Things are really rocking at the Bentley Be Inspired Awards at the 2015 Year in Infrastructure conference.
As finalists present their entries in the awards competition, each is critiqued by a panel of industry experts. One particular presentation featured a new motorway in Stockholm, Sweden, which will see 6.5 million cubic meters of rock displaced.
Building a Better Highway
When Stockholm was founded over seven centuries ago, waterways were the main method of transportation. Nowadays, those waterways bottleneck the majority of motor traffic onto bridges and highways that are now too small.
To solve the problem, the Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket) developed the E4 Stockholm Bypass project.(Video courtesy of Trafikverket.)
The project will see a 21-km (13-mile) stretch of motorway installed to connect northern and southern Stockholm. Of that length, 18 km (11 miles) will be underground to bypass inconvenient waterways. This will place the project among the longest road tunnels in the world.
It is also one of the largest civil engineering projects in Sweden. The E4 Stockholm Bypass is expected to cost around €3.1 billion in 2009 prices. Planning for the project began as early as 2001, with construction beginning earlier in 2015 and scheduled to end in 2025.
The FSK02 Contract
AECOM is a professional and technical services firm specializing in design, construction and financing of infrastructure. It is a finalist in the Innovation in Megaprojects category of the Be Inspired Awards for its work with the FSK02 contract.
The contract is for the excavation of the tunnels for the motorway and was awarded to AECOM by Trafikverket.
The tunnels were designed using building information modeling (BIM) methodology, one of the first uses of BIM in Sweden. Various examples of BIM software, including Bentley’s ProjectWise and Navigator, were used to develop comprehensive designs and plans for the tunnel project.Two tunnels, each with three lanes for unidirectional traffic, will be constructed below ground. The motorway will feature underground connection ramps and dedicated bus ramps to assist with traffic flow.
The tunnels will be bridged by pedestrian pathways for emergency situations and have been designed to be well-ventilated.
Why a Tunnel?
The bypass will skirt the Stockholm area and instead tunnel below the wider waterways surrounding Lake Mälaren. The tunnels will reach as far as 60 m (nearly 200’) below the surface of the lake.
The advantage of these tunnels when compared to more common choices such as bridges is that they will reduce the impact on sensitive natural and cultural environments in the Stockholm area.
For more information, check out the Trafikverket, AECOM and Bentley Be Inspired Awards websites.