Free Republic

HOUSTON - The Harris County Toll Road Authority now has an expensive plan to fix design flaws in its billion-dollar replacement of the Ship Channel Bridge. The original structure was finished in 1982. But, with just two lanes in each direction and no shoulder for emergencies, construction on a replacement was started in 2018. HCTRA’s Executive Director Roberto Trevino was hired after flaws were discovered in the design, and he says the danger could have been catastrophic. "It could have collapsed," he says. Trevino says the county wanted the new bridge to be sleek and iconic, resembling the Fred Hartman...

HOUSTON — Harris County Commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday night to change the engineer of record on the Sam Houston Tollway Ship Channel Bridge after a review found one portion that had not yet been built contained a potential design flaw. The Harris County Toll Road Authority hired an independent consultant, COWI North America, Inc., to review the design of the bridge. HCTRA deputy director John Tyler told KHOU 11 in January that COWI found the possible weakness in December 2019. The design comes from FIGG Bridge Engineers, Inc., the same company behind a Florida pedestrian bridge that collapsed in 2018,...

The Harris County Toll Road Authority plans to take a three-week pause in construction on the new Houston Ship Channel Bridge along the Sam Houston Tollway so engineers can agree on a solution to a possible design flaw found nearly 20 months into the project. The $1 billion bridge — the costliest infrastructure project in the county’s history — was designed by the Dallas office of FIGG Bridge Group. The company, based in Florida, came under scrutiny when its Tallahassee office designed a pedestrian bridge that collapsed in February 2018 at Florida International University, killing six. FIGG and its consultants...