southern Corporation, about the impressive Heartland Corridor Project. The Heartland Corridor Project is a collaboration between the Norfolk Southern Railroad and state and federal governments, intended to improve rail service between the Port of Norfolk and places in the Midwest. Among other elements of the project, it will provide a more direct routing for double-stacked container trains between Norfolk, Virginia and western Virginia, West Virginia, and Ohio, as far as Columbus. The project was begun in 2007, with completion anticipated in 2010. Included in the podcast is information on tunnel modification, intermodal terminals, double-stacked trains and freight, and funding

Tom Taylor, Branch Chief of Surveys Coordination/New Technologies for Caltrans District 4, talks with the hosts about the advanced survey technologies used in rebuilding the I-580 ramp in Oakland, CA, totally destroyed in a tanker fire on April 29, 2007. This ramp is a critical element of the Bay Area freeway network. It was rebuilt in only 26 days in an extremely fast-track project that used innovative contracting methods and relied on extensive use of advanced measurement technologies. These included aerial photography and photogrammetry, laser scanning, and the use of advanced survey instruments for field measurement of the damage and exact position and dimensions of the remaining structure — thus defining the gap that needed to be filled by the replacement ramp

Interviewed is Linda Figg, whose company, Figg Bridge Engineers of Tallahassee, FL, designed the new Minneapolis I-35W Bridge to replace the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge that collapsed on Aug. 1, 2007. The new bridge opened on September 18, 2008. Linda discusses this fast-track project, features of the new bridge, and lessons learned from the bridge failure and replacement

The hosts introduce this series of podcasts with a definition of the infrastructure and a discussion of why it is important to us. They talk about trends in infrastructure characteristics and condition and consider why the infrastructure has been so much in the news recently. Then they move on to an assessment of the nation’s infrastructure, talking with Casey Dinges of the American Society of Civil Engineers about his organization’s Infrastructure Report Card. This broad assessment of our infrastructure is prepared by the ASCE every 5 years. It grades the condition of our bridges, dams, roads, rail systems, inland waterways, and 10 more systems. Casey describes the most recent Report Card, released in January of 2009