Edinger Avenue Bridge Widening Project

People who travel the vital Edinger Avenue corridor between Fountain Valley and Santa Ana no longer need to contend with congested roads, walkways and bike paths. Even where the road crosses the Santa Ana River, it's wider, safer and simply prettier.

Thanks are due to the Edinger Avenue bridge widening project, an ambitious undertaking to widen a road while working within its footprint. With high-voltage power lines above, an environmentally sensitive river below and lots of motorists, pedestrians and bikers who needed to keep moving along, the project involved a host of complex constraints.

Harris & Associates welcomed the challenge, providing construction management, including:

• Submittal/RFI review
• Field inspection
• Schedule review
• Coordination with stakeholders and utilities
• Weekly and monthly meetings and reports
• Safety and SWPPP inspection
• Traffic control
• Public relations on behalf of the County of Orange

Harris & Associates also provided constructability reviews of bid documents, as well as value engineering throughout the construction process to minimize modifications, redesigns and cost impacts.

Core Elements

The $5.4 million project entailed:

• Widening the street from four to six lanes, including a center median, sidewalk and bicycle lanes on both sides
• Broadening the existing bridge over the Santa Ana River between Harbor Street and Mohawk Street
• Constructing two retaining walls
• Building a sound wall
• Making improvements to existing driveways, side streets and utilities
• Landscaping, planting and seeding

To keep the project on schedule (it was completed in just 260 working days), Harris employed a partnering approach. We also conducted preconstruction meetings for all new activities.

Beyond the Blueprints

The tight boundaries made this project especially challenging. We had to do pile driving underneath high-voltage lines, with some piles driven directly between 60-inch sewer and 54-inch reclaimed water lines. Meanwhile, we built a 16-foot-tall retaining wall right beside a busy apartment building.

Minimizing environmental and stormwater impact was another challenge. To do so, we staged the work outside of the rainy season, and we designed the storm drain and detention basin to protect the watershed and clean some of the runoff.