This year marks the 25th anniversary of Roads & Bridges’ Top 10 awards series, which annually recognizes the most outstanding North American road and bridge projects.
The honored projects are innovative and creative feats of engineering, improving infrastructure and the lives of motorists, cyclists and pedestrians in their respective areas. Winning teams serve as examples to the rest of the industry, working together to overcome challenges, utilize new technology and connect communities.
Each year, nominations are submitted to the Roads & Bridges editorial staff, who determine the Top 10 lists by considering project challenges, innovation and impact. Nominations for the 2025 awards are open now until Sept. 1.
Before announcing this year’s winners in the November/December issue, Roads & Bridges is highlighting previous projects that embody the spirit of the Top 10 awards.
Technology
Infrastructure technology is constantly evolving and certain Top 10 winners used cutting-edge tools to set them apart from the rest, from construction equipment to software.
One of the biggest examples, literally, is 2016’s No. 1 bridge, the New NY Bridge spanning the Tappan Zee section of the Hudson River between Tarrytown and Nyack. Officially named the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge and also known as the Tappan Zee Bridge, it used a “skyscraper-on-water” mega crane nicknamed “I Lift NY,” one of the largest cranes in the world.
I Lift NY could carry 1,900 tons at once with its 950-ton arm. Two operators manned two separate sets of controls — one to guide the lift of the boom and another to control the barge movement. The crane placed pile caps, steel girder assemblies, road deck panels and more.
Previous Top 10 winners also set their projects apart by pioneering with digital technology. Project Neon in Las Vegas, 2019’s No. 1 road, used a mobile app to allow the public to view construction photos and videos, as well as notify road users of current closures and detour roads.
“I would say that Project Neon really set the bar as far as how we interact with the public,” said Cole Mortensen, then-deputy director of the Nevada Department of Transportation.
This was the department’s first time using an app in such a way. It could not have been more appropriate for a project covering the busiest stretch of highway in Nevada — around four miles of Interstate 15 between Sahara Avenue and the Spaghetti Bowl Interchange
The Complete 540 project in North Carolina’s Wake County, 2024’s No. 1 road, also took advantage of digital tools. It used AutoCAD Civil 3D for operational planning and SiteIQ for tracking earthwork movements by drone. These platforms enabled real-time oversight and enhanced safety by offering remote assessments of site conditions.
The technology was crucial for such a complex project, which featured nine bridges, 11 concrete box culverts and over 2.5 miles of aesthetic brick noise walls.
Resilience
While all Top 10 honorees faced challenges, some endured more than others. Winners were chosen not only for the obstacles they withstood, but how teams adapted to them.
Nothing says resilience more than working through multiple hurricanes. Crews on the U.S. 70 Gallants Channel Bridge in North Carolina’s Carteret County weathered not one but three one-eyed storms during construction, becoming 2017’s No. 1 bridge.
The team endured Hurricanes Matthew, Hermie and Joaquin, as well as Tropical Storms Ana, Julia, Colin and Bonnie. Whenever it looked like a storm’s path could impact the project area, workers cleared debris, stacked loose items and cleared off the top of the bridge.
On a couple occasions, crews had to move cranes and barges to safer ports. It took two days of prep and two days of recovery every time a major storm hit.
The Madawaska-Edmundston International Bridge, 2024’s No. 1 bridge, was also completed in the face of harsh weather conditions. Long winters in Madawaska, Maine, hovered between 5 and 21-degrees Fahrenheit. The St. John River froze, forcing the contractor to dismantle and remove work trestles to avoid ice buildup.
Because the bridge connects the U.S. and New Brunswick, Canada, the crew also faced the unique challenge of working with two countries’ wage, labor and tax laws. All team members had to pass background checks and be credentialed to enter the high-security worksite.
Philadelphia’s South Street Bridge Reconstruction, the 2011 No. 1 bridge, similarly had to navigate multiple bureaucratic entities.
The project was surrounded by three active railroad tracks, all managed by different transportation authorities. Each one had its own set of requirements and working windows. The contractor responded by working in three different project areas at the same time.
“There were a lot of different players and a lot of different agencies to gain consensus from,” project manager Rick Kemper said.
