The Texas Department of Transportation could award a contact this week on a revised bid it received last week for a redesigned and iconic new highway bridge over the Trinity River in downtown Dallas. The new bid came in 61% lower than the initial bids submitted in June.
The latest construction estimate for the 40-story high, 1,800-foot long suspension bridge designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava is $69 million, down from the previous low bid of $113 million.
That's still $4 million over the budget, but officials expect to come up with the additional money from private sources. The city said it has $65 million available for the bridge project. Work could get under way as early as January.
The bid by Williams Bros. Construction of Houston was the only one received.
The revised design calls for several small beams to support the suspension cables instead of few larger ones, the use of cheaper foreign steel in the fabrication, and replacing a steel drainage pipe with a plastic one.
The bridge's financing includes $28 million from a $246 million Dallas general obligation bond authorization in 1998 for improvements in the Trinity River corridor, $8 million from the state's federal highway grants, $17 million from state and regional transportation funds, and $12 million in naming rights.
The city sold the bridge's name in 2005 to Hunt Petroleum. It will officially be known as the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge.
