OPAC Consulting Engineers

Sun Yat-Sen Freeway Widening Project


Taipei, Taiwan

Client:

Taiwan Area National Freeway Bureau

Date:

Design completed 1991
Construction completed 1995

Scope of work:

Design

Construction cost:

US$ 1.6 Billion

Services Performed:

  • Conceptual design and type selection
  • Final design
  • Engineering support during construction

Issues:

  • Extensive coordination and communication interface with 7 production offices involved in the design effort, with various government agencies, and with multiple subconsultants
  • Segmental bridge
  • Strong management, scheduling, and budget control to meet the aggressive, fast-track design schedule
  • Design for high seismic zone

The capacity of the Sun Yat-Sen Freeway, a major transportation link of the Greater Taipei Metropolitan area, required doubling within the existing right-of-way and without significant disruption of traffic during construction. The design solution specifies a pair of twin 22 km long elevated structures with interchanges to segregate local traffic on the existing surface roadway and through traffic on the new grade-separation. Each of the 22 km long structures carries two or three lanes of traffic over or alongside the existing freeway. The project contains a wide variety of bridge and elevated highway structures, including 5.2 km of cast-in-place concrete box girders of spans up to 180 m constructed using the segmental cantilever method. T.Y. Lin International (TYLI) was the prime consultant.

  • Kwong Cheng, current OPAC Principal, served as Project Manager while at TYLI and directed a team of over 150 engineers and technicians to perform preliminary and final design of this project.
  • Mark Ketchum, current OPAC Principal, served as Supervising Engineer while at TYLI and provided guidance for the design and analysis of 5.2 km of cast-in-place box girder bridge structures.