SR 415 over St. Johns River

The SR 415 over St. Johns River was a $33 million project in Volusia County, Florida. The highway was becoming congested during peak traffic times and needed capacity improvements to reduce bottlenecking and increase traffic flow as well as provide increased mobility on the St. Johns River. 

DRMP was responsible for the structural design and plans preparation of four new bridges and the retrofitting of an existing bridge as part of this 2-lane to 4-lane capacity improvement project.  Key project elements included the design of a new medium level St. Johns River crossing consisting of AASHTO Beam approach spans with steel plate girder channel spans and the retrofitting of the channel spans of the existing river crossing to provide vessel impact resistance and greater horizontal clearance.  The introduction of the highly efficient Florida I-Beam to the market led to reevaluation of high value projects in Florida. This project was selected for evaluation which led to redesign in a plans update phase. The plans update involved modification of the proposed AASHTO beam approach spans and steel plate girder main spans to Florida-I Beams for the two bridges that span the St. Johns River. This major update, which required complete redesign, of two major concrete bridges subject to scour affects and vessel impact loads was completed on an extremely accelerated schedule to meet a hard letting date and resulted in an estimated $1.1 million savings.  In addition to the main river crossings were both a vehicular bridge and a pedestrian bridge over the St John River Relief Canal.

The project allowed for maximum traffic flow and decreased vehicular congestion by doubling the capacity on SR 415. The bridge over St. Johns River was innovatively designed for maximum structure lifespan and featured vessel impact resistant accommodations for bigger watercraft to navigate the river below.