Matthew Stahl, a project manager for Trumbull Corp., had grown up in the Central Susquehanna Valley hearing about a highway that would provide a crucial link in the grid between Maryland and New York. This 13-mile vision would include a bridge that spanned the West Branch of the titular river.
“I said, ‘Someday I’m going to build this bridge,'” he recalls. And he did. The 4,545-foot-long, 15-span bridge, up to 180 feet above the Susquehanna River, is the crown jewel of Trumbull’s $156 million contract to build the 3.5-mile northern section of the transportation project of the Central Susquehanna Valley (CSVT) that opened in 2022. The southern section of the $900 million project is scheduled for completion in 2027.
The CSVT project has been in the works since the study of the Route 15 corridor was completed in 1959. Environmental engineering firm Skelly and Loy, now a Terracon company, became involved in 1995, he says Vice President Sandy Basehore. “We made a proposal first, with an engineering subordinate,” he recalls. “Usually we are the subordinate. We knew that what would drive the project was an environmental analysis for where it would be placed.”
It wasn’t until the passage of Act 89 in 2013 that funding became available to complete the project. Thirty alternatives were explored across a 43,000-acre footprint, Basehore says, with wetlands, waterways, forests, cultural and local resources up for grabs.
The new crossing over the Susquehanna River is PennDOT’s eighth largest.
Photo courtesy of Trumbull Corp.
Challenges included an undocumented closed landfill, trout populations, a river floodplain, and impounded fly ash basins. “The preliminary alignment went through some fly ash basins” that were initially thought to be stable enough, says David Hamlet, project manager for Gannett Fleming, who served as the construction inspector for the northern section and the final designer of the southern section. The stability of the basins was affected by the underground sources. “We found it was like toothpaste,” he recalls. “Ultimately, [the highway] it was necessary to turn them around”.
STV, which completed the final design of the northern section, worked with geotechnical consultants to minimize potential acid rock excavation near the river, recalls Barbara Hoehne, STV’s technical director. Matthew Beck, assistant plans engineer for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, says the 2 million cubic meters of potential impacts were reduced to 400,000 cubic meters.
Terracon also built a predictive model to identify potential impacts to historically significant entities, Beck adds. After stops and starts over the past half-century, “once we got it back in the mid-’90s, we held 150 public meetings over an eight-year period,” he says.
Acquiring plots of land, many of them farms, was also a challenge. PennDOT had to get approval three times from an agricultural land condemnation approval board. “You have to demonstrate beyond doubt that you’re on the most reasonable path,” says Basehore.
The Susquehanna River Bridge, PennDOT’s eighth-longest, required the construction of a 45,000-foot-long rock causeway across the river, half at a time, with footings 70 feet by 70 feet and up to 80 feet deep and a circular segment of concrete. cofferdams, says Stahl. TThe 14 piers range in height from 75 feet to 180 feet and are supported by extended rock foundations or caissons with pile layers and abutments resting on steel piles, according to SAI Consulting Engineers, Inc., the structural engineer.
Crews used temporary side bracing to support the beams until the 90-foot-wide deck was poured, Stahl says. The precast, prestressed and post-tensioned beams required a “very large crane, with counterweights that were pulled out as you went down,” he adds. “We couldn’t move very fast and we needed a solid foundation.” Subcontractor Century Steel Erectors used one crane with a capacity of up to 800 tons, and two others of 600 tons, he adds.
The Susquehanna River Bridge rises nearly 200 feet and is 4,545 feet long.
Photo courtesy of Trumbull Corp.
Trumbull also had a $61 million contract in the northern section to move 2.5 million cubic meters of earth, while New Enterprise Stone & Lime had two contracts totaling $89 million for paving and other structures.
Trumbull is now in the middle of a $115 million contract to move about 5 million cubic yards of dirt for the southern section, while Walsh has a $106 million contract for nine bridges and four sound walls , says Beck. The paving contract is scheduled to be awarded in 2026.
Although not as difficult as the northern section, the ongoing construction requires constant monitoring, Basehore notes. This includes stormwater management and potential impacts to bats and eagle nesting. “We have to show that rock blasting doesn’t bother them any more than planes taking off [from a nearby airport].” says Paul DeAngelo, id biologistdirector of natural resources analysis with Skelly and Loy.
The northern section carries 16,000 vehicles a day, including 3,800 trucks that used local roads. “This project completes a missing link,” says Hoehne. “For us, whether we’re the subordinates or the principals, interacting with PennDOT and other agencies, this has been on the books and on the mind for decades.”
