SkyscraperPage Forum - MIAMI | Signature Bridge (I-395)

SkyscraperPage Forum (https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/index.php)

- General Development (https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=86)

- - MIAMI | Signature Bridge (I-395) (https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/showthread.php?t=213815)

Buckle up for The Mother of all highway construction projects. It’s about to start

Quote:

Fasten your seatbelts, Miami, it’s going to be a long and bumpy ride. Gird yourself. Learn how to meditate in your car. Stock up on podcasts. Or, better yet, leave town for four years.

The Mother of all highway construction projects commences Monday with the initial stage of the $800 million redesign of Interstate 395, which will encompass significant stretches of I-95 and State Road 836.

Expect a clusterjam, with three highways that feed downtown Miami, Miami Beach and the Civic Center area torn up. A signature bridge that resembles a high-tech tarantula will be built over Biscayne Boulevard. A double-decker span will vault over I-95 to the MacArthur Causeway. Brace for lane closures, street closures and exit closures.

While the Florida Department of Transportation, Miami-Dade Expressway Authority and their contractors will try to minimize disruption, pain is guaranteed in perpetually clogged South Florida, where orange and white barricades are as much a part of the scenery as palm trees.

ut by the time the ambitious rearrangement is completed in fall 2023 — want to bet on that deadline? — a beautiful mile-long pathway, artsy plazas, green gardens and 30 acres of urban parkland will replace the blighted, cave-like space crouching beneath I-395 that became an encampment for homeless people and opioid addicts. Overtown, once the “Harlem of the South,” will be rid of the suffocating overpasses and embankments that ripped through the neighborhood in the 1960s and left a sun-deprived wasteland of concrete columns. The city’s cultural gems —the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Frost Science Museum and Perez Art Museum — will be better connected to each other, Museum Park and the waterfront. In theory, it will be easier to get in and out of downtown and to traverse the choked, messy interchange, although there’s little doubt the new roadways will induce more traffic.

Surveying and geotechnical testing that involves driving exploratory test piles along I-395 is underway, according to FDOT spokesperson Oscar Gonzalez.

[....]

By March or April, major foundation work for the signature bridge will begin in the area of Northeast 12th Street between Biscayne Boulevard and Northeast 2nd Avenue. The section of Northeast 12th Street between the Boulevard and Northeast 2nd Avenue will be closed. Traffic will be re-routed to Northeast 13th Street, which will be widened to three lanes between the Boulevard and Northeast Second Avenue.

At the same time, widening work on SR 836 around Northwest 17th Avenue will start in preparation for the construction of the double-decked section of 836.

[...]

The defining element of the reconstruction project is the six-arched, 1,025-foot suspension bridge, lit with programmable LEDs, which is meant to recall a spouting fountain. The runner-up design, favored by a local panel during the controversial selection process, featured a pair of support pylons evoking dancers on the threshold of the Arsht Center.

The 1.4-mile-long 395 expressway will be split into two elevated spans, one going east and the other west, both situated slightly north of where it is now. Only a quarter of the 440 support columns will exist when it’s finished. Eastbound off-ramps at Northeast Second Avenue will be moved west to North Miami Avenue and westbound on-ramps at Northeast First Avenue will be shifted west to North Miami Avenue.

The double-decking of 836 will start west of the Miami River near the toll gantry with an elevation of 60 feet as it approaches Overtown. The viaduct will allow drivers to bypass the midtown interchange and its ramps and continue east to Watson Island and Miami Beach. The hope is that the existing 836 on the lower level will allow drivers to enter and exit from local roads and I-95 and reduce the dangerous “weaving movements” of drivers trying to maneuver into their desired lanes. The eastbound 836 ramp to northbound I-95 will get an additional lane to reduce congestion.

https://www.miamiherald.com/latest-n...ome%5B1%5D.jpg

=========================
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/loc...224277450.html

Teaser site has been updated. A lot of info.

http://www.i395-miami.com/the-project/

Quote:

Originally Posted by chris08876 (Post 6776954)

I-395 bridge funded for 2018

http://mt1.miamitoday.netdna-cdn.com...l-lotus-4c.jpg

Possible Designs:

Very beautiful! It is necessary to attend, for sure. Really. Thanks for the pictures!

