Ohio River Bridges East End Crossing Tunnel

Jacobs served as Engineer-of-Record to Walsh Vinci CJV, the Design-Build Contractor for the East End Crossing P3 consortium on the Ohio River Bridges Project, which involved the construction of two new bridges over the Ohio River to connect Kentucky and Indiana. 

The East End Crossing, which links the Gene Snyder Freeway in Kentucky with the Lee Hamilton Expressway in Indiana, was delivered through a public-private partnership (P3). The bridge approaches on the Kentucky side of the East End Crossing include twin 1,700 LF mined tunnels under the Drumanard Estate, a historic wooded area. Each tunnel is 53 feet wide by 26.5 feet high and carries three lanes of traffic as well as shoulders and walkways.

The tunnels were mined through sedimentary rock (Louisville Limestone, Waldron Shale and Laurel Dolomite) using both drill and blast techniques and mechanical excavating equipment. Initial support consisted of rock bolts, shotcrete and lattice girders (as needed). The final liner consisted of a 16-inch thick reinforced concrete arch with a waterproofing membrane. The 20-inch thick reinforced concrete base slab sits on top of a gravel drainage layer to reduce water pressures on the invert. Cross passages were mined between the twin tunnels at two locations to satisfy the egress requirements of NFPA 502.

Our innovative design solutions included:

• Developed an active fire suppressing system to reduce the fire release rate from 300 MW to 50 MW in two (2) minutes and thirty seconds.
• Developed a new laboratory fire testing procedure to verify the tunnel liner concrete design met explosive spalling requirements and without the use of passive fire protection system.
• Our design also featured the use of resin rock anchors for permanent applications, which required demonstrating to the relevant authorities that the anchors could achieve a 75-year design life by employing an over-sized cross-section.