Already, the largest transportation project in Central Virginia and one of the most unusual in North America is transforming river vistas. Workers strapped to thin safety harnesses seemingly float 130 feet in the air above the river and 100 feet over I-95 to connect concrete and steel segments. Half the project is standard highway construction with 8.8 miles of road, 1,682 pre-cast segments of roadway and multiple bridge interchanges. What’s unique about I-895 is the sheer span of it, 675 feet — a distance equal to more than two football fields — stretching across the James River.

Supported by piers filled with 7,700 cubic yards of concrete supplied by 800 dump trucks and 800 tons of reinforced concrete, the high-level interchange and river crossing will be the third largest cast-in-place span in North America. "When you start going to longer spans, you’d have to go to a cable-type suspension bridge," says Herb Morgan, project director and president of the Fluor Daniel and Morrison Knudsen joint venture.

Among the challenges has been finding workers experienced in this type of construction in a tight labor market. Cast-in- place concrete projects are more common in Europe. The result is probably one of the most diverse construction work forces in the country with 600 workers, many coming from Northern Ireland, Italy, Canada and Mexico among other nations. Besides being difficult and specialized work, constructing a span of this type is not without danger. Since construction began, one worker has died — when bridge and overpass pilings were being set — and two others have sustained injuries.

After studying different construction options in the early 1990s, the Virginia Department of Transportation settled on the cast-in-place model as the best choice for the river crossings.The spans needed to be high enough to allow river traffic to and from the Port of Richmond downstream. The Pocahontas Parkway is the first major road construction project to be financed through Virginia’s Public-Private Transportation Act of 1995 and only the second in the nation to be financed through a public-private partnership of this type. FD/MK, the joint venture between Fluor Daniel, Inc. of Greenville, S.C. and Morris Knudsen, LLC of Boise Idaho that is managing the project, arranged the private bond financing and is responsible for paying for cost overruns.

Virginia is kicking in $27 million. But most of the $324 million cost including financing will be recouped over time through $1.50 tolls on the east side of the river. Construction began Oct. 13, 1998 and project leaders are fairly certain they will not finish by their April 2002 deadline. If not, their contract with the state and VDOT requires them to pay fines of $25,000 per day — for as many as 1,000 days — for each day past the completion date regardless of the cause, including weather. No wonder project managers are praying for sunny skies.

Yet it sure is a big draw. Delegations of engineers from 17 countries as far away as China, Egypt and Vietnam have trekked to see it. Transportation officials from across the country have made the pilgrimage, and at least two highway departments have copied it. Even Northern Virginia residents – the neighbors most likely to be effected or inconvenienced – show it off to their out-of-town guests.

How come? The Mixing Bowl is big. It has a hefty $585 million price tag that keeps growing. And despite on-going construction, it still moves more humans than most U.S. cities have residents. "Anybody can build all the bridges and everything, but we’re doing this as we’re moving 400,000 commuters a day," says Donna Kierstead, a senior inspector with the Virginia Department of Transportation.

The interchange project is nearing completion on the $123 million second and third of eight phases, likely earning the main contractor, Shirley Contracting Corp. of Newington, a $10 million bonus for being ahead of schedule. Phase 4, connecting the Capital Beltway to I-395, is about 30 percent finished and part of phase 5 is also underway. The project is scheduled for completion by 2007.

All of that work, however, is a big imposition for Northern Virginia motorists who are enduring some of the worst traffic congestion in the country and are likely to have to put up with much more.

Such notoriety has prompted VDOT to try new outreach programs to ease the pain. For instance, it has begun the first-ever "store" to keep residents informed. Kierstead and Titunik are among five people who staff the Springfield Interchange store at the Springfield Mall from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week to keep lines of communication open with neighbors and commuters.

The best that most construction projects offer is a trailer at the site where residents can get ongoing details. Yet the Springfield Mall store and Web site at www.springfieldinterchange.com are part of a $34 million congestion management program that provides residents frequently updated information in a convenient location. Fairfax County Supervisor Dana Kauffman, a Democrat and frequent VDOT critic, is almost embarrassed to acknowledge how well the project is being managed. "Frequently VDOT inadvertently sets themselves up for criticism. But in the case of the mitigation efforts they are to be praised."

The 3,000-square-foot store, sandwiched between one of the busiest DMV offices in the state, a future Target store, and the sweet smells of Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, has attracted 7,000 visitors each month since it opened two and a half years ago. The congestion management efforts, which consume close to 6 percent of the project’s budget, grew from meetings among senior project managers, area business leaders and elected officials. Transportation leaders in Richmond were initially reluctant, fearing it would be seen as a waste of money, but pressure from the business community and Springfield area politicians eventually won out. "The key is you have to be accessible to people when doing such large scale projects," says Titunik, a retired military public relations expert and the creative force behind the store.

That’s not to say that no one has been inconvenienced by the project. There’s a high probability that anybody heading south on I-95 from I-495 will be stuck in traffic, even on a Saturday afternoon. But project managers and even many neighbors say many of the traffic tie-ups have been caused by car accidents or merging traffic and not construction directly. About 15 state troopers and contracts with towing companies dedicated to the project help keep traffic moving and respond almost instantly to accidents. Traffic updates, including accident details or alternate routes can be posted to the Web site in minutes. "In a lot of countries they would put up a sign that says ‘road closed.’ In Northern Virginia we cannot do that," Titunik says.

Patients will be moved about five miles when Sentara Healthcare’s new $86 million Sentara Health Campus on the Virginia Peninsula opens in December 2002. The 368,000-square-foot, 194-bed facility will wrap around Sentara’s CarePlex outpatient facility on a new 45-acre campus. It will boast cameras in rooms so that out-of-town friends and family can visit patients using high-speed Internet connections. Among new amenities will be a linear accelerator for treating cancer patients, a 4,000-kilowatt power plant, and new sterilizers. "It’s the ultimate in medical construction," says John Lawson, president of W.M. Jordan General Contracting, the company building the project.

Hampton General is among the latest Virginia hospitals to decide that sometimes it’s cheaper, easier and better to start from scratch by replacing an old hospital with a new one. Richmond Memorial Hospital made the move three years ago when it relocated to Hanover and became Memorial Regional Medical Center. Louise Obici Memorial Hospital in Suffolk is scheduled to move to a new facility in February, and Williamsburg Community Hospital is weighing a similar move.