Crews were forced to use shallow beams due to tight clearances over the railroads. Because sewerage from the project could not seep onto the tracks, they created a complex drainage system to work around the nearby railways.
The span also tied into the University of Pennsylvania’s Hollenback Hall, which required a Historic American Engineering Record and the building’s contributing elements to be retained or matched.
Innovation
The Top 10 awards are often used to recognize projects that used new or unique methods for a better design and build. These improvements are often made out of necessity and showcase how a team solved problems creatively.
It is impressive anytime a project finishes ahead of schedule, but the Hood Canal Bridge’s 10-day lead is even more admirable when considering the required design innovations.
The project in Port Gamble, Wash., earned the title of 2010’s No. 1 bridge. It included “the most complex pontoons you can build,” which had basically no 90-degree angles. Designers could not reuse forms because each cell in every pontoon was unique in shape and size.
To create completely enclosed cells, the formwork had to be disassembled and removed in small pieces through a 30-inch hatch. Flexi-floats were bolted to the pontoons’ perimeters for additional buoyancy.
Other Top 10-winning projects required creative solutions due to remote construction locations, like 2013’s No. 1 bridge, the Grassy Creek Bridge in Breaks, Va. Because the team was working deep in the Appalachian Mountains, they built an on-site concrete batch plant to avoid shipment delays. The plant produced almost 60 different custom concrete mix designs.
The construction site location was also subject to intense weather conditions, so crews installed their own weather station. Real-time photos of the site were available via a solar-powered web camera, allowing for remote monitoring.
Even more secluded is 2015’s No. 1 road, found in the Tongass National Forest on Alaska’s Prince of Wales Island. The North Prince of Wales Road was located in an area with about 70 residents.
“Being fairly remote out there was one of the challenges,” project sponsor Brad Halvorson said. “A great deal of planning went into how we were going to deal with it.”
Collecting nearby building material was crucial, but crews struggled to excavate the plentiful limestone out from underneath peat waste. Equipment kept breaking, so the team decided to repurpose the damaged tools.
The workers placed old tires from articulated trucks in between the teeth and thumb of an excavator bucket, creating a large squeegee capable of fitting into hard-to-reach areas.
Without cellphone towers or internet access in the region, crews had to assemble a communications system on-site. A satellite dish powered by generator was installed, allowing satellite phones and radios to be used while on the job.
Multimodal transportation
Some Top 10 winners stand out for expanding transportation methods to beyond just cars, highlighting how roads and bridges are for various types of users.
The idea is not new — more than a decade ago, the District of Columbia’s 11th Street Bridges rebuild included multimodal options. The project, named 2012’s No. 1 bridge, included a 15-foot-wide pedestrian and cyclist path. Another part of the span was devoted to streetcar use, with bump-outs added to accommodate a then-upcoming 37-mile streetcar track.
Alternative mobility improvements were paramount to the U.S. Highway 18/151 reconstruction project in Madison, Wis. Named 2017’s No. 1 road, it connected neighborhoods on either side of Verona Road.
Project leaders kept in mind the wheelchair users, pedestrians and cyclists who frequented the urban road.
“Throw in the economically disadvantaged area in the project zone, with folks who don’t have access to other forms of transportation, and planning for multimodal was a key concern,” Project Chief John Vesperman said.
Linking neighborhoods was also a goal of New York’s Kosciuszko Bridge, which stretched between Brooklyn and Queens. Named 2020’s No. 1 bridge, it included a new bikeway-walkway, providing a connection between communities that did not exist before.
The shared-use path was 20-feet long and illuminated by programmable multi-colored LED lights.
Turning 25
Since 2000, Roads & Bridges has honored hundreds of infrastructure projects. This year, the count will reach 500 awardees.
Some Top 10 winners stood out for their use of technology, while others overcame environmental obstacles or design challenges. They all have one thing in common, however: they are used daily by people who rely on the road or bridge to go about their lives.
Whether a project spans a few-mile stretch in a rural community or reaches across international borders, the mobility it grants users is an award in itself.
The tradition continues later this year, when our editorial team announces the Top 10 Roads and Top 10 Bridges of 2025. Please stay tuned. If the past is any indication of the quality of the submissions we receive, you will want to read about these projects. RB
