Accelerating Construction of Bridge Abutments: Legacy Parkway Project, UT

Legacy Parkway is a proposed fully controlled access highway in Salt Lake/Davis Counties, Utah. The current Parkway alignment is located in the Lake Bonneville Basin. The near surface soils are composed of stream alluvium, lateral spread deposits, lacustrine silts and clays and marsh deposits. The geotechnical challenge along the proposed alignment includes settlements (both primary and secondary) in the range of few millimeters to upwards of 1000 millimeters over a period of time ranging from about 30 days to 2,000 days. The traditional approach of building the bridge embankments and allowing for the settlement to be complete before building the abutments would not allow the builder to meet the schedule constraints. A creative engineering approach, based on field data, helped accelerate the construction of bridge abutments before the settlements due to embankment loads were completed. This paper will present details of downdrag/dragloads on the bridge foundations due to settlements, analysis conducted, and the planned approach taken by the Design-Build Team to accelerate construction.