Brevard County is home to Florida’s famed Space Coast. Centrally located 45 minutes east of Orlando, and known as the “Gateway to Space” since the 1950’s, the County hosts several major tourist destinations, and is a thriving hub for business and industry. The Brevard County Traffic Operations team is responsible for administering maintenance to traffic signals, pavement markings, and signing for approximately 375 intersections. Additionally, Traffic Operations fabricates road signs for the agency’s own use, and for selling to other agencies.

Signalization at the intersection of SR 520 at Sykes Creek Parkway presented a design challenge due to the large number of eastbound and westbound lanes in the arterial roadway. SR 520 is one of two main points of access to Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach. Installation of the signal truss would require an overnight traffic shutdown at the high volume intersection. When the bid was awarded to PowerCore, a specialty electrical contractor based in nearby Melbourne, as part of the pre construction submittal process, PowerCore had to develop an emergency contingency plan for Brevard County’s approval.

PowerCore selected Arcosa Traffic Structures as the structural steel fabricator, and the project kicked off in Spring 2020. The bid design called for a powder coated, tri chord, traffic signal truss with a 260’ span. After the contract award, the initial design was revised, due to the amount of signal cable to be installed. The thirty traffic signals attached to the structure were to be independently powered by a separate cable for each. The re design allowed the structure to better accommodate the cable sizing, and created more accessibility to the cable for the end user.

Fabrication lead time was approximately eighteen weeks. The PowerCore and Arcosa Traffic Structures teams coordinated the delivery schedule so the shipments arrived on site four weeks before the installation. The structure span was shipped in eight sections, each a single load. An additional ninth load carried the two structure upright columns. Deliveries were staged in a shopping center parking lot near the intersection where the structure would be installed. PowerCore crews were then able to assemble the structure, and attach and pre-cable the traffic signals.

At 260’ in length, and 65,000 pounds in weight, the structure necessitated two cranes for lifting, a 275 ton and a 240 ton. The day of installation, the crane provider began setting up equipment at 9:00 am. A 10 person PowerCore team was onsite to fly the structure. Safety was the first priority for all in attendance. Annually, in roadway work zones across the U.S, approximately twenty thousand workers are injured, and over one hundred killed. A safety meeting was held at 7:00 pm, and at 9:00 pm, the roads were closed.

The truss span was moved from the final assembly staging area to the intersection, where the column uprights were pre-installed on anchor bolts embedded in two 54” x 24’ drill shaft foundations. With a crane at each end of the span, the crane operators carefully maneuvered into place the 260’ long section. Overhead crews then bolted the span to the uprights, fed the cable down the interior of the column, and pulled it through underground conduit to the traffic signal controller cabinet. A technician made the final cable connections within the cabinet, powered the intersection on, and the new signalized overhead truss at SR 520 at Sykes Creek Parkway was operational. The team met the installation deadline as scheduled, and the intersection was re-opened to traffic by 5:00 am.