When the traffic engineers at Stantec took on the Harrodsburg Road interchange project at New Circle for the state’s Transportation Cabinet, the aim was to improve traffic flow and safety at the heavily congested and crash-ridden intersection. Their answer, in part, was to have motorists drive on the wrong side of the road.
The innovative interchange design, called the “double-crossover diamond,” eliminates left turns by briefly shifting traffic lanes to the opposite sides of the road. Since its implementation on Harrodsburg Road in 2011, the number of crashes at the interchange has been cut almost in half. The project’s price tag of $6.5 million was far lower than the up-to-$20 million estimated cost of a more conventional interchange redesign, and construction was completed in five months.
The Harrodsburg interchange is one of many high-visibility transportation and engineering projects undertaken locally and across the state by the Lexington office of Stantec, which includes the former local agencies of Fuller Mossbarger Scott and May Engineers Inc. (FMSM) and ENTRAN. In addition to Harrodsburg Road, Stantec has served as lead design engineer for the Newtown Pike extension, which has involved the formation of Lexington’s first community land grant program and is expected to enter its next phase, the construction of the section connecting Versailles Road and South Broadway, within the next year. The company has also served as design consultant on the estimated $2.34 billion Ohio River Bridges Project, which involves the untangling of downtown Louisville’s Kennedy interchange, commonly known as “Spaghetti Junction,” and is projected to be completed in December 2016.
Major clients of Stantec’s Lexington offices include the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and the Corps of Engineers, but its client list ranges from large national energy companies to local Kentucky municipalities.
“Over the years, we have been involved with many of the high-profile projects in the state, in one way or another,” said Richard Sutherland, senior principal, transportation, for Stantec. “We do work for the municipalities when we can and when it’s available, and Lexington has been a good reliable client for us over the years.”
Stantec first entered the Lexington market in 2007 with its acquisition of FMSM, which brought with it expertise in environmental and geotechnical engineering in particular. The company added to its local footprint by acquiring the Lexington-based transportation consulting firm ENTRAN in 2011. Since then, Stantec’s presence in Kentucky has grown to include roughly 200 employees in Lexington and 85 in Louisville, making it one of the largest engineering firm in the state. Stantec (then ENTRAN) proposed the doublecrossover diamond concept to the Transportation Cabinet roughly six years ago, said Jason Bricker, Stantec senior project manager. The Transportation Cabinet initially moved forward with a conventional design for Harrodsburg Road, before the decision was made to take the more novel approach. After that, the entire project, from design to completion, was finished in less than a year.
Because the innovative design had never been used in Kentucky before, Stantec also organized a community outreach effort to introduce drivers to the new system before they encountered it behind the wheel.
“We felt like we needed to educate the public on what was going to happen and give them the facts on how the design functioned,” Bricker said.
They held community meetings at a nearby church to explain the new design to concerned citizens and developed a video to help community members visualize how cars would move through the intersection. They also set up a dedicated website to share information on the project and conducted an online survey to gather community feedback after the road re-opened. More than 1,400 community members responded to the survey, with 62 percent stating that they thought the roadway was safer as a result of the project, Bricker said.
“There were a few people who were skeptical, but when they understood how it would work, they accepted it,” Sutherland added. “And it’s worked like a charm.”
Stantec is currently designing another double-crossover diamond interchange for the 536/I-75 interchange in Boone County, and has been contracted to design another DCD project at I-24 and US-60 in Paducah. The Transportation Cabinet is considering the design as a possible solution for similar intersections across the state, Sutherland said.
Sutherland said that building strong community connections, both as part of the job and through volunteer service, is a guiding principle for Stantec, which operates 250 offices with 15,000 employees in North America. The company’s local employees participate in community events throughout the year, including the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life and Special Olympics. The company, which was named as one of the top-ten Best Places to Work in Kentucky for the past three years, also recently raised $120,000 through corporate and employee donations to assist the University of Kentucky’s civil engineering department in upgrading its teaching laboratories.
“Being visible in the community and being a participant in community activities is good business,” Sutherland said. “We’ve all taken that to heart.”
The company is in the process of consolidating its two local offices on Vine Street and Forbes Road to a new facility currently under development in Beaumont Centre, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2016. The company originally had planned to relocate to the downtown CentrePointe development but had to switch gears in late 2014 due to the delays at CentrePointe. Maintaining its presence in Lexington was a priority for Stantec, Sutherland said, and the company plans to continue its involvement in the more complicated local projects that keep them connected and accountable to the community.
“We kind of look forward to those,” Sutherland said. “Those are the kind of projects we like to get involved with — the ones that are challenging.”