CSXT North Avenue Bridge

Baltimore City, MD
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Location: Baltimore City, MD
Owner: CSXT
Construction Company: Fay, S&B USA Construction
Project Status: Under construction since December 2023
Fay will replace two 19th century 27-ft closed-spandrel brick masonry arches with modern steel girder and concrete deck bridge superstructures. This capital improvement addresses double-stack clearance restrictions along CSXT’s I-95 rail corridor between Baltimore, MD and Philadelphia, PA. Existing CSXT tracks are bounded below by the Amtrak B&P Tunnel and a 98-inch diameter stone and brick culvert, and above by North Avenue which carries heavy vehicular, pedestrian, and bicycle traffic together with four (4) major water lines, a critical 20-inch diameter gas line, and a network of approximately 50 communication and electrical conduits.
NAB1
The west side of the tunnel.
NAB Top view
The top view of CSXT North Avenue Bridge.

Construction

Since this project was a Progressive Design-Build, Fay began with 30% complete Owner drawings and worked with CSXT to get to design completion. To reduce impacts to rail, vehicular, pedestrian, and bicycle traffic, Fay worked with design engineers to change the MOT phasing from the three phases of construction shown in the preliminary plans to two phases by temporarily removing the existing concrete jersey shape median barrier and shifting traffic to maintain traffic on one half of the structure at a time. To reduce cost and save construction time, Fay proposed shifting Abutment A from the location shown in the preliminary plans to be parallel with the future mainline (west) track alignment. This reduced the length of the north side of the bridge by approximately 15 feet, providing several benefits to CSXT including reducing the length of utilities that would need to be maintained during construction and supported by the new bridge and reduce the amount of structural steel required for the bridge girders.