Commonly used in Europe for rail construction, the box-jacking method was first used in the U.S. earlier this year on the Long Island Railroad expansion project in New York City. In this project, similar precast concrete boxes were installed under roadways eliminating the need for at-grade railroad crossings.
Richard Brown, project manager for Granite, which cast the boxes on site, told Construction Dive that traditional tunneling wasn’t an option on the Florida project because of the existing grades of the roadway and the proposed track grades. In addition, conventional construction methods would have created an approximately 10-month detour for motorists, Brown said, as opposed to the two-week detour that is now planned.
