This 3 mile roadway project includes an aerial crossing over the Jacksonville-Baldwin Rail Trail, which is owned by the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund of the State of Florida, and leased to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s Office of Greenways and Trails, and sub-leased to the City of Jacksonville. The Baldwin Trail is a multi-purpose paved trail, flanked by an equestrian trail. Use of the trail includes hiking, jogging, walking, bicycling, inline skating, nature watching and horseback riding.
The ConSpan allows safe and uninterrupted flow between the users of the roadway and the trail. Compared to a three-sided box culvert, the ConSpan shape provided a thinner top slab, which was critical to the clearance requirements of this specific application, as well as more insulation from the traffic noise above, which was critical to equestrian use of the trail.
Manufacturing entailed 16 precast footing elements with the heaviest weighing 29.3 TONS, 14 Arch elements with a 38’ span and 10’ rise. The heaviest arch element was 27.4 TONS. There were also 5 headwalls and 10 wingwall elements.
The challenge at the site was that the contractor was not allowed to shut down the trail but for one night. He set the precast footers with no trail disturbance during the day, poured the closure pours and came back a couple of weeks later and set all the arches, headwalls and wingwalls in one night starting at 7:00 P.M. and cutting the temporary support cables and opening the trail back up by 7:00 A.M. the next morning.
Jackson-Baldwin Trail Official Site
