Spanning the Mighty Colorado/Creating a Civil Engineering Landmark Near

摘要

Black Canyon, a rugged area on the Arizona-Nevada border, is an exclusive neighborhood when it comes to feats of civil engineering. The canyon is home to Hoover Dam, arguably one of civil engineering's greatest accomplishments of the 20th Century. Now designers and builders are attempting what could be one of the 21st Century's greatest civil engineering jobs: constructing a 1,900-ft.-long bridge across the chasm of the Colorado River. The project's entire budget is 234 million dollars. "It's not often that we have to deal with building a bridge not only in an area of natural beauty but one with a historic civil engineering structure," said Bill Dowd, executive vice president of HDR Inc., which led the design team of Bay Area-based T.Y. Lin International and the Nevada office of Jacobs-Sverdrup Civil Engineers. The complex project is the culmination of years of planning and design. The present route of U.S. Highway 93 uses the top of Hoover Dam to cross the Colorado River. U.S. 93 is the major commercial corridor between Arizona, Nevada, and Utah; it is also on the North American Free Trade Agreement route through the United States .