Buford Highway and Norfolk Southern Railroad over Pleasant Hill Road

Gwinnett County identified the grade crossing of Pleasant Hill Road at Norfolk Southern as requiring improvement due to safety concerns. Pleasant Hill Road (PHR) is a major four-lane arterial highway carrying very high levels of vehicular traffic. Norfolk Southern operates twenty-four trains per day on two tracks through the project site. Buford Highway is a major four-lane arterial highway intersecting Pleasant Hill Road at a signalized intersection only one hundred meters east of the railroad. During busy periods, traffic routinely backed up from the intersection across the tracks, creating considerable safety concerns in the event of a train passing at high speed.

Heath & Lineback, as the bridge design firm on the multi-discipline team selected for the project, studied a number of solutions for the project including:

Pleasant Hill Road over Buford Highway and over Norfolk Southern
Norfolk Southern and Buford Highway over Pleasant Hill Road with ramps in cut east of Buford Highway
Norfolk Southern and Buford Highway under Pleasant Hill Road with ramps west of Buford Highway under Norfolk Southern

In order to determine the best concept, H&L participated in a number of stakeholder and client meetings in which the major issues discussed were cost, constructability, maintenance of vehicular traffic, maintenance of train traffic, preservation of existing businesses and property, and access to adjacent properties. After considerable discussion, it was determined that the optimum design would tunnel under the railroad that runs parallel to Buford Highway and rebuild the intersection of Buford Highway and Pleasant Hill Road as an interchange, utilizing ramps to get from one roadway to the other. This option required a temporary railroad track, temporary trestle bridge, and temporary grade crossing.

Upon acceptance of the concept, H&L was responsible for the design of three bridges:

Norfolk Southern over Pleasant Hill Road
Buford Highway over Pleasant Hill Road
Norfolk Southern (temporary) over Pleasant Hill Road, with seven walls and the temporary railroad runaround track

Buford Highway and Norfolk Southern Railroad over Pleasant Hill Road

This structurally and functionally obsolete bridge and its approaches included interfaces with a system of streets, viaducts, retaining walls, sidewalks, public and private utilities, street lighting, railroads, storm drainage and traffic signals. For the replacement, maintaining grade on the approaches was a vital consideration in preserving connectivity with side streets at a reasonable cost. Providing long clear spans over all railroad tracks was a requirement of Norfolk Southern Railroad because this ensured flexibility for future rail tracks. H&L’s solution was based on the design of long span, welded plate girders, tightly spaced to minimize construction depth over the tracks.

Services Provided:

Bridge design
Roadway design
Wall design
Railroad coordination
Survey
Geotechnical
Traffic

Client:

Gwinnett County Department of Transportation

Location:

Gwinnett County, Georgia

Cost:

$25,000,000