FINAL HEIGHT OF MIAMI’S ‘BRIDGE FOR THE AGES’ HAS BEEN APPROVED, & CRANES WILL NOW BE INSTALLED

https://i.imgur.com/CWju1xP.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/F4Tuq4y.jpg

Quote:

The final height for Miami’s Signature Bridge was approved by the Federal Aviation Administration this week.

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez has called the project “a bridge for the ages” in a 2017 memo.

A total of six arches are planned, with the tallest at 330 feet above ground:

Arch 1 – 180 feet above ground, 186 feet above sea level
Arch 2 – 230 feet above ground, 237 feet above sea level
Arch 3 – 180 feet above ground, 187 feet above sea level
Arch 4 – 250 feet above ground, 253 feet above sea level
Arch 5 – 330 feet above ground, 332 feet above sea level
Arch 6 – 250 feet above ground, 252 feet above sea level
All of the arches had their heights approved by the FAA last week, with review taking about ten months following a November 2018 application.

A total of four boom cranes were also approved for installation. Each crane will be installed this month at a height of 420 feet above ground, and will stay in place until February 2021.

[...]

Completion is expected in 2023, but contractors say that traffic relief for motorists will begin much earlier. Within 12 months of the start of construction, newly added lanes and ramps will already start to improve the flow of vehicles, they say.

===========
NXT

If they had tunneled the highway, it would have been a lot better for Miami than this lipstick on a pig attempt. I mean, it's better than nothing,but if that ugly interstate was underground, the city would have become much prettier overall. Also the design reminds me of Mickey D's, kinda tacky. Looks like some Route 66 nonsense, lol!

There's a god damn reason why cities all over the USA are burying their old highways that ruin the downtown areas. They are as ugly as a body builder who had too many steroids.

Now Miami has a monument to look at in this Golden Arches thingy, but it still is stuck with a noisey, polluting piece of crap going into the city, hurting the downtown's ovreall appeal and taking up valuable space. Should have pulled a Boston.

Yeah most cities are trying to move away from this sort of thing. But I guess it looks interesting.

What a waste of money for a tacky project lol. City needs transit and better urban planning, not this crap.

This project is so idiotic.

Florida's politicians seem to be stuck in the 20th century, with their irrational transport policies. It's so absurd to believe that adding more car lanes would solve congestion.

https://www.skyscrapercity.com/attac...if-gif.216271/

1970: One more lane will fix it.
1980: One more lane will fix it.
1990: One more lane will fix it.
2000: One more lane will fix it.
2010: One more lane will fix it.
2020: ?

• Video Link

https://twitter.com/urbanthoughts11/...187686400?s=20

Quote:

Originally Posted by doglover99 (Post 8981471)

I'd rather look at a pretty road than a pile of grey concrete, give that a road is going there one way or another. It's Florida, not NYC.. did you expect a tunnel or a train? LOL!

I'd rather they use the money collected form the half penny tax for a light rail system (which is what it was intended for btw, if you lived there you would know). It was talked about when I lived there and still nada. So I'd rather have that than an overpass with a nice design, it's adding lipstick on a pig.

Mercedes (people with refined taste) > Tesla

Quote:

Originally Posted by doglover99 (Post 9004843)

They both can exist. The rail and the pretty road. The roads around US cities are usually eye sores anyway, so making one look like a supermodel of roads isn't a bad thing, is it? Roads like this have ruined American towns, but if they are not going away. So might as well give them a big makeover.

Would you rather a perpetual hideous person to look at or the cover of Vogue magazine on the way to work everyday?

The tram can be done at another time under a friendlier mayor/governor.

I'd rather my city have extensive public transit networks instead of $1B McDonald's arches.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Djesus777 (Post 9005162)

I'd rather my city have extensive public transit networks instead of $1B McDonald's arches.

who's uh... who's gonna tell him about Brightline/Virgin Miami, Metrorail and the Metromover? :shrug:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hudson11 (Post 9005201)

who's uh... who's gonna tell him about Brightline/Virgin Miami, Metrorail and the Metromover? :shrug:

I literally live in Miami dingus, but for a major city, this is not sufficient at all. Metromover is trash, so is Metrorail and Brightline does nothing for the urban centre.. so uh... ya know.. more transit is better for a major city... kinda shocking that you don't comprehend that.

Very cool video. I-395/SR 836, I-95 project change.

• Video Link