What’s Happening in Transportation
Our transportation and civil teams at Pickering are quite busy with a sudden onset of transportation projects. Here are just a few of those projects:
I-40, Madison County, TN: widening of I-40 from 4 lanes to 6 lanes for approximately 5 miles from exit 82 to exit 87. Includes several thousand feet of retaining walls, two new bridges over railroads, and raising 3 existing bridges in place to provide desirable minimum vertical clearance underneath.
Star Landing Road, DeSoto County, MS: widening of Star Landing Road from 2 lanes to 5 lanes for approximately 3 miles from Cumberland Road to Getwell Road. Includes a raised median, bike/pedestrian paths, two large FEMA studied hydraulic crossings and phased construction.
SR 57, Shelby County, TN: widening of SR 57 (Poplar Ave.) from 2 lanes to 5 lanes for approximately 1 mile from Eastley St./Collierville-Arlington Road to SR 385 (I-269) in Collierville. Includes bike/pedestrian paths, traffic signals, FEMA studied hydraulic crossing, new bridge, and utility design/coordination.
North Main Street, Searcy, AR: widening of N. Main St. from 2 lanes to 3 lanes for approximately 1.5 miles from E. Moore Avenue to the City limits. Includes sidewalk, mixed use path, FEMA studied hydraulic crossing, and multiple barrel culvert crossing.
Airfield Maintenance & Operations Support Facility, Shelby County, TN: development of new site for the airfield maintenance facility at Memphis International Airport. Includes grading, drainage, concrete pavement, sewer, water, electric, gas, fiber optic, landscaping, and security fencing.
Patrick Neal, PE, who leads our transportation group in Tennessee, helped to explain why this surge might be happening, and how we at Pickering are set to deal with it.
Why are we so busy in transportation right now? Several projects were on hold for various reasons and they just happened to start gaining traction around the same time. Additionally, we’ve landed several projects in Arkansas since opening our Jonesboro office.
What is it about your team that gives you confidence you can handle the new influx of work? We have a good mixture of seasoned veterans and young graduates that should provide us the capacity necessary to produce the work in a timely fashion. It’s a good learning experience for our new employees to work on such a variety of projects at an early stage in their careers.
What excites you about the future of transportation work in our region? Funding. There has been a huge push over the last decade to increase funding for infrastructure, especially roads and bridges, which is finally coming to fruition. The increased funding should release projects that have been on hold for several years and make room for new projects in the near